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…
By REBECCA HALAT. Blending humor with anxiety, Theatre Unbound’s production of Motherhood Out Loud showed many of the complexities of motherhood. What’s left to be said about motherhood, you ask? True, a play on this much-discussed subject risks redundancy, and yet throughout the performance, I felt fully engaged. Set through a series of scenes that takes…
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: The Children’s Theatre Company is known for commissioning new works for younger audiences. They have commissioned over 200 plays in their long history and they continue to add to that number every season. This season they have chosen to adapt Paul Fleishman’s book Seedfolks into a short (a little over an hour) one-woman…
By LIZ BYRON. In old western movies, the good guy wears a white hat, and the bad guy wears a black hat. In Gabriel, the good guy (good lady?) wears a pretty dress and the bad guy wears a Nazi uniform, which seems rather unsubtle, but as the play unfolds, the divide between right and…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE and RACHEL ADAMOVICH The dilemma in reviewing the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Heidi Chronicles at the Guthrie Theater is to describe a transformative and near perfect theater experience without sounding clichéd. From the bravura performance of lead actress Kate Wetherhead as Heidi Holland to the equally excellent supporting cast, music, staging,…
by SOPHIE KERMAN I did Nature wrong, and I have to say that I am a little ashamed of myself. Rather than arriving early at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, I had a rushed lunch at home and then sped my way down 494 to make it to Chaska on time. This was my first time at the…
By LIZ BYRON. Frequently it seems that a play is either insightful and poorly staged, or else fluffy and well staged. Time after time do I get the impression that it’s an either..or.. deal: either you get a thought-provoking script that raises important questions, or you get a well-acted, well-directed performance. It was with delight,…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Looking for a light, campy Victorian supernatural-mystery-farce with hysterical scene-chewing acting, cross-dressing and clever staging? Then, The Mystery of Irma Vep at The Jungle Theater is just the play for you! I love physical humor and this play delivers. With two actors playing all eight characters, they move quickly through the…
by SOPHIE KERMAN There is a danger in having a formula that works as well as Mixed Precipitation‘s annual picnic operettas. We know the recipe hits all the right notes (so to speak): first, start with an operetta – guaranteed good-quality music – and add in some more contemporary songs and an anti-corporate message to reach a target audience of modern adults…
by SOPHIE KERMAN As a source text for a youth circus production, you can’t get much better than Peter Pan. Neverland is a country of eternal youth and constant adventure, and circus arts rekindle our sense of incredulity in a way that not many other forms of theatre can match. Maybe the death-defying leaps, staggering feats…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 