Katherine Ferrand

Do you find it hard to imagine how to engage, directly but civilly, with people who hold views you emphatically oppose? If so, make a beeline for History Theater in Saint Paul to see SISTERS OF PEACE. This new play models that very thing several times, even within a nuclear family.

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 set (at least partly) in a train station, so the museum is a perfect location. Filled with vintage train equipment and displays (which you can wander through before the show and at intermission), the museum is fascinating but also kind of dark and creepy and cold, and smells a little like a garage. Which is the perfect atmosphere for Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt's absurd 'tragicomic' play. This is a very Frank play, with a huge and talented cast and great commitment to the highly stylized design and tone of the play.

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 melancholic tone is a perfect fit. It's a beautiful play and a beautiful cast, and will leave you with a warm and wistful feeling.

Enda Walsh seems to be a perfect match for Frank Theatre. Their mission is 'to produce unique work that stretches the skill of the artists who create the work while simultaneously challenging the everyday perceptions of the audience.' In other words, they do weird stuff, but weird in the best possible way, in the way that challenges the audience and encourages us to look at things in a new way, even if we don't quite understand it. Irish playwright Enda Walsh also writes weird and interesting and challenging and utterly unique plays. As with last year's Ivey award-winning MISTERMAN, Frank once again does beautiful work with this weird, challenging, disturbing, completely engrossing, crazy brilliant play.

Heading up north to the cabin is such an integral part of life in Minnesota. The tranquility and seclusion of the woods offers an excellent escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Even though Ernest Thompson's 1978 play 'On Golden Pond' is set in Maine there is a natural connection with the ambience of Minnesota's lake country. In fact, the dialogue for Yellow Tree Theatre's production has been tweaked to reflect taking place in Northern Minnesota.

We all have problems with our parents. Once Mom and Dad reach a certain age, the one thing everyone can agree on is that the parents drive us crazy. It's often been a topic in some of our most popular books, movies, and plays - some of them are great, some not-so-great. Others like Tina Howe's PAINTING CHURCHS, which opened Friday at the Park Square Theatre, are stuck firmly in the middle. Not bad, but not compelling enough to be great.

Tina Howe's PAINTING CHURCHES opens March 5. When Mags (Angela Timberman), a New York City painter on the verge of artistic celebrity, returns home to help her aging, eccentric parents (Richard Ooms and Katherine Ferrand) pack up their Boston mansion, she suddenly sees them in a new light.

Tina Howe's PAINTING CHURCHES opens March 5. When Mags (Angela Timberman), a New York City painter on the verge of artistic celebrity, returns home to help her aging, eccentric parents (Richard Ooms and Katherine Ferrand) pack up their Boston mansion, she suddenly sees them in a new light.

Returning for the first time in a decade to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres' Main Stage is Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA! Voted the #1 Musical of the Century by the American Theatre Critics Association, OKLAHOMA! is known as the production that first brought together the prolific songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

Returning for the first time in a decade to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres' Main Stage is Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA! Voted the #1 Musical of the Century by the American Theatre Critics Association, OKLAHOMA! is known as the production that first brought together the prolific songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.