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BWW Review: MN Opera Portrays Sacrifices for Love in Magnificent LA TRAVIATA
Opening on the past Saturday night at the Ordway Center, MN Opera staged a magnificent production of Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 Opera La Traviata. Verdi's breathtaking love and death opera accompanied by Francesco Maria Piave's libretto was adapted after Alexander Dumas' 'Lady of the Camellias' or 'La Da...
BWW Review: VICTOR/VICTORIA at Artistry
This month is all about gender when it comes to the theatre I've seen. The first was Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Theater Latte Da which really flips gender upside down. The second now is a beautiful production of VictorVictoria at Artistry in Bloomington. VictorVictoria is a truly unique story tha...
BWW Review: Prime Productions Mounts MARJORIE PRIME at Park Square
Playwriting can be a form of thinking, and plays can be thought-experiments. That's true of Jordan Harrison's four actor, 80 minute play MARJORIE PRIME (a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize), set in 2062 and beyond. He's investigating whether advances in artificial intelligence might enable new ...
BWW Review: METAMORPHOSES at Guthrie
'Bodies' is the first word spoken in Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, and it's the physicality of the story telling that makes this show such a theatrical pleasure. First developed with students at Northwestern, the production went pro and opened on Broadway in 2002 at Circle in...
BWW Review: HELLO, DOLLY! at Hennepin Theatre Trust
When I saw Hello, Dolly! In New York with Bette Midler last year, I was in awe. I knew that it was special, and it was an experience I'd never forget. I truly considered myself one of the luckiest theatre goers after seeing Midler in this iconic role and now I consider myself even luckier with the n...
BWW Review: MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT at Ordway Center For Performing Arts
What is described to some as crude humor to others is the best kind of humor. I was delighted to see that the touring production of Monty Python's Spamalot was touring and would be making a stop in St. Paul at the Ordway. Adapted from the 1975 film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this production m...
BWW Review: SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY at Jungle Theater
While I love all forms of theater, it's apparent that typically I gravitate towards musicals more than plays. However there is one theatre in town that still somehow manages to pull me in with every play they produce and that is the Jungle Theater. Whether it's thrilling, drama or a comedy I always ...
BWW Review: Masterful CYRANO DE BERGERAC at Guthrie Theater
Sometimes all the pieces come together: story, language, visuals, performance, staging. That's the case with the superb production of the French classic CYRANO DE BERGERAC currently playing on the proscenium stage at the Guthrie. Artistic director Joseph Haj first created his own adaptation in 2...
BWW Review: SISTERS OF PEACE at History Theatre
Do you find it hard to imagine how to engage, directly but civilly, with people who hold views you emphatically oppose? If so, make a beeline for History Theater in Saint Paul to see SISTERS OF PEACE. This new play models that very thing several times, even within a nuclear family....
BWW Review: Anoka's Lyric Arts Gifts Audiences Elegant and Evocative EVITA
Was Eva Peron a saint or sinner, or perhaps merely an incredibly determined woman who changed the face of Argentinian politics? In an elegant stage presentation of the award winning Evita, Lyric Arts on the Main Street Stage delivered a theatrical jewel to their audiences this past weekend. Andrew L...
BWW Interview: Grand Adventures Behind the Scenes in Greg Banks' World Premiere THE HOBBIT at CTC
Accept an invitation to a grand adventure when Children's Theatre Company (CTC) of Minneapolis produces a condensed, world premiere version of J.R.R, Tolkien's "The Hobbit." The popular novel, which happens to be a best selling children's book of all time, has remained in print since being published...
BWW Review: CTC Spectacular Style Inhabits Superlative World Premiere THE HOBBIT
On a middle of the month March weekend, Children's Theatre Company (CTC) of Minneapolis on the United Health Group Stage, offered their audiences a Middle Earth journey when they presented the World Premiere The Hobbit. Based on one of J.R.R. Tolkien's bestselling novels, the British actor, direc...
BWW Review: MN Opera's Memorable THE FIX Composes Requiem for the American Dream
This past weekend at the Ordway Center, MN Opera unveiled their World Premiere The Fix in tribute to the All-American sport and spirt of baseball. The story created through the company's New Works Initiative by Eric Simonson, who wrote the libretto and also directed the production, was accompanied b...
