By LIZ BYRON. I remember being wildly unimpressed the first time I read The Misanthrope. I was a college sophomore taking my first French literature class, and my impatient 19-year-old brain thought it was slow, wordy, and didn’t particularly seem to have a plot. A few years later, I re-read it for a graduate class…
by ADAM SCHENCK and REBECCA HALAT. We live in an age of oversharing, as if our every whim must be declared on social media. In politics, partisanship prevents us from reaching compromise; we go to Target instead of Wal-Mart; Facebook prompts us to say where we work and whom our romantic partners are. We “like”…
By LIZ BYRON. There is nothing particularly groundbreaking about Yellow Tree Theater’s holiday season production. On the other hand, something doesn’t have to be groundbreaking to be good, and A Hunting Shack Christmas is very good. It’s got a compelling plot, it’s funny, it’s got enough heartwarming moments to give you the warm fuzzies but…
It’s coming up on that time of year again… Theatre Unbound’s 24:00:00 Xtreme Theatre Smackdown. I reviewed the Smackdown last year and am looking forward to this year’s event, since they’re all different. Since this is a one-night-a-year event, here’s your reminder to catch this year’s action! This year’s event is happening on Saturday, January…
by REBECCA HALAT and ADAM SCHENCK. Christmastime is a reminder that our best stories are not new. The Guthrie’s annual production of A Christmas Carol is just such a story. How then to make the old familiar story new? The Guthrie celebrates its 40th year of A Christmas Carol this year, and this classic production…
Open Eye Figure Theater’s adaptation of The Juniper Tree uses an innovative blend of live actors, beautiful stage design, and amazing puppetry to bring to life one of the Grimm Brothers’ more gruesome tales. This is no children’s tale, as it brings together love, loss, murder, and cannibalism, while still leaving room for a happy…
By LIZ BYRON. Haven’t you ever wondered what happened to Sleeping Beauty after she married her Prince Charming? I mean, let’s think about this for a second. She was supposed to have fallen into her “death-like sleep” at the age of 16, right? And then Princely McPerfect comes along and kisses her, she wakes up,…
By LIZ BYRON. Before I tell you what I thought of the opening production of Gadfly Theatre‘s fifth season, a little disclosure: I didn’t seek out a cast list when I agreed to review this play, and so it wasn’t until I sat down in my seat on Friday night and looked at the program that…
By LIZ BYRON. I was sitting in a German class a couple of years ago when my teacher, demonstrating a new grammar concept, used the example character “Frau Blücher”. Without thinking, I neighed like a horse, much to the alarm of my classmates — most of whom were a good ten years younger than me…
By REBECCA HALAT. Mixed Blood’s production of Colossal dealt with the difficulty of loss. Most simply, it is the story of a young football player and a game injury that leaves him in a wheelchair. The loss of the full use of his legs, however, is not the most painful one we see him suffer…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 