by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities is a cunningly crafted family drama set in a plush Palm Springs living room. The play, directed by Peter Rothstein at the Guthrie Theater is superbly acted and written, with powerhouse female performances by Sally Wingert, as Polly, the Wyeth family matriarch, Michelle Barber, as her sister Silda,…
By Mira Reinberg How do words determine action? Even more fascinatingly, how do words perform the effect that will determine fatal action? Greek tragedy embodied the poetic quest to articulate the relation between words and performance in order to help us, humans that we are, explain a reality that is unexplainable through language. Here is…
By MIRA REINBERG That the twenty-first century, and even the election of Barack Obama, have not ushered in a true “post-racial” consciousness within American society is a topic still in need of serious debate. In her play Buzzer, which opened on Friday at The Guthrie, playwright Tracey Scott Wilson contends that in fact the question…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Need a break from winter? Step into the Walking Shadow‘s inventive production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a well-timed throwback to the distant autumn days when the leaves – not the snow – crunched underfoot and it was the shivers down your spine, not a feel-good Valentine’s card, that made you sit just…
by LIZ PANTING, guest reviewer When most people hear the name C.S. Lewis, they think of The Chronicles of Narnia or The Screwtape Letters. They may think of Christian theology, of an author who was friendly with J.R.R. Tolkien, or maybe even of a stuffy British man in tweed. What they probably do not think…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN Inevitably, talking about Yellow Tree Theatre productions starts with talking about the space. Often the first thought on pulling up to the building is something like ‘is this it?’ Or ‘am I here?’ The theater lives in a lowrise line of storefronts in Osseo, welcoming but nondescript. This first impression never…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Wholesomely all-American, with unrelenting optimism and unquestioning zeal: am I talking about musical theater, or about the Mormon Church? In The Book of Mormon, Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone have found the perfect subject for a Broadway musical. Religious conviction, fear of hell-fire and idealistic missions seem to have been made for nothing if not…
by KAREN BORCHERT, guest reviewer The musical parody of the 1936 film by the same name, Reefer Madness, presented by Minneapolis Musical Theatre and Hennepin Theatre Trust, is well-timed given the sensation around marijuana legislation in recent months. The 1936 film, which warned of the evils of the “leafy green substance,” had somewhat of a cult following for its…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE For Jane Austen fans and readers of her romantic novel, Emma, the central challenge is to overcome your distaste for Emma’s patronizing, meddling matchmaking in order to understand the onerous class distinctions that characterized everyday interactions between neighbors, family members and friends in the early 1800s. For local playwrights, Savage Umbrella’s Laura Leffler-McCabe and…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Although the Jungle Theater‘s decision to produce Venus in Fur may be capitalizing on the spotlight “50 Shades of Grey” has placed on BDSM relationships, David Ives’s play – which pre-dates the publication of “50 Shades” by about a year – has greater ambitions than simply titillating its viewers. A play about a theatrical adaptation of Leopold…
