MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL THEATER REVIEWS

Once again, Anoka's Lyric Arts presents an area premiere for their audiences. This winter, Superior Donuts, a 2008 play written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Tracy Letts, arrived for opening weekend. Letts, an ensemble actor at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theatre, has recently been in the ...

'The future is female.' If the main stage at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts is any judge of it, this statement is true, and gives one hope for the future. The story of one 11-year-old girl who changes hearts and minds with optimism and determination is an inspiring one, as is the boundles...

For the 2017 season, enjoy the sights and sounds to Have a yule that's cool at Anoka's Lyric Arts. The retro greeting tag line recreates the theater's holiday show titled Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings. Stuart Ross wrote the clever, lighthearted book to this festive musical in 1989, along with nume...

On stage at Anoka's Lyric Arts, A Coney Island Christmas presents a child's heartfelt dreams to its audiences for the holiday season. One of two theatrical presentations alternating at the venue in December, this play features a flashback to 1930's New York, in the midst of the Great Depression, whe...

If you're looking for a fun, light-hearted, escapist night at the theater (and really, who isn't in need of that?!), look no further than the Guthrie's sublimely entertaining production of No l Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT. Featuring Guthrie favorites and newcomers in this perfect concoction of a cast, br...

Writing a sequel to one of the most beloved novels in English literature is a daunting and risky task. Audiences have such attachment to the original, and it could go wrong in so many ways. But playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margo Melcon have gotten it so, so right in their theatrical sequel to Ja...

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME racked up awards in both London and NYC, including winning the Tony Award for best play in 2015. Just last year the Broadway tour stopped in Minneapolis, which I saw and was impressed by the clever and inventive storytelling. Now available for region...

A new #TCTheater company is debuting a new play by a first time playwright in a new St. Paul theater space that just opened this summer. What's more exciting than that?! The good news is that ROLLER DERBY QUEEN is a great play - smart, funny, and well-written, with quirky but real characters played ...

Happy Halloween, my #TCTheater friends! If you're looking for a theatrical way to celebrate the spooky holiday, I have a few suggestions for you. All of the below have performances on this Halloweekend, and many on Halloween itself and even continuing into early November. Keep reading to find detail...

I love a good tragic love story, and it doesn't get much more tragic than an interracial couple in 1918 South Carolina. But Penumbra's gorgeous production of the 1966 play WEDDING BAND by Alice Childress (whose TROUBLE IN MIND was seen at the Guthrie last year) is not just a beautiful, complicated, ...

Potatoes and bluebells and watermelon, oh my! Just before Frank Theatre's production of Alice Birch's new play REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN, I posted on Instagram: 'I'm not sure what I'm in for but I'm pretty sure it's gonna to be awesome. And 70 minutes no intermission.' I was right on all counts...

Swedish playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri's* work makes its area debut with Pillsbury House Theatre's excellent production of the odd and oddly titled ALMOST EQUAL TO . But odd in a good way, odd in that it's uniquely structured and covers many topics and doesn't always entirely make sense. In fact...

Seven years ago, just a few months after I started this #TCTheater blogging adventure I call Cherry and Spoon, a friend told me about this little theater in a strip mall in Osseo. Since at the time I worked just a few miles away, I organized a group of coworkers to go see a play after work one day. ...

A musical about youth hockey with an abominable snowman, er... yeti? It's gotta be Minnesota, and it's gotta be the Children's Theatre Company. It's no surprise that this new original musical is a surefire hit, the only surprise is that it took them so long to come up with the idea. THE ABOMINABLES ...

Immigration has been a hot topic in the news for many months now, most recently with the current administration's announcement to end DACA. Unfortunate for the people adversely affected by the decision, but perfect timing for Theatre Unbound to open their 18th season of presenting the work of women ...

We're halfway through the 11-day, 15-venue, 167-show Minnesota Fringe Festival. I've seen 25 shows, with another 20-some on the schedule for the next five days. Here are a few of my favorites so far. I haven't seen everything on my must-see list yet, so be sure to check that out for more recommen...

'I think comedy is disarming. I mean literally. You let down your armor so you can laugh. And if you laugh, you're taking things in. I want people who disagree to watch this play and be able to laugh at themselves.' Mission accomplished. The new play NATIVE GARDENS by Karen Zacarias (from whom th...

The Ordway's recent string of excellent locally produced Broadway sized musicals continues with the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, and it's fan-freakin-tastic. Unlike the Ordway's last original, WEST SIDE STORY, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR is not one of my favori...

Anoka's Lyric Arts Main Street Stage returns this summer with the comedic and uplifting Cole Porter, Guy Bolton, PG Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse musical Anything Goes. First produced in 1934, in the beginning of the Great Depression, Porter's memorable musical questions the country's...

Good news friends, Gremlin Theatre is back with a new performance space in St. Paul! Four years after losing their space on University and Raymond, which also hosted other theater companies and the Minnesota Fringe Festival, they've opened a brand new space just a few blocks away on Vandalia. They a...

IDIOT'S DELIGHT is one of those deceptive plays that makes you think it's a light and fun romp through the past, until you begin to see the seriousness behind the beautiful clothes and pretty music. WWI vet Robert E. Sherwood's play premiered in 1936 and is eerily prescient about the impending war ...

Design. Pattern. Composition. Balance. Light. Dark. Harmony. These are the principles artist Georges Seurat-as imagined by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine-names in his struggle to paint in a new way. All these principles are present in the musical SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. The current prod...

Old Log Theatre's contribution to the summer blockbuster musical is GHOST THE MUSICAL, based on the popular 1990 movie. It premiered on Broadway in 2012 and ran for only a few months, and when I saw the tour the following year I was not impressed. At the time I wrote, 'At its core, GHOST is a s...

A new original folk-rock musical? It's like FLY BY NIGHT was created and brought to the Jungle just for me. The rare bird that is the new original musical is my favorite thing in the world, and folk-rock/folk/Americana is my favorite genre of music. I was primed and ready to love this show, and love...

"Refugia" is a Latin term meaning "an area where special circumstances have enabled survival after extinction in surrounding areas." The adventurous theater explorers of The Moving Company (themselves displaced from the renowned Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which closed in 2006) have devised multiple r...