Despite being a lifelong music geek, I wasn’t familiar with the Dutch band NITS until this past year. It’s not like the band has been hiding under a rock for the fifty years of their existence, and I’m not ignorant…
NITS at the Savoy, Helsinki
Rickie Lee Jones at Tavastia Club, Helsinki
To do a dangerous thing with style Is what I call art. – Charles Bukowski When my concert companion asked what I thought about Rickie Lee Jones’s performance in Helsinki Wednesday night as we walked from the venue, it made…
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Olympic Stadium, Helsinki
During the encore of his 32-song, three-hour show in Helsinki Friday night, Bruce Springsteen asked the audience of 42 thousand, “Do you think you can outlast the E Street band?” I, for one, couldn’t, even if Springsteen is 74 and…
Nick Cave at Musiikkitalo, Helsinki
I vividly recall Nick Cave’s tour stop in Helsinki on the “Conversations with Nick Cave” tour in 2019. Not just because I was one of the lucky few selected to sit on stage with the performer during the first of his two-night…
Review | Driving the dream: Just keep those “Hands on a Hardbody”
Ready to get out, be entertained and enjoy theater again? Of course, you are! Minneapolis Musical Theatre is back with its latest choice for a “rare musical,” a niche for which the company is well known. Hands on a Hardbody,…
The Crisis: HWTS responds
We can’t review plays when there are no plays to be reviewed. Therefore, until Gov. Walz decides to “re-open” live theaters, we will, unfortunately, be on hiatus. There is, however, movement in the theater world: the estimable Sarah Rasmussen, artistic…
Review | Thunder Knocking On The Door: can theater be more enjoyable?
This terrific show puts me in mind of the Greg Brown lyric: “I get the good blues / When I think about you.” Keb’ Mo’ and Anderson Edwards have the good blues. These two have put together the tastiest, bluesiest…
Review | Interstate: love and music on the open road
Interstate (Mixed Blood Theatre, through March 29) contains a standout performance: Sushma Saha as the young woman chafing in a small (and very conservative) American town, struggling to become Henry, to “man up,” to become who she really is. Saha…
Review | The White Card: guess who’s coming to dinner 2020
In The White Card, at Penumbra Theatre things don’t go awry in the way you might expect. Playwright Claudia Rankin dives head first into the American race relations. The play starts with Charles and his wife, Virginia (both white) who…
Review | The Ugly One: an actual German comedy
All well and good, the Guthrie’s glitzy production of Guys And Dolls; and it’s good that they’ve scheduled (rescheduled actually) Shakespeare’s masterful history cycle; and it’s wonderful that in Three Little Birds CTC put together a show based on music…
Review || Blue Man Group: Slapstick for the digital age
Do you feel the need for some silliness? Just letting go and laughing? You’re not alone. Millions of people worldwide have felt the same way—since 1987! Now, that’s what I call a run! The Blue Man Group (“Still Blue, the…
Review | The Bridges Of Madison County: cornfed passion
Fad-lit. In the 90s every woman (and many men) read Robert James Waller‘s novel The Bridges Of Madison County (nowadays the title is 50 Shades Of Gray). The book was hugely popular. And why not? The story, of two late-middle…