Dan Norman News

Theater Latte Da presents John Cameron Mitchell's genre-bending, fourth-wall-smashing sensation Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

On a middle of the month March weekend, Children's Theatre Company (CTC) of Minneapolis on the United Health Group Stage, offered their audiences a Middle Earth journey when they presented the World Premiere The Hobbit.  Based on one of J.R.R. Tolkien's bestselling novels, the British actor, director and playwright Greg Banks adapted and then directed the production, which featured an original musical score by fellow Brit Tom Johnson. The classic story of Middle Earth Dwarves reclaiming their culture and treasure stolen form them by a fire breathing creature imagines adventure and exhilaration galore, enough to last an entire evening and long after the actors leave the stage.

Children's Theatre Company presents The Hobbit, based on the beloved novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, running from March 12 through April 14, 2019, adapted for the stage and directed by Greg Banks, with music by Thomas Johnson. The cast for this new, nimble ensemble play includes Joy Dolo (Gandalf, Bombur, Troll, Gollum, Elven King, Ensemble), H. Adam Harris (Kili, Troll, Smaug, Ensemble), Becca Hart (Balin, Troll, Bard, Ensemble), Acting Company member Dean Holt (Bilbo Baggins), and Acting Company Member Reed Sigmund (Dwalin, Thorin, Spider, Ensemble) with Victor Zupanc and Bill Olson as the onstage musicians. Multiple special event nights are listed below.

Director Lavina Jadhwani had a clear intention underlying casting and concept in the Guthrie's current production of AS YOU LIKE IT: to enable audience members from many different heritages and sexualities to see themselves represented on stage. Her intent was fueled, in part, by her own memories of going to theater as a child, and loving it, but never seeing someone who looked like her on stage; she is of South Asian descent. This production is, in Jadhwani's words, meant to be "hereish and nowish" and is informed by a deliberately intersectional feminist lens.

Children's Theatre Company presents The Biggest Little House in the Forest, running January 29 through March 10, 2019, based on the book by Djemma Bider, adapted for the stage by Rosanna Staffa, music by Victor Zupanc, and directed by Peter C. Brosius and starring CTC Acting Company member Autumn Ness (TCG Fox Fellowship grantee). 

Theater Latte Da's well-cast production of Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is gorgeous to look at and sweet on the ear. Like many great musicals, it depends on the master narrative of romance, but in Sondheim's hands that narrative gets a wider treatment than usual: not only are some of the lovers well beyond their ingenue years, but the characters are also by turns cynical, nostalgic, randy, anguished, manipulative, ecstatic, and resigned.

Theater Latte Da presents Stephen Sondheim's romantic comedy A Little Night Music. Winner of three Tony Awards including Best Musical, A Little Night Music features a book by Hugh Wheeler with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Theater Latte Da Artistic Director Peter Rothstein directs the production with Music Director Jason Hansen and choreography by Heidi Spesard-Noble. Performances begin January 23 at the Ritz Theater (345 13th Avenue NE in Minneapolis). Single tickets and season tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at latteda.org or by calling 612-339-3003.

Lauren Yee is a talented playwright, with an ear for fast dialogue and a knack for creating pithy lines that work on several levels. This skill is clear in the title of her cross-cultural play now on the big proscenium stage at the Guthrie, and also pops up periodically through the two-act show. While the piece traverses some promising thematic terrain, it is too choppy and a little too predictable to work fully.

Under Sarah Rasmussen as Artistic Director, the 150 seat Jungle Theater in Minneapolis punches above its weight frequently, mounting finely tuned productions of important new works. They've done it again with the current show: a play for grownups called THE CHILDREN, the first production in the US after the Broadway run. Three accomplished veteran actors with Twin Cities roots, working under Casey Stangl's direction, drop us into a contemporary apocalyptic twist on a 'kitchen sink' play. Only here, environmental disaster has established a new normal where water and food are rationed, electricity is spotty, and questions of morality and mortality are immediate and intertwined.

Children's Theatre Company presents Mr. Popper's Penguins in association with Kenny Wax Family Entertainment and TC Beech.

So-fi (Co-Founders; Jody Christopherson (Artistic Director), Nathan Gebhard (Managing Director) and Romy Nordlinger (Producing Director)) announce added January performances in the so-fi (winter mini) festival, a low-fi, multi-disciplinary solo performance festival, co-produced by, and at Torn Page in Chelsea (435 W 22nd Street, 2nd Floor), a performance space in the historic home of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

Shortly after midnight, on Christmas Day of 1914, a German soldier whose name is now lost to history committed what might be the most subversive act in all of modern warfare.  He walked, unarmed, out of the front line trenches and into the middle of No Man's Land, faced the enemy British soldiers before him and, in his native tongue, began singing 'Silent Night.'

ANIMUS is a theater piece that incorporates film (both pre-recorded as well as projected live) better than any I've seen before. In fact everything about the piece is thoughtfully created and exquisitely executed. Produced by a new company (called E/D), but not a new collaboration (Emily Michaels King and Debra Berger), it's inspired by the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film PERSONA and is in fact part of the Swedish filmmaker's jubilee celebration. I've not seen this film, but if it's as hauntingly beautiful and downright trippy as ANIMUS, I now want to. Presented as part of last year's Twin Cities Horror Festival, it's been expanded to 90 fully engrossing minutes. ANIMUS continues through December 22 only and should not be overlooked in this busy season both on and off stage.

On Sunday, November 11, the cast and creative team  All Is Calm honored the 100th anniversary of the armistice with a reading of an excerpt from "For the Fallen,' a poem by Robert Laurence Binyon, first published in The London Times on September 21st, 1914 and a singing of "Silent Night.'

Children's Theatre Company (CTC) presents Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, running November 6, 2018 through January 6, 2019, based on the book How The Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss, with book and lyrics by Timothy Mason, music by Mel Marvin, choreographed by Linda Talcott Lee, and directed by Peter C. Brosius. Single tickets are now on sale and subscription packages are also available on our website.

 In a New York Times article dated October 14, 2018, 'A Mexican Man's Fatal Journey to Reclaim HIs Life,' the newspaper retells the story of Adrián Luna, a man from a small town in Idaho. His life scenario reads eerily familiar to the themes in the World Premiere Play at Children's Theatre Company (CTC) titled 'I Come From Arizona.' In another play titled, 'Augusta and Noble,' playwright Carlos Murillo depicts a related story for these character, while in 'Arizona, he relives the story of a 14 year old girl Gabi, who must negotiate attending a new college prep high school in tony North Chicago. She also needs to care for her younger brother, Jesus, while worrying if her father will remain safe while he visits his dying father in Mexico. Both stories, in the newspaper and at the theater retell the plight of immigrants in America, both documented and undocumented, and certainly other than illegal.

Tira Palmquist's TWO DEGREES could not be more timely. Written in 2014, it centers on a woman paleoclimatologist, Emma, as she is called to Washington to testify before a hostile Senate committee about climate change-a committee that, she is told, is "easily bored by facts." She's been invited by her old college friend, Louise, now a powerful senator.

Children's Theatre Company (CTC) is proud to announce the  world premiere production of I Come From Arizona, running October 9 through November 25, 2018, written by Carlos Murillo and directed by Lisa Portes.

Shelli Place and her colleagues at PRIME Productions saw a role to fill in the varied theater landscape in the Twin Cities, and are doing just that in their second season with an area premiere of TWO DEGREES at the Guthrie's Level Nine.

Theater Latte Da announces extended performances through October 27th for the regional premiere of Once. Winner of 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Once features a book by Enda Walsh with music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.