MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL THEATER REVIEWS

There's something for everybody in this raucous and hilarious CINDERELLA: plenty of glitter and stage magic and romance (lite) for the kids, but also cat videos, a Tshirt slingshot, a killer drag rendition of Joe Cocker's “You are So Beautiful” and even a poop emoji blanket. It's a really smar...

Sarah Ruhl's recent play puts a contemporary mother's dilemma at the center of the story. This is not the only radical thing about the show. It also includes depiction of a live birth on stage, carefully staged so as not to offend audience sensibilities. And it steps directly into the treacherous ...

I had a rare experience at the theater recently - I went to see a musical I knew nothing about and was absolutely charmed by it. Stephen Schwartz's WICKED may be the 10th longest-running show on Broadway and one of the most 'popular' musicals of recent years, but his 1976 musical THE BAKER'S WIFE ...

In 1961, Parchman Penitentiary served as a detention site for the Freedom Riders, mixed race and mixed gender groups of activists who put their lives on the line to protest segregation. To keep their spirits up in jail, they sang. This documentary theater piece is rich in music, and tells their sto...

'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.' I remember learning this quote in history class. And I remember my teacher saying that what the authors of the Declaration of Independance really meant was, firstly, men and not women, and secondly, the implied qualifiers of ...

This pre-eminent children's theatre company is one of the wellsprings of new plays for young audiences, and has twice commissioned playwright Naomi Iizuka in that effort. This time, Iizuka has woven together aspects of seven different Japanese folktales to create THE LAST FIREFLY, the tale of a bo...

THE REALISTIC JONESES is an odd little play. But I shouldn't be surprised; the other Will Eno play I've seen (THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING) by Loudmouth Collective) is exceedingly odd. But odd in the best way. THE JONESES is a little more, well, realistic, than the one-man show THOM PAIN, with an ...

Medea. Even if, like me, you've never seen or read the play, we all know the story of the mother who kills her children. Worst mother ever, right? But maybe, as they say on CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND, the situation is a bit more nuanced than that. Maybe there's more to the story, maybe other people in the ...

WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT is definitely the lightest and funniest show Loudmouth Collective has done in their five seasons. And friends, it's really funny. Playwright Dave Hanson has written a clever, smart, and silly companion play to Beckett's classic absurdist play WAITING FOR GODOT, in which...

The Guthrie's well cast, wittily directed, beautifully costumed production of a new adaptation of one of Jane Austen's beloved novels is a delightful concoction, firmly set in period but updated to our time in terms of thematic emphasis. This upbeat show is well worth a visit, even if you are someo...

Lauren Gunderson is the 8th most produced playwright in the US in the 2015 - 16 theater season, according to AMERICAN THEATRE. Make that 9th, if you count Shakespeare. And part of the reason is her 2013 farce, THE TAMING, which riffs loosely off Shakespeare's famously problematic sex comedy, THE T...

I had never even heard of the 1951 Lerner and Loewe musical PAINT YOUR WAGON when the Ordway announced it as part of their season. I guess that's not too surprising; it ran for less than a year on Broadway and has never been revived. The story was significantly rewritten for the 1969 movie adaptatio...

It's the halfway point of the 11-day, 168-show Minnesota Fringe Festival. I've seen 29 shows in the last 6 days, with 20+ more scheduled for the final 5 days of the fest. The new system of daily wristbands that get you into any and all shows that day seems to be working great. The handy Fringe websi...