by SOPHIE KERMAN Aside from honoring the Twin Cities’ most hard-working and talented theater professionals, the Ivey Awards also provides reviewers and theater fans with a chance to see how they did. What must-see shows did we miss this year? And did we agree with the Ivey committee’s choices? Here is a list of this year’s…
by SOPHIE KERMAN In Sarah Ruhl‘s take on the classic myth of Eurydice, there are many ways to cross between loss and forgetting. Letters find their way to and from the underworld, where a chorus of stones silently fights the speech and song that bring memory back into dark places. An elevator transports the dead to their…
by MELANIE BOWMAN When the question of marriage equality arises, solemnity prevails. The seriousness of the issue generally excludes comedy, though derision is never far from the discussion. Better (or) Worse, presented by the Freshwater Theatre Company, takes on marriage as an institution with seriousness, realism, laughter, and hope. The play is a series of short scenes…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Contemporary theatre has a wide range of potential – to break new artistic ground, to offer pointed social commentary, to provide audiences a window into the lives of others. The Brothers Size, performed in the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio, tries to do all three. But while the play’s vague nods to Yoruba-inspired mythology¹ do…
by SOPHIE KERMAN No matter how busy your summer may be, you certainly have 90 minutes on a weekend to sit outside in a beautiful garden, eat tasty snacks, and watch a highly entertaining, impressively executed operetta. “But,” you whine, “I just don’t get opera!” With its adaptation of The Return of King Idomeneo, which integrates…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” were certainly ground-breaking in 1996, but the contemporary conversation about gender – and all the many fluid forms it may take – makes Ensler’s focus seem a bit narrow. After all, some people have no particular affinity towards their vagina, while others ardently wish that they had…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The program for Savage Umbrella’s latest production, Care Enough, cites quotes from Vaclav Havel, John Berger, Susan Sontag, and Cat Power (among others) as the play’s inspiration. If that does not immediately seem like a red flag to you, let me explain why it should. Works like Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others”…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Memorial Day weekend might officially kick off the wedding season for most of the population, but for same-sex couples in most states, all those weddings are just a reminder of one way that their love can not be legally recognized. And despite all of the political rhetoric about rights and principles,…
By ANNA ROSENSWEIG “A woman playing a woman. What’s the trick in that?” So wonders Edward Kynaston, a star of the London stage in the 1660s most renowned for his skill playing female roles. Kynaston has good reason to cast aspersions on the idea of women playing women, as his fame and fortune threaten to…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner (directed by Penumbra Theater’s Lou Bellamy) tackles faith, poverty, racism and sexism in a superbly acted ensemble performance at the Guthrie Theater’s Wurtele Thrust Stage through June 17. The beautifully rendered 1950s Harlem neighborhood set comes alive immediately upon entering the theater, with assorted street characters wandering on and off stage…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 