BWW Review: MAMMA MIA! at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres
It could not be a better time for the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres to be opening their run of ABBA's famous jukebox musical, Mamma Mia. Just as the sun is finally starting to peek out from this awful winter we've had, many of us got transported to a beautiful island in Greece with some incredible song...
BWW Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY at Orpheum Theatre
It was a week full of candy and sweets for me personally. First my work life was full of a sugar high with the grand opening of Candytopia at Mall of America - shameless plug but it's incredible so you should go check it out - and then it was the opening night of a new musical. The adaptation of Roa...
BWW Review: Intimate, Funny, Moving INTO THE WOODS at Ten Thousand Things
INTO THE WOODS is new artistic director Marcela Lorca's debut directorial outing for Ten Thousand Things after the retirement of renowned artist and social change agent Michelle Hensley, the founder of the company. Seeing this Sondheim masterpiece up close and stripped of pretentiousness is a treat....
BWW Review: Lyric Arts Presents Enchanting Feminine Powered SENSE & SENSIBILITY
Anoka's Lyric Arts in the Main Stage Theater reprises a 200 year old tradition when the company stages Jane Austen's famous bestselling novel Sense & Sensibility--For the company's recent production, which opened on a February weekend, Director Natalie Novacek choose an adaptation by actor/playwrig...
BWW Review: World Premiere of BENEVOLENCE at Penumbra Theatre
Ifa Bayeza's (lower case titled) benevolence, the second play in her trilogy revolving around Emmett Till, the 14 year old Chicago boy brutally murdered in the Mississippi Delta in 1955, is hard to watch. It's also important, because it takes us beyond what we think we know to detail the aftermath o...
BWW Review: POTTED POTTER: THE UNAUTHORIZED HARRY EXPERIENCE at Hennepin Theatre Trust
When I hear the word "magic" I automatically think of two things. There is the magic of theatre and of course one of my favorite stories from when I was a little kid and that is the magical world of Harry Potter. Audiences in the Twin Cities can now be treated to two of my favorite magical things......
BWW Review: Guthrie's AS YOU LIKE IT Promises Hip Hop Lovers' Trysts in the Forest
Deep into the Minneapolis midwinter ice and snow, book a ticket for the Guthrie's As You Like It on the Wurtele Thrust Stage and travel to the forest. William Shakespeare's tribute to the delights and folly of love. Set in the Forest of Ardenne, the evening promises a brief respite to city life in...
BWW Review: World Premiere of Fast, Funny, Smart STEWARDESS! at History Theatre
Briskly written and dynamically staged, this world premiere tells a complicated, true, little known story with wit and economy. From the early days of commercial airlines, stewardesses were hired based on looks, required to pass weekly weight checks, forbidden to wear glasses or marry, and fired au...
BWW Review: CTC Creates Magic this Midwinter in THE BIGGEST LITTLE HOUSE IN THE FOREST
Riding a bicycle into the theater, similar to a charming pied piper, Autumn Ness, rings a bell to call the tiny tot audience into the Gargill Studio at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. In CTC'S production,The Biggest Little House in the Forest, a play adapted from the picture book b...
BWW Review: Compact, All-Female Cast ANTIGONE at Park Square Theatre
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 ...
BWW Review: THE WOLVES at The Southern Theater (through the Jungle Theater)
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...
BWW Review: SHE LOVES ME at Artistry
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...
Videos
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Footloose: The Musical Open Door Community Theatre (6/20-6/28) |
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John Crist Live! State (9/18-9/18) |
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MrBallen: Lights out Live Orpheum Theatre (10/01-10/01) |
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Outlander in Concert State (10/22-10/22) |
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Oh, Mary! Ordway Center for the Performing Arts (1/06-1/17) |
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Off Book Dudley Riggs Theatre (7/10-7/11) |
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When a Woman’s Fed Up State Theatre (6/14-6/14) |
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Blithe Spirit Theatre in the Round (6/19-7/12) |
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Shrek The Musical Stages Theatre Company (6/20-8/02) |
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The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley Commonweal Theatre Company (11/07-12/21) |
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