MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL THEATER REVIEWS

Have you ever imagined your life as a musical? Lifelong BFFs Max and Sheena have done more than imagine it - they've written it! And since in addition to being best friends, Max Wojtanowicz and Sheena Janson are both super talented music-theater artists* (you may know Max from the Children's Theatre...

I went to see Theatre Forever's newest creation NATURE CROWN in the Guthrie's Dowling Studio Theater not knowing what it was about. I left the theater still not knowing exactly what it was about, except that it's lovely, delightful, innovative, poignant, creative, and incredibly moving. The original...

A fast, fun, flirtatious farce that takes place in the French Riviera is perfectly suited to take audiences away from it all in the Twin Cities out to the Old Log Theater for a little spring break....

BOEING BOEING is the perfect screwball comedy. Though this tale of an American playboy in Paris with three 'air hostess' fiances was a hit in France, the English translation flopped on Broadway in 1965. But the revival over 40 years later was a hit and spurred a flood of regional productions around ...

Crowd pleasing BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is reimagined in this production of the 20-year-old musical tale as old as time....

I first saw the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical fairy tale mash up INTO THE WOODS four years ago, and have seen it several times since then, including the recent star-studded movie. Every time I see it I like it more. I think Sondheim is like Shakespeare in that it has a very specific rhythm a...

The English language is in need of a gender-neutral pronoun. Firstly to eliminate the awkward 'he or she' and 'his or her,' but also to refer to people who don't identify with either, or in cases where gender really doesn't matter (which is most cases). The title of the new play HIR (pronounced here...

Musical theater is just the best thing, isn't it? If you agree, head west to the Plymouth Playhouse for the latest incarnation of the delightfully irreverent tribute to the love of all things musical theater, aka POP UP MUSICAL. Four friends, who just happen to be super talented local music-theater ...

Tony Award-winning PIPPIN is an acrobatic, twisty, flying, leaping, twirling revival that wowed the Orpheum Theatre crowd in Minneapolis and provides thoughtful insight into the thing called life....

Yesterday I sat on the famous thrust stage of the Guthrie Theater and watched a bunch of soldiers, lovers, and fairies dance, sing, fly, converse, love, hate, and generally cavort around in a bare circular space. Or was it all a dream? Such is the Guthrie's latest production of perhaps Shakespeare's...

No one does musicals like Ten Thousand Things does musicals. And even though it defies everything we know about musical theater, after seeing a TTT musical I think that maybe that's the way musicals should always be done. The music, like everything else about the show, is stripped down to the very b...

Theater Latte Da and Hennepin Theatre Trust have formed a beautiful partnership called 'Broadway Re-Imagined,' in which they combine the resources of the Trust with the creativity and innovation of Latte Da to produce a Broadway-sized musical with all local talent and that special Latte Da twist. Af...

In BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK, now playing at Penumbra Theatre as part of their 'Womansong' season, the title character is a black actress in 1930s Hollywood who gets her big break playing a loyal slave in an antebellum Southern melodrama. She imbues the stereotypical role with as much humanity and...

Musical theater loving friends, if you're not at Hell's Kitchen on the first Monday of the month, you are missing out. This is when Sheena Jansen and Max Wojtanowicz gather a few of their friends, who just happen to be among the most talented musical theater artists in town, for a little cabaret sho...

I'll never forget the first time I saw Transatlantic Love Affair. It was the 'Audience Pick' show at the end of a long and exhausting 2012 Fringe Festival. I was tired and crabby and fringed out, but from the moment the lights went down on ASH LAND, TLA transported me to another world, a world so sp...