by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN The Minnesota Opera’s production of Hansel and Gretel is a great introduction to opera for friends and family who are intimidated or reluctant to give the form a try. The story is familiar, the music is approachable (and lovely), and the staging is fantastic – in all definitions of the word. …
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: After I saw The Classical Actors Ensemble’s production of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi all my memories of my Renaissance English Literature class came crashing back. I went home, dusted off my copy of the play, and started flipping through my notes about the tragic themes present in this story. I…
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…
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 SOPHIE KERMAN Like so many of you, last Monday evening I went to celebrate the Twin Cities theater community by getting dressed up and applauding the achievements of so many talented theater professionals at the Ivey Awards. This year, as the Iveys’ 10th anniversary, has given critics ample food for thought; for instance, Tad Simons has a great article about how wonderful…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 