by SOPHIE KERMAN Every weekend in the fall, there seems to be an endless stream of shows opening around the Twin Cities, and despite the best efforts our tireless band of volunteer reviewers, we can never manage to see everything. October feels like a record high for opening weekends this year: although Anna Rosensweig and…
by EMILY MEISLER, guest reviewer Appomattox, a new play by Christopher Hampton and commissioned by the Guthrie Theater, presents two distinct snapshots of American history: April 1865, the end of the Civil War; and April 1965, after the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and just before the passage of President Johnson’s Voting Rights Act. While these…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Despite knowing and loving Kurt Vonnegut, Jr for novels like Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle, fans should not be surprised that he was also a playwright. After all, his witty, cutting dialogue is precisely what makes his novels so readable and so incisive. In Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Vonnegut’s trademark style leaps off the page;…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Aside from honoring the Twin Cities’ most hard-working and talented theater professionals, the Ivey Awards also provides reviewers and theater fans with a chance to see how they did. What must-see shows did we miss this year? And did we agree with the Ivey committee’s choices? Here is a list of this year’s…
by SOPHIE KERMAN In Sarah Ruhl‘s take on the classic myth of Eurydice, there are many ways to cross between loss and forgetting. Letters find their way to and from the underworld, where a chorus of stones silently fights the speech and song that bring memory back into dark places. An elevator transports the dead to their…
by MELANIE BOWMAN When the question of marriage equality arises, solemnity prevails. The seriousness of the issue generally excludes comedy, though derision is never far from the discussion. Better (or) Worse, presented by the Freshwater Theatre Company, takes on marriage as an institution with seriousness, realism, laughter, and hope. The play is a series of short scenes…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Contemporary theatre has a wide range of potential – to break new artistic ground, to offer pointed social commentary, to provide audiences a window into the lives of others. The Brothers Size, performed in the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio, tries to do all three. But while the play’s vague nods to Yoruba-inspired mythology¹ do…
by SOPHIE KERMAN No matter how busy your summer may be, you certainly have 90 minutes on a weekend to sit outside in a beautiful garden, eat tasty snacks, and watch a highly entertaining, impressively executed operetta. “But,” you whine, “I just don’t get opera!” With its adaptation of The Return of King Idomeneo, which integrates…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” were certainly ground-breaking in 1996, but the contemporary conversation about gender – and all the many fluid forms it may take – makes Ensler’s focus seem a bit narrow. After all, some people have no particular affinity towards their vagina, while others ardently wish that they had…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The program for Savage Umbrella’s latest production, Care Enough, cites quotes from Vaclav Havel, John Berger, Susan Sontag, and Cat Power (among others) as the play’s inspiration. If that does not immediately seem like a red flag to you, let me explain why it should. Works like Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others”…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 