MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL THEATER REVIEWS

Let's remember: Antigone was a teenager. This 90 minute intermissionless ANTIGONE is calibrated to work beautifully as a week day field trip for high school students, and succeeds equally well for adult audiences who may be a little rusty on the ancient Greek tale of Oedipus and his offspring. Some ...

Last year there were soft growls across the Twin Cities theatre scene. The rumors and whispering of a phenomenal show that had just opened at the Jungle Theater were sweeping across social media and various critics sites. The show dealt with gender roles, breaking the norm and also standing out in a...

It is bound to happen every once in awhile that various theatres in the Twin Cities all decide to produce the same musical within the same season. The positive thing is that the other two productions of She Loves Me (one at Daleko and one at Lyric Arts) were absolutely fabulous and the most recent p...

The Guthrie's 9th floor experimental black box space, where all tickets are always just $9, is one of the best deals in town. Currently, it hosts a festival called "Get Used To It: A Celebration of Queer Artistry" and the initial offering is a real coup. The famed duo of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, ...

Theater Latte Da's well-cast production of Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is gorgeous to look at and sweet on the ear. Like many great musicals, it depends on the master narrative of romance, but in Sondheim's hands that narrative gets a wider treatment than usual: not only are some of the lovers...

The Guthrie''s Proscenium Stage recently opened a production of The Great Leap, where playwright Lauren Yee envisions two basketball games between the United States and China through two university teams: San Francisco University (SFU) and Beijing University. One of the play's premises asserts that...

n the midst of a polar vortex this winter, MN Opera sends an early valentine filled with warmth to the Twin Cities in their production The Italian Straw Hat at the Ordway Center's Orchestra Hall. This comic Italian opera set in 1950's Paris plays similar to a French farce while sung in Italian and a...

Lauren Yee is a talented playwright, with an ear for fast dialogue and a knack for creating pithy lines that work on several levels. This skill is clear in the title of her cross-cultural play now on the big proscenium stage at the Guthrie, and also pops up periodically through the two-act show. Whi...

In the depths of Minnesota's January cold, Children's Theatre Company (CTC) presents a story based on a town in England, with a name similar to one outside of Minneapolis, Stillwater. Here, the musical adapted from the 1938 Newbury Honor Book 'Mr. Popper's Penguins.' comes to life under Director E...

Lyric Arts' latest selection, Sarah Ruhl's "Dead Man's Cell Phone," prophetically speaks to the Iphone or smart phone's debut in 2007.  Steve Jobs of Apple Inc heralded the first iPhone in January, 2007, with its release to the public in June, 2007---the same year  Ruhl's premiered her surreali...

Under Sarah Rasmussen as Artistic Director, the 150 seat Jungle Theater in Minneapolis punches above its weight frequently, mounting finely tuned productions of important new works. They've done it again with the current show: a play for grownups called THE CHILDREN, the first production in the US ...

Florian Zeller's adventurous script, winner of the 2014 Moliere Prize for best new play in France, takes up questions that are (or will be!) central for many of us: how do we care for aging parents who are losing their memories, disappearing into dementia, and (perhaps) undergoing personality change...

As 2018 wrapped up, I was able to sneak in one final show. That show was my 55th show that I saw this year and it was at the lovely Old Log Theatre. This show is one that I've heard of many many times but had never gotten the chance to read or even see produced. I was beyond thrilled to finally see ...

Don't let the Christmas lights strung across the ceiling fool you, Dark and Stormy's BLACKBIRD is not a feel-good holiday play. Which is why it's a great choice for right now, if you need a break from the sugary sweet holiday fare. Written in 2005, BLACKBIRD is a brutal play about a woman confr...

There are lots of holiday offerings in the performance-rich Twin Cities. One of the new ones this year was CHILL, an hour-long danced-through performance to the famous score of the CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS television special, played live by a small jazz combo sharing the stage with the ensemble of 9...

ANIMUS is a theater piece that incorporates film (both pre-recorded as well as projected live) better than any I've seen before. In fact everything about the piece is thoughtfully created and exquisitely executed. Produced by a new company (called E/D), but not a new collaboration (Emily Michaels K...

Who believes in flying reindeer-Dasher, Dancer and Prancer? One of the seasonal productions on stage at Anoka's Lyric Arts  Main Street Stage titled 'Prancer' had its beginnings in a 1989 Canadian American film written by Greg Taylor. Eventually, Seattle Children's Theatre and Children's Theatre C...

Bright colors and jingle bell music magically appear on the Lyric Arts Main Street Stage while the time of year leaps back into December, 1968. Harper's Hardware holds their end of year Holiday Happening, or the company's seasonal party, and everyone in the audience attends!  Lyric Arts presents...

For two nights in a row, I experienced rousing gospel music as part of #TCTheater. In other words, was a good week. The night after seeing Penumbra Theatre's annual gospel rendition of the nativity story BLACK NATIVITY, I attended opening night of Park Square Theatre's regional premiere of the new p...

There truly is no better place to experience the 'joyful noise' of the holiday* season than at Penumbra Theatre's annual production of BLACK NATIVITY. Despite it being a 30+ year #TCTheater holiday institution, this is only my second time seeing the show. If you've never seen it before, you need to ...

As usual, Mixed Blood Theatre is doing something pretty remarkable right now. They're presenting three plays in rep, all written by young black men. Under the umbrella 'Prescient Harbingers' (meaning: 'having or showing knowledge of events before they take place;' 'a person or thing that announces o...

Gather round, children, this is one of my favorite stories in #TCTheater. Not that long ago, in a land not too far away, a couple moved home to Minnesota from NYC to start a theater company. Shortly after doing so, the rights to the holiday show they were planning were pulled a few weeks before rehe...

The Moving Company (which grew out of the ashes of the Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune) is back this fall with a very Moving Company kind of show. Which is to say original, profound, silly, thoughtful, delightful, sweet, surprising, and a little odd. Conceived by co-Artistic Directors Steven E...

In the past five seasons, Collide Theatrical Dance Company has brought us original stories from various historical eras, as well as adaptations of classics like ROMEO AND JULIET. Their new show is an adaptation of the most well-known novel by Minnesota's own F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY. Wh...

Where will a holiday memory be made this season? Somewhere near Whoville staged at Children's Theatre Company (CTC)? The illustrious CTC opened their musical extravaganza' 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' penned by the iconic Dr. Seuss beginning in 1994, and reprises the production from last season....