All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 at Pantages Theatre on 12/17/09

By: John Olive
[Read full review]
Photo credit - Rick Spaulding, courtesy Hennepin Theatre Trust What is it about a naked human voice? Unaccompanied, unfancied up, pristine. There is something in it that goes to the pure essence of what it means to be human. Thus, when the nine members of Cantus take the stage in All Is Calm (produced by Theater Latte Da at the Pantages Theatre, 710 Hennepin Ave, through Dec 20) and start singing, a...

Spiked! at Lowry Lab Theatre on 12/5/09

By: Janet Preus
[Read full review]
  Table Salt Productions has launched the second show in their inaugural season, an entertaining variety show slightly reminiscent of 60s-style holiday T.V. specials.   This structure would have worked just fine without the added layer of a host and hostess, played by Jim Robinson and Jen Scott. The co-hosts were meant to provide a connection — via the channel changer — to a spirited potp...

In The Heights at Orpheum Theatre on 12/1/09

By: Janet Preus
[Read full review]
  Broadway is taking another step in the right direction with the contemporary music and ethnic flavors of In the Heights, a slice of life in a Latino neighborhood in New York City. The 2008 Tony Award Winner is decidedly sugar-coated, but it’s also new and original – rare in musical theater produced these days – and authentically grounded in Latino culture – rarer still. This s...

Some Girl(s) at Pillsbury House Theatre on 11/20/09

By: John Olive
[Read full review]
Mo Perry and Clarence Wethern in Some Girl(s) - Photo by Aaron Fenster The holidays can be gruesome. All those Carols, the overdone Nutcrackers, the ancient Holidazzle parade, everything over-designed and sparkly. The retail frenzy. The jacked-up airfares. The pasted-on smiles. Joy to the world! Humbug.   If you're looking for an antidote to all this fakey feel-good, here's a...

Cinderella at The Children's Theatre Company on 11/13/09

By: John Olive
[Read full review]
Pearl (Dean Holt) and Dorcas (Reed Sigmund) in Cinderella - Photo by Ann Marsden "I admire actors," a friend once told me, "who walk right up to the line of bad taste, and then slip one toe over it." In Peter Brosius's over-the-top-and-then-some production of Cinderella (at the Children's Theatre Company main stage, through Jan 2, childrenstheatre.org), the actors doing the goony stepmothe...

The Seafarer at The Jungle Theater on 11/13/09

By: Janet Preus
[Read full review]
  The Jungle Theater has returned to playwright Conor McPherson’s work (who wrote last season’s Shining City) with The Seafarer, a play that is both complex and entertaining, intellectually provocative and emotionally grounded. The end result is a play that is as completely satisfying as you could want.     The story sets up a fundamental dilemma: who, in the end, is redeemable and wh...

The Sense of What Should Be at The Playwrights' Center on 11/8/09

By: John Olive
[Read full review]
Dylan Frederick and Joanna Harmon in THE SENSE OF WHAT SHOULD BE. Photo Credit Kevin McLaughlin Minneapolis/St. Paul is a smallish, slightly out-of-the-way Midwestern city with ghastly winters. Nevertheless, we can boast some of the best playwrights in the U.S. If you doubt this, check out the unique Workhaus Collective, in which the dramatist enjoys complete creative control. Everything – the...

She: Immortal Witch-Queen of a Lost World at Bryant Lake Bowl on 11/7/09

By: Janet Preus
[Read full review]
Publicity Photo It’s a testament to Hardcover’s engaging style and tight little script that I found myself a good half hour into the performance before I thought, “I should take a few notes—” and now I’m already praising it when I haven’t even told you what the show is about.    “She: Immortal Witch-Queen of a Lost World,” is based on the 19th centu...

Faith Healer at The Guthrie Theater on 10/24/09

By: John Olive
[Read full review]
Joe Dowling as Frank Hardy in the Guthrie Theater production of Brian Friel's FAITH HEALER, directed by Joe Dowling, Photo credit T Charles Erickson Faith Healer (playing in the Guthrie's McGuire Proscenium through Dec 6, guthrietheater.org) may be playwright Brian Friel's strongest work. This is saying a lot. Friel, now in his 80s, is one of the English language's finest dramatists. When first per...

Burned at Gremlin Theatre on 10/23/09

By: Janet Preus
[Read full review]
Left to Right: Rachael Brogan Flanery, Madison Olimb, Hannah Campbell.  Photo credit Wendy Short Hays. Table Salt Productions, a new company founded by theater locals Jim Robinson, Dennis Curley and Rachel Brogan Flanery, opened its season with a new play by Flanery. The end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it premise, presented in Burned, reduces a cataclysmic event to something more comprehensible: an unrealized, ...