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BWW Review: Guthrie Theater Premieres Laughter and Mayhem in Rousing NOISES OFF
For the Guthrie Theater's final hurrah on the McGuire Proscenium Stage in 2019, the company presents a hilarious tribute to plates of sardines and humor in the farcical 'Noises Off.' English playwright' Michael Frayn's award winning 1982 play presents an alternative perspective to the theatrica...
BWW Review: Twenty Years After the Hate Crime Murder of Matthew Shepard, Uprising Theatre Company Tells His Story in THE LARAMIE CYCLE
Twenty years ago last month in a small college town in Wyoming, a young gay man was brutally beaten and tied to a fence post, left to die. The name Matthew Shepard has become synonymous with gay rights and in particular with the national hate crime legislation that bears his name, passed into law 11...
BWW Review: Theatre Coup d'Etat Brings Us a Stripped Down, One Act, In-the-Round, Intimate Production of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST
Wikipedia tells me that THE TEMPEST is 'now considered to be one of Shakespeare's greatest works,' but I'd never seen it until last week. Theatre Coup d'Etat brings us a stripped down, one act, in-the-round, intimate production in the non-traditional theater space that is SpringHouse Ministry Cente...
BWW Review: Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company Shows us a Funny, Dysfunctional, and Moving Modern Jewish Family in THE LAST SCHWARTZ
Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company brings us another modern (well, late '90s) Jewish family trying to maintain their cultural identity while living in the melting pot of America. Four siblings gather at the family home in upstate New York for their father's Jahrzeit (one-year anniversary of death), an...
BWW Review: Freshwater Theatre's Triptych of Funny, Poignant, Feminist Plays PREFERRED BY DISCREET WOMEN EVERYWHERE Takes Place in a Women's Bathroom
This fall, Freshwater Theatre is featuring new work by women artists, and they couldn't have picked a better time. In rep with a short play festival called 'The Feminine Surcharge,' they're presenting a collection of three short plays set in a women's bathroom. A place where many of us spend a consi...
BWW Review: Funny and Accessible SCAPIN at Ten Thousand Things
Ten Thousand Things is a treasure: a company dedicated to bringing live theater to marginalized and underserved audiences for free. Founding Director Michelle Hensley retired in June of 2018. So this production is the first in new Artistic Director Marcela Lorca's inaugural season, and is directed...
BWW Review: Lyrics Arts Produces Compelling and Contemporary GOD OF CARNAGE
The Tony Award Wining 2009 'God of Carnage,' opened at Lyric Arts this weekend. The intimate theater offers a splendid production of Yasmina Reza's comic tragedy with sophistication. The 90 minute, no intermission evening presents a plethora of philosophical issues to contemplate, especially in reg...
BWW Review: CTC'S I COME FROM ARIZONA Cuts to the Heart of Contemporary Immigration Concerns
In a New York Times article dated October 14, 2018, 'A Mexican Man's Fatal Journey to Reclaim HIs Life,' the newspaper retells the story of Adrián Luna, a man from a small town in Idaho. His life scenario reads eerily familiar to the themes in the World Premiere Play at Children's Theatre Company...
BWW Review: The Artistry Soars with Fantastic MARY POPPINS
The incomparable 'Mary Poppins' returns to Bloomington's The Artistry Theater on the winds of her iconic character's umbrella. Penned as a collection of eight stories beginning in the 1934, Walt Disney wrangled the rights from author PL Travers for their 1964 film. One of the studios crowning glorie...
BWW Review: Prime Productions presents TWO DEGREES at Guthrie's Dowling Studio
Tira Palmquist's TWO DEGREES could not be more timely. Written in 2014, it centers on a woman paleoclimatologist, Emma, as she is called to Washington to testify before a hostile Senate committee about climate change-a committee that, she is told, is "easily bored by facts." She's been invited by ...
BWW Review: Trademark Theater's Thoughtful and Thought-Provoking New Play UNDERSTOOD Explores Divisiveness in the Country and in a Marriage
'People by and large are idiots.' Wow, does this ever ring true, especially on a day when some of my fellow Minnesotans showed up and cheered for the current White House resident despite all the ugly things he's said and done. How can people do that?! It's completely incomprehensible to me; they are...
BWW Review: Consummate Performance Anchors THE GREAT SOCIETY at History Theatre
Pearce Bunting delivers a visceral gut punch as Lyndon B. Johnson in THE GREAT SOCIETY. Rarely in 50 years of serious theater going have I seen a more fully inhabited physical performance. It's masterful. Menacing and charming by turns, Bunting channels LBJ's ability to manipulate people into pos...
