Category: Theater

Hamlet at the Jungle Theater

Hamlet (at the Jungle Theater, through Oct 9) is the greatest play ever written.  William Shakespeare‘s sinuous exploration of (in no particular order) revenge, love, ambition, power, madness, violence, suicide, lust, agonizing passivity, aristocratic privilege represents, along with the Sistine…

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2011

Billed as “Minnesota’s festival of the performing arts”, The Fringe Festival boasts performances of 160+ shows spread over a breathless ten day period, Aug 4-14.  We at HowWasTheShow.com (J.O. = John Olive and J.P. = Janet Preus) offer herewith highly…

H.M.S. Pinafore at the Guthrie Theater

Perhaps director Joe Dowling and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher (provider of “additional material”) are right: as it stands Gilbert and Sullivan‘s gloriously English, emphatically 19th century H.M.S. Pinafore (at the Guthrie, through August 28) is too dry and dreary for 21st…

Panic at Park Square Theatre

In Panic (at Park Square Theatre, through July 10), playwright Joseph Goodrich creates a “cozy” mystery: characters are powerful, wealthy, self-assured.  They live postcard-perfect lives.  Henry Lockwood, famous film-director, prepares to open his latest film (a grand success, of course)…

Guys And Dolls at the Ordway

“What kind of doll are you?” Sky Masterson, high-roller extraordinaire, asks incredulously. To which Sergeant Sarah Brown, proud marcher for the Salvation Army, now sober after getting herself roundly sloshed on Bacardi-flavored milkshakes, replies defiantly, “I’m a mission doll!”  End…