by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Imagine a whiskey and piano jazz bar fuzed with the salon of your favorite NYU music professor and you’ll understand the captivating vibe of Words By….Ira Gershwin and the Great American Songbook. The play combines singing with a bit of American musical history and offers a wonderful evening’s entertainment for music lovers of all…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Russ King’s hilarious holiday drag satire pokes fun of Asians, Christmas, religion, lesbians, bad sweaters and suburbia. No group is safe from Miss Richfield 1981’s sharp-tongued, spike-heeled humor. King’s hysterically funny Sweet & Sour Richfield: Made in China! is a holiday tradition for many repeat audience members and a break from traditional, treacly holiday fare for newcomers. King’s beauty queen alter ego,…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Fans of the 1950s classic movie, Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday and William Holden, will find much to enjoy in Guthrie Theater’s version, which is based on playwright Garson Kanin’s original Broadway play. Born Yesterday at the Guthrie is an amusing, well-acted romantic comedy and political satire, whose indictment of congressional corruption…
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 LIZ BYRON At first glance, Leaves might seem like a confusing mishmash that could go very wrong. Finding its inspiration in the poetry of American great Walt Whitman, and borrowing large swaths of his work, the people of Savage Umbrella have created a play that is part drama, part music, part poetry, moving back and forth between Whitman’s words and…
by LIZ BYRON Who has a bear-fighting love interest, a crossdressing sister, a father addicted to gambling, a trio of near-identical suitors, a major case of indecision, and some seriously fancy fur coats? Arabella does. The titular character of the Richard Strauss’ opera (libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal) must fumble her way through some pretty major cases of miscommunication,…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN This Is A World To Live In drops the audience without net into a peculiar hybrid of event, installation and performance. Even the ushering of the attendees into the space is performative. A concierge of sorts in a white t-shirt and suspenders surveys the waiting crowd and selects people by twos…
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…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 