Aisle Say Twin Cities is pleased to introduce its newest reviewer, Tamar Neumann, an adjunct English professor who also writes for the St Paul Community Reporter! by TAMAR NEUMANN A Kind of Love Story begins with the frank admission that this is a love story. It’s a story we’ve heard a thousand times before: Boy meets…
by SOPHIE KERMAN If you haven’t heard of Transatlantic Love Affair yet, you might be a little bit behind the curve. The company has been creating its own brand of physical theatre since 2010, and has been picking up Ivey Awards and annual Fringe Favorites left and right ever since. Their ability to captivate audiences year after…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Modern dance and schizophrenia are two subjects that many people initially shy away from. Weirdly, both topics provoke similar gut reactions from those unfamiliar with them: Isn’t it hard to understand? It’s so weird and unpredictable! What if I don’t get what’s going on? Maggie’s Brain, presented at the Cowles Center this weekend only,…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Director Amy Rummenie couldn’t have picked a better time of year to stage a drawing room farce: if you’re feeling stuck in the doldrums of a long, cold January, The School for Lies is just the kind of diversion to shake off a winter chill. The play, by David Ives, is a very loose adaptation…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Griffelkin might be a children’s opera, but the performers – a group of over 70 children in graders 4-12 – aren’t playing around. In a limited run at the Lab Theater, the opera is already nearly sold out, and for good reason. This isn’t your average high school musical: these kids have dedicated…
by SOPHIE KERMAN If you’re sick and tired of Christmas spirit, it might be time for a change of pace. Director Josh Cragun‘s adaptation of Maxim Gorky‘s The Lower Depths places you in the middle of a Great Depression basement-level tenement, peeling away all of the candy-coated materialism of the holiday season to reveal what happens to people when they…
by SOPHIE KERMAN What’s in a number? Well, when it comes to sex, numbers can mean a heck of a lot. Ian MacAllister-McDonald‘s The Sexual Life of Savages begins when Hal discovers that he and his girlfriend Jean are numerically mismatched – where he has had 7 sexual encounters, Jean’s number may be up beyond 25 –…
by SOPHIE KERMAN At the beginning of The Veterans Play Project, two would-be filmmakers and a community chorus are all asking the same question: “Where are all the vets?” In the fictional town of Smedley, MN – just like the Twin Cities – veterans are everywhere, but for a variety of personal and political reasons,…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Some topics are so serious, so immediate, and so tragic that it is better to deny audiences the catharsis they often seek at the theater. This is the case with Kiomars Moradi and Porya Azarbayjani‘s devastating Love Letters from the Middle East, a trio of monologues about the plight of women affected by the upheaval…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Sure, saving the universe sounds awesome. Superpowers, space travel, battling aliens… there’s no down side, right? Well, as it turns out for Bruce and Violet Wong, all this superhero stuff is actually kind of stressful. Just as stressful, in fact, as it is to be an awkward, sci-fi loving middle schooler. In…
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