What a pleasure to actually see Autumn Ness. In The Biggest Little House In The Forest (on the Children’s Theatre Co.’s Cargill Stage, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, through June 20, childrenstheatre.org) Ms. Ness wears none of the feature disguising makeup…
Author: John Olive
My Fair Lady at Minnesota Opera Center
Ten Thousand Things’ production of My Fair Lady (Ten Thousand Things, various venues, though note that the “public performances” are at the MN Opera Center, 620 N. 1st St., Minneapolis, May 7-30, tenthousandthings.org) owes more to George Bernard Shaw (creator…
Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking at Penumbra Theatre
In his lovely Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking (Penumbra, 270 Kent St., St Paul, through May 23, penumbratheatre.org) playwright Gus Edwards presents us with two gentlemen of a grand experience of life, inhabiting the trash strewn corner…
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at The Jungle Theater
When first produced in October 1962 (at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis), the boozy and vituperative Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (at the Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis, through May 30, jungletheater.com) blew through staid and polite…
Becoming, a Mu Performing Arts Production at Dreamland Arts
Even the name is perfect: Dreamland Arts, a small one story building nestled in a modest St Paul neighborhood (not far from Hamline University), containing an intimate (maybe 40 seats) theater. I adore spaces like this, where actors can play with…
Avenue Q at Orpheum Theatre
It’s one of the enduring mysteries of the theater, and it goes back thousands of years, the way masks and puppets can take on such astonishingly lucid life. Every movement, gesture, every tilt of the head is amplified and what we…
Safe as Houses, a Joking Envelope Production at Minneapolis Theater Garage
The house appears innocuous. It’s pleasant and airy, with a few books, an anemic plant, cheapo Venetian blinds, a couch, a table containing realtor’s photos and info sheets. But the offstage areas, the bone strewn basement, the viciously haunted breakfast nook (“It…
August: Osage County at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts
The setup of Tracy Letts‘s wonderful August: Osage County (at the Ordway, through March 21, ordway.org) is familiar: the family patriarch has died under mysterious circumstances and his three daughters, the “agitated Weston sisters”, have arrived at the family manse…
Iron Ring, a Children’s Theatre Company Production
Iron Ring (on the Children’s Theatre Company mainstage, 2400 Third Ave, through April 10, childrenstheatre.org) adapted by Charles Way from a novel by the gifted Lloyd Alexander is a journey story in the grandly mythic Joseph Campbell tradition. Way (one of…
Somebody/Nobody at Mixed Blood Theatre
Deranged starlet Sheena Keener flees the Surf Awards (“All those eyes”), stumbles out of her limo, rolls down a bebrambled freeway embankment and now with a photogenic scrape on her pampered forehead pounds on the wobbly door of Loli’s cinderblock…