by SOPHIE KERMAN “Provocative” is too cliché a word to describe Neighbors, the Mixed Blood‘s season opener. Although the publicity materials for this recent play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins use words like “subversive,” “real,” and “scathing,” the Mixed Blood has earned the right to tell it like it is: this ensemble will sneak up behind you, rip you…
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 Theatre Pro Rata made an interesting choice by producing Cat’s Paw, a play about domestic eco-terrorism, in the midst of our nation-wide remembrances on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. The play, updated in 2010 by playwright William Mastrosimone from the 1985 original, turns out to be quite…
by SOPHIE KERMAN and ANNA ROSENSWEIG With a subtitle like, “An edible opera touring to a community garden near you,” we didn’t necessarily expect to come away from a performance of Alcina’s Island: A Picnic Operetta wondering if it might just be the best thing we’ll see all season. Staged in gardens across the Twin…
by SOPHIE KERMAN As I scanned the crowds while waiting in line for tickets at this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival, listening in on conversations and taking mental notes on which of the 168 productions I really should not miss, it occurred to me that aside from its obvious entertainment value, going to Fringe is a…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG This review is a special dispatch from Corvallis, Oregon, where Anna caught a play while on vacation: How does one begin a play? It’s possible to start the action in medias res, but then how will the audience know who is who and what they want? P.G. Wodehouse solves this problem by…
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…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Sometimes, it’s good to leave a theater a little bit dissatisfied. The Sandbox Theatre‘s interpretation of Fargo– which they rightly call “more inspiration than adaptation” – is highly unsatisfying for exactly the right reason: there isn’t enough of it. The production, just an hour long, is so varied and unexpected that the…
by ANNA ROSENSWEIG Watching Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit is a lot like watching reality television. Personalities clash and secrets are revealed. Alliances are formed, broken and reconstituted. The more we know about each character, the more we are repulsed. And yet powerful voyeuristic impulses keep us riveted to every sophomoric outburst and salacious revelation. But…
