The pitch for the Broadway touring production of Mamma Mia! is “You already know you’re gonna love it!†Judging by the opening night audience, at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, I’d say that’s fairly accurate. A good portion of…
Category: Reviews
The Mill at The Playwrights’ Center
The Mill, a new play by International Falls, Minn., native Jeannine Coulombe presented at The Playwrights’ Center by The Workhaus Collective, looks at what it really means to live in a town that is dependent on one major industry and…
Learn To Be Latina at Mixed Blood Theatre
In the demented, clutch-popping and mud puddle shallow Learn To Be Latina (Mixed Blood Theatre, through May 13), by Enrique Urueta, a sweet-tempered, blissfully open Lebanese-American (clear emphasis on the latter), Hanan Mashalani, is informed that although she exhibits serious…
Deal! The Musical at the Ritz Theater
It’s a challenge for writers to get their own work produced; it gets even more complex to produce a new musical. Furthermore, if the new musical does not have a “name†– either one of the writers or recognized subject…
Spring Awakening, a co-production with Theater Latté Da and The University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts and Dance
I’m often asked, in my exalted position as theater reviewer, if I’ve seen anything really good. I hem and haw. “This play at the Guthrie’s not bad, and that play at CTC is terrific if you’re seven years old, and…
Time Stands Still at the Guthrie Theater
Sarah Goodwin, the hero of Donald Margulies‘s often penetrating (and often static) Time Stands Still (at the Guthrie, through May 20), thrives on conflict. On blood, on insanity, the sudden violence of war. She has acquired – or so she…
“What’s the Word For” at Illusion Theater
Illusion Theater has renewed their collaborative relationship with local playwright Jeffrey Hatcher in a commissioned work that also honors producing directors Michael Robins (who directs this production) and Bonnie Morris for their commitment to developing and producing new plays. The…
The Birthday Party at the Jungle Theater
Pinteresque. The word has permanently entered the English lexicon. It refers to something seemingly straightforward – a word, a gesture, a simple prop, a mere pause – that implies that we live atop a miasmic sea of horror and nastiness. …
Million Dollar Quartet at the State Theatre
I did a scientific analysis of the audience at Million Dollar Quartet (at the State Theatre, through April 1) (I looked around). I immediately perceived that a person with the Rogaine concession would clean up. The show seems geared largely…
“Werther and Lotte” produced by The Moving Company at The Lab Theater
We’ve learned to expect imaginative surprises from The Moving Company. The members of this relatively new company of familiar local theater artists just see theater differently. Werther and Lotte, the Passion and the Sorrow, created by company members Nathan Keepers…