MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL THEATER REVIEWS

?Consider this my annual plug for Loudmouth Collective, one of my favorite new theater companies, if you can still call them 'new' after four seasons of smart, intense, funny, beautifully executed theater. They only do two shows a year, and typically only run for two weekends, so you need to be qui...

A surprising night of old-fashioned modern theatre in this 2014 Tony Award winning musical, playing at the Hennepin Theatre Trust's State Theatre....

?This is my fourth time seeing and writing about Theater Latte Da's annual holiday show ALL IS CALM, presented with Hennepin Theatre Trust at the Pantages Theatre. This true story about peace in the midst of war is so beautifully told by creator/director Peter Rothstein, using period music and aut...

Inside Park Square Theatre on 7th Place in lovely downtown St. Paul, magic is happening. It's the magic of storytelling, something that has been happening for ages on this planet. Friends sitting around a campfire, telling stories of good and evil, trials, and friendship, with words, music, dance,...

Friends, it's been a rough week. With devastating news here at home (the Children's Theatre lawsuit) and around the country (yet another senseless and horrific mass shooting, this time in San Bernadino, CA), on top of all the other painful things we've been dealing with lately, it's almost more than...

A short order cook who is an ex-con and reads Shakespeare. A waitress who's given up her dream of being an actress and is afraid to hope for anything more in life. It may seem inevitable that these two NYC diner coworkers get together, but how it happens is a funny, sexy, awkward, bittersweet little...

Friends, I know that there are a lot of theater companies in the Twin Cities, so many that it's hard to keep track of them all and impossible to see them all. But you would be wise to take note of New Epic Theater. With just their second production outside of the Fringe Festival and their first full...

Confession: I've never read THE JUNGLE BOOK (the collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894) or seen the 1967 Disney movie (that I can remember). So I was on the fence about seeing Children's Theatre Company's new adaptation, until I saw the cast list. They're about a month into their ...

The 'Bacon Strip Show' was presented in Las Vegas by the makers of Hormel Black Label Bacon on Friday night, November 6th at The Cosmpolitan's exclusive Marquee Nightclub and Dayclub. The one-night-only performance was an extravaganza celebrating 'all things bacon.'...

The word octoroon is defined as 'a person of one-eight black ancestry.' THE OCTOROON is a 19th Century play by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault about which Wikipedia says, 'among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second only in popularity to Uncle Tom's Cabin.' AN OCTOROON is a new play by p...

'Can we all get along?' This famous plea uttered by Rodney King during the 1992 L.A. Riots, a reaction to the acquittal of the four LAPD officers who severely beat him a year earlier, is often what he's most remembered for. I admit that after more than 20 years, I had forgotten many of the details, ...

Friends, Theater Latte Da has done it again. They've created a music-theater production that is so stirring and chilling, it's nothing short of brilliant. After the delightfully innovative and stripped-down INTO THE WOODS this spring, they return to Sondheim with a similarly innovative and stripp...

Irish playwright Brian Friel's DANCING AT LUGHNASA is a perfectly lovely play, and a wonderful choice for the perfectly lovely Yellow Tree Theatre. The eight-person cast is actually on the large side for their cozy and intimate space nestled inside an Osseo strip mall, but the warm, humorous, and me...

Even if you are not glued to the boob tube watching the latest exploits of the Real Housewives of wherever, you'll find much to laugh at and with in this local parody of the popular TV series....

Annapurna is the tenth highest mountain in the world, named after the Hindu Goddess of nourishment. In the new play by Sharr White, Ulysses writes an epic poem about his ex-wife Emma in which he uses climbing Annapurna as an analogy for their long, complicated, fractured relationship. The revelation...