We’re going to make the crabby and dyspeptic Critic stand in the corner for this one.  Stay. Quiet. Ahem. The venerable and vaunted Les Mis has roared into town for a disappointingly short run at the Orpheum (the show closes…
Author: John Olive
Camino Real by Girl Friday Productions, performing at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage
“I have three problems,” asserts Camino Real‘s Kilroy, in a lush and exuberant performance by Eric Knutson. “I’m hungry, I’m lonely, and I don’t know what this place is.” Camino Real (Girl Friday Productions, performing at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage,…
Sherlock Holmes And The Adventure Of The Suicide Club by Park Square Theatre
What’s the business of the Suicide Club? “Death,” stentorily intones Mr. George (in a terrific performance by James Cada), with equal parts grinning euphoria and stern reverence. Ah, yes. Sherlock Holmes And The Adventure Of The Suicide Club (at Park…
War Horse at the Orpheum Theatre
World War One, aka the Great War.  Unrelenting sordidness, a sea of blood seeping into endless mud, no-man’s-land stretching for hundreds of miles, forty plus million human beings killed or maimed, a whole generation lost. No heroes, no real villains. …
Clybourne Park at the Guthrie Theater
It is lucky that Jim Lichtscheidl gives such a rich and multi-layered performance in the first act (set in 1959) of Clybourne Park (at the Guthrie, through August 4). His Karl is a despicable toad and playwright Bruce Norris fills…
Anything Goes at the Ordway
Anything Goes (currently docked at the Ordway for a week, though May 12) hails from the early tradition of American musical theater, when musical plays mostly consisted of comic sketches interspersed with (often brilliant) songs. There are a few…
The Primrose Path at the Guthrie Theater
Playwright Crispin Whittell and the determined Guthrie cast endeavor to turn Ivan Turgenev‘s melancholic, poignant, dreamy, and oh-so-Russian novel Home Of The Gentry into a brisk, bracing and breezy drawing room comedy — and they, for the most part, succeed.…
A Streetcar Named Desire by Ten Thousand Things Theater
“I don’t want realism,” Blanche DuBois cries in A Streetcar Named Desire (Ten Thousand Things Theater, various venues, through May 26), “I want magic!” The great Tennessee Williams serves up juicy dollops of both in this play. Streetcar celebrates eroticism,…
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials Of Oscar Wilde, by Walking Shadow Theatre Company performing at the Theatre Garage
Actor Craig Johnson‘s layered, knowing, subtle and intelligent portrayal of Oscar Wilde is by far the best reason to see Gross Indecency: The Three Trials Of Oscar Wilde (Walking Shadow performing at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage, through May 4). Gross…
Lorca In A Green Dress, a co-production of Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater, performing at the Ritz
The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico GarcÃa Lorca died a nasty and sordid death: murdered by homophobic fascists, alongside a road, at night, his bullet-riddled body flung into an anonymous mass grave. It is the achievement – and it…