by ANNA ROSENSWEIG Some shows sneak up on you and win you over, complicating your initial impressions. Charley’s Aunt is one such show, which provided a rather enjoyable evening at the theater, despite a slow start and uneven pacing throughout. Much of what makes the Guthrie Theater’s production of Brandon Thomas’ wildly popular 1892 farce…
by REBECCA HALAT, Guest Reviewer Reader beware! I have stepped in to help out your usual Aisle Say TC reviewers, and my take on this piece must be read with the knowledge that I am both a theater novice and Christmas lover. From what I understand, A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie Theater is a…
by SOPHIE KERMAN As a former sixteen-year-old prep school student from the New York metropolitan area, I might have a skewed perspective on The Edge of Our Bodies, Adam Rapp‘s (almost) one-woman play about a sixteen-year-old prep school student from the New York metropolitan area. Unlike most of the Guthrie Theater‘s Minnesotan audience, I can…
By ANNA ROSENSWEIG Adaptations of old plays for modern audiences too often miss the mark because they seek merely to update, and end up doing so cosmetically. A contemporary setting, fashion-forward costumes, or the newest gadgets all shoulder the work of making a play current, with little concern for what makes the play currently meaningful.…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Whether you want to spend two hours at the Walking Shadow Theatre Company‘s production of reasons to be pretty depends entirely on the company you keep. As one would expect from a Neil LaBute play, reasons is centered on four unpleasant people and the unpleasant things they do to one another. If…
by SOPHIE KERMAN A good director knows his or her audience, and although the Guthrie Theater‘s latest Shakespearean adaptation failed for me on several levels, I have to give director Joe Dowling credit where credit is due. As far as I could tell, the audience at the opening night of Much Ado About Nothing mostly consisted of…
by SOPHIE KERMAN and ANNA ROSENSWEIG The Flying Foot Forum, a percussive dance/theatre company directed by Joe Chvala, took on a very ambitious project with Heaven: to portray the complicated politics and deep suffering of 1990s Bosnia through dance, music, and drama. It was clear from the outset of this production, which played at the…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG Sergius Saranoff is the very model of a Major and a gentleman. We learn this in the first scene of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man when his fiancée, Raina Petkoff, coos over a photograph of him in full officer’s garb and revels in reports of his valor and bravery. Sergius…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 