by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE The Matchmaker, now on Park Square Theatre’s Andy Boss Thrust Stage, is writer and playwright Thornton Wilder’s (Our Town) satirical and humorous take on class differences, new wealth, love and the importance of having adventures. This is the play that was later turned into the iconic Tony-award winning musical, Hello Dolly!, starring Carole Channing and the 1969…
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: It’s safe to assume that most people don’t think about horror festivals, and creepy-themed plays during the warm summer nights of July, but Gadfly Theatre Productions is hoping you might be up for just that. Their annual one-act Final Frontier Festival has a spooky theme this year. They’ve gathered six one act…
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: During the post-play discussion for Juno and the Paycock, the Guthrie Theater’s latest production, Jo Holcomb, dramaturg, stated that this play was in Joseph Dowling’s DNA. As I thought about everything I could say about this production I kept circling back to Holcomb’s statement. My written words cannot find a better way to…
by Adam M. Schenck Our lives have seasons, and the Bard himself tells us that “All the world’s a stage.” And as Aristotle teaches us in his Poetics, catharsis is the purgation of our emotions via the experience of tragedy. That’s three big concepts, but I want to answer a simple question: What is the…
by Adam M. Schenck Part of growing up in our country as a late adolescent is reading what is called classic American literature. The teacher tells the sixth- through ninth-graders, “This is important! This matters!” But children at that age do not have a reference for what is important. Like you perhaps, my first interaction…
[Trigger warning: sexual abuse, rape] by Rebecca Halat The Illusion Theater’s production of Lee Blessing’s For the Loyal explores truth, consequences, and obligations. The narrative is based on the real-life events of the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal, but avoids falling into the trap of simply re-telling that narrative. The play begins by exploring…
Have you ever done something without knowing why? –so asks a character in If You Don’t Weaken, and it comes at a very timely moment, for the audience may just be asking themselves why this woman is making such inexplicable, illogical decisions in her life. So is the character’s friend, for that matter. After all, why…
by Adam M. Schenck Have you ever been sitting there in the audience, Live Theatre Goer, and wondered, “Why are there so few people here and so many people at home watching television?” Well, this critic has had that thought, and let me say that I can’t recall having a solid belly laugh at a…
At one point during The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible, one of the titular performers asked an audience member if he had ever wanted to be a magician. “Yes,” the man answered, and when asked why he never pursued this, he explained, “Well, I was 8.” The implications were obvious — being a magician is not…
by Rebecca Halat As a youth, Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite movies, so the child in me was very excited to be able to see the Orpheum’s production, bringing my old memories to the stage. This performance certainly matched my expectations, and I was reminded of what a pleasure it is…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 