Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, now at the Guthrie, begins as the upper-class English couple Charles and Ruth Condomine are about to host a dinner party. He’s an established writer. She manages the household which includes a maid of uncommon exuberance.…
Tag: Guthrie Theatre
The Royal Family: fizzy, frothy — and long
When it was first produced, 90 long years ago, George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber‘s The Royal Family had a different sort of meaning than now. Audiences back then were knowledgeable about, and were devotees of, theatrical dynasties – the…
Promise Land: a universal story of the search for home
Human migration is a timeless effort. People shift, sometimes in great numbers, sometimes as singles or pairs. Transatlantic Love Affair‘s Diogo Lopes decided to tell this story of geographic relocation beginning with the old fairy tale of the Hansel and…
The Lion In Winter at the Guthrie Theatre
When The Lion in Winter begins on the Guthrie‘s McGuire stage (playing through Dec 31), the great red-velvet curtain opens on a timbered, multileveled tower, topped with two tiers of flickering candles. The set, designed by Christopher Ash, deftly invokes the…
Hold These Truths in the Guthrie Theatre’s Dowling Studio
In an at-war America wracked with paranoia and fear of a subversive threat following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a young, patriotic university student decided to stand up and be relentlessly principled. That student was Gordon Hirabayashi, and at a…
Choir Boy at the Guthrie Theater
Easily the best aspect of the Guthrie‘s incisive production of Tarell Alvin McCraney‘s Choir Boy (in the Dowling Studio, through July 5) is John-Michael Lyles‘ performance as the lead, Pharus. Lyles is overtly fey, gesticulating wildly, with a rich tenor…
The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie Theatre
The Guthrie Theatre presented the world premier of The Master Butchers Singing Club Sunday evening, a dramatization of Minnesota writer, Louise Erdrich’s, novel. Marsha Norman’s adaptation, developed and directed by Francesca Zambello, took a rich and wonderful book, dense with…