Camp: when the process(es) of the performers supercede(s) the needs of the story being told. By this definition, Two Mile Hollow – a co-production between Mixed Blood Theater and Mu Performing Arts (an arrangement one wishes more theaters would make),…
Category: Theater
Review | 21 Extremely Bad Breakups: should I stay or should I go?
Any play with a title like 21 Extremely Bad Breakups is bound to be a bit of a yuk-fest and so it is with Walking Shadow’s new work of that name. Though 21EBB fits this description, it’s more than just…
Review | The Humans: realism returns
It is Thanksgiving Day. A family gathers in the Manhattan Chinatown apartment that one of the daughters shares with her boyfriend. Grandmother, in a wheelchair, only somewhat “with it.†Sister, dealing with recent breakup. Mom, mother hen-ing, and Dad, doing…
Review | Assassins: overlong maybe, but fab
Ever wonder why the dapper Johnny Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln? Laid awake at night sorting out the reasons why the cheerfully insane Charles Guiteau put a bullet in President Garfield’s back? Tried to figure out why the effervescently cute…
Review | The Wiz: a fun, funky fairytale
The Twin Cities is blessed with many storied theater institutions, two of the most vital being the Children’s Theatre Company and Penumbra Theatre. Both have distinct missions – one to introduce theater in approachable ways to new generations and one…
Review | Noises Off: a fine British farce
Noises Off is a perennially popular farce about all the things that can go wrong with a theatre production. Anyone who knows theatre knows the list is almost endless: last minute changes that rattle the actors, backstage romances that threaten…
Review | The Maids: pure energy
Like all of Dark & Stormy Productions plays, Jean Genet‘s The Maids is done in a small, empty office space in the old Grain Belt Brewery (77 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis, through Feb 17). The space is intimate. The actors…
Review | A Steady Rain: solid
Of all the horrific things that have happened over the past fifty years the Jeffrey Dahmer story stands out. What makes it especially distressing is that a fourteen-year-old boy escaped from Dahmer’s basement apartment, ran naked to two Milwaukee police…
Review | Ishmael: a monolog based on Moby Dick
For most people… Well, for many people… Okay, for me, Moby Dick = Gregory Peck. The image is indelible: Peck-as-Ahab lashed to the great albino whale’s side, stabbing at him ineffectually with a broken harpoon, as Dick, having handily turned…
Review | Dot: glitter, with tarnished gold
Christmas time mingles past, present and future as families gather to celebrate and share common traditions and memories. So it’s no surprise to discover a play about a family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s during the holiday season when the loss of…