The Wolves (Jungle Theater, through Apr 29) concerns a group of young women, 9 by my count, prepping for a series of soccer games. Soccer-haters (a category that includes myself) take note: you don’t have to watch these women play.…
Author: John Olive
Review | The Great Divide II: wonderfully uneven
The Great Divide II is a collection of 5 short one acts presented without intermission by Pillsbury House Theatre (through March 25), a follow-up to last season’s successful The Great Divide. The plays – by Andrew Rosendorf, Christina M. Ham,…
Review | Indecent: beautifully dilapidated
Your two agèd (make that astute and intelligent) www.HowWasTheShow.com reviewers, John Olive and Janet Preus, recently attended a performance at the G of Paula Vogel‘s Indecent. They then repaired to the bar downstairs and prepared the following review: John Olive:…
Review | Park & Lake: a hoot and a half
What gives with all these outré comedies currently gracing stages in the twins? Two Mile Hollow. 21 Extremely Bad Breakups. Noises Off. And now the latest offering from Ten Thousand Things: Park & Lake. Are the sanctimonious clowns in Washington…
Review | Two Mile Hollow: over-the-top, and thoroughly enjoyable
Camp: when the process(es) of the performers supercede(s) the needs of the story being told. By this definition, Two Mile Hollow – a co-production between Mixed Blood Theater and Mu Performing Arts (an arrangement one wishes more theaters would make),…
Review | Assassins: overlong maybe, but fab
Ever wonder why the dapper Johnny Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln? Laid awake at night sorting out the reasons why the cheerfully insane Charles Guiteau put a bullet in President Garfield’s back? Tried to figure out why the effervescently cute…
Review | My Mother Has 4 Noses: brilliant music, difficult subject matter charmingly rendered
Let’s get this out of the way right off ye olde bat: My Mother Has 4 Noses (at the Jungle, through March 4) is not really a play. It’s a story. Relentlessly past tense. The teller – the charming and…
Review | The Maids: pure energy
Like all of Dark & Stormy Productions plays, Jean Genet‘s The Maids is done in a small, empty office space in the old Grain Belt Brewery (77 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis, through Feb 17). The space is intimate. The actors…
Review | Ishmael: a monolog based on Moby Dick
For most people… Well, for many people… Okay, for me, Moby Dick = Gregory Peck. The image is indelible: Peck-as-Ahab lashed to the great albino whale’s side, stabbing at him ineffectually with a broken harpoon, as Dick, having handily turned…
Article | HWTS’s Top Plays Of 2017
Our second year-end wrap-up. Most of the shows were reviewed, but some were not. For those for which reviews exist, helpful links are included. We’re lucky to live in such a good theater town. MARI WITTENBREER Full disclosure: I…