by LIZ PANTING, guest reviewer Are you ever at the theatre and feel bored before the curtain goes up? Do you find yourself thinking all plays are starting to look the same? Go see a PuppetLab show at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. Something in it will take you off…
by LIZ PANTING, guest reviewer Girl Shorts is a festival of short plays all written by women playwrights, focusing on female characters. Each night of the festival, which runs from February 23-March 3, features 5 one-act plays, and certain evenings also feature live music after the show by Missing Peace, Lingua Luna, and Courtney McLean of the…
by EMILY MEISLER, guest reviewer After exiting the Saturday night production of Red Resurrected, I turned to my friend who accompanied me to the production and asked, “So, what did you think?” She paused. “It was good.” She smiled politely. “It was well done….but I’m not a theater person.” There are some beautiful moments in Red…
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 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…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN The two productions that constituted “Puppet Weekend” with my toddler daughter were startlingly different approaches to celebrating the natural world. In attempting to figure how to write about the performances, I thought about Kid Enkidu’s inclusion of a bit of Walt Whitman’s poetry and the contrast between his writing and Emily…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 