BWW Review: Case Study of Allyship in THE AGITATORS at Park Square Theatre
Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were friends for 45 years through tumultuous times. The strategic interests of their respective causes did not always align, which caused rifts between them. In AGITATORS, Playwright Mat Smart has mined this rich terrain to create an episodic examination of ...
BWW Review: Nomadic #TCTheater Company Frank Theatre Opens their 30th Season with THE VISIT Staged in the Minnesota Transportation Museum
To open their 30th season, intrepid nomadic #TCTheater company Frank Theatre is bringing us THE VISIT in the Minnesota Transportation Museum. This is actually the second play I've seen in this unique and super cool venue (see also Wayward and Mission's co-production of GHOST TRAIN). Both plays are s...
BWW Review: CTC'S Delightful LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET Encourages More 'Dancing in Life.'
Dancing and energizing music imbue life with joy in the Midwest premiere of Children's Theater Company's Last Stop on Market Street this September. Produced as a co-commission with Chicago Children's Theatre and based on the Newbery Award Winning book written by Matt de la Peña, Last Stop on Market...
BWW Review: Theater Latté Da's ONCE Appears to 'Walk on Moonbeams'
To open their 2018-2019 season, Theater Latte Da presents the multi Tony Award winning musical ONCE at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis. Adapted by Edna Walsh with worlds and lyrics written or composed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, ONCE recalls the story of a guy and girl who meet ...
BWW Review: Mixed Blood Theatre's Regional Premiere of the Revenge Fantasy Play IS GOD IS is Filled with Shocking Surprises from Delightful to Horrific
Playwright Aleshea Harris' play IS GOD IS, receiving just its second production at Minneapolis' Mixed Blood Theatre, is a revenge play. More than that, it's a revenge fantasy. Filled with the kind of vengeance that we don't resort to in real life because we're civilized people, but it sure is fun to...
BWW Review: FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE / WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF at Penumbra Theatre
In keeping with their tradition of honoring the ancestors and artistic leaders of past generations, Penumbra Theatre is opening this season by revisiting Ntozake Shange's groundbreaking iconoclastic work, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, which won an Obie in 1...
BWW Review: FRANKENSTEIN--PLAYING WITH FIRE at the Guthrie
30 years ago, Minneapolis based playwright Barbara Field penned an adaptation of Mary Shelley's famous novel for the Guthrie. Now, on the 200th anniversary of the novel's composition, the Guthrie is opening their season with a new production of Field's script, titled FRANKENSTEIN-PLAYING WITH FIRE....
BWW Review: Artistry's Beautifully Tragic AWAKE AND SING! will Break Your Heart in the Best Way
I love sad plays. I love stories of miserable families who love each other but don't know how to express it in healthy ways. AWAKE AND SING!, now playing at Artistry's black box theater, is one such tragically beautiful and beautifully tragic play, like Tennessee Williams set in the Bronx. Or rather...
BWW Review: Just When We Need it Most, Shoot the Glass Theater Brings Us a Beautifully Staged SPRING AWAKENING with a Fantastic Young Cast
I love SPRING AWAKENING so much that after seeing the eight time Tony winner on Broadway (with most of the original cast), I named the next kitten I adopted Moritz Stiefel, after my favorite character. Nine years and three bladder surgeries later, my sweet Moritz is still with me, and so is my love ...
BWW Review: SOMETIMES THERE'S WINE at Park Square Theatre
Women making comedy can be a radical act. The best moments of SOMETIMES THERE'S WINE at Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul are truly funny and border on radical, by offering glimpses of how real women sometimes talk to each other when no one else is listening. For theatergoers who never have access...
BWW Review: World Premiere Adaptation of LITTLE WOMEN at Jungle Theater
For the opening of her third season as Artistic Director at Minneapolis' spunky Jungle Theater, Sarah Rasmussen and her team commissioned a new adaptation of LITTLE WOMEN from Kate Hamill in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the novel's publication. Kate Hamill is an actor who has, of late, g...
BWW Review: LYRIC Arts Explores Parallel Lives In Phenomenal Musical IF/THEN
On September 7, Anoka's Lyric Arts opened a Drama League Award Winning musical 'If/Then.' In this edgy, provocatives production, Tom Kitt's music complimented with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey creates a musical force as they did in their Pulitzer Prize winning 'Next to Normal.' Their 2014 'IF/THE...
BWW Review: The National Tour of HAMILTON, the Quintessential American Story Told through the Quintessential American Art Form, Finally Arrives in Minnesota
That's right, #TCTheater friends, music-theater's favorite founding father has finally arrived in Minneapolis, along with all of this friends. Three years after opening on Broadway and becoming the biggest theater sensation in years, maybe even decades, the second national tour is playing at the Oph...
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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