We see it when we walk into the McGuire: the Lorraine Motel sign, visible through the window of Room 306, stark against the black Memphis sky, crashes of lightning bringing it into high relief. The Lorraine. Where Martin Luther King…
Tag: Penumbra Theatre
Black Nativity: A Holiday Concert at Penumbra Theatre
If you see one Christmas show this year, pick Black Nativity: A Holiday Concert. It’s absolutely wonderful, and it will make you feel wonderful, too. Penumbra Theatre is much more than Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity but it is the show…
Spunk at Penumbra Theatre
Review written by Janet Preus and John Olive. Penumbra Theatre came charging back to life last night with a production of Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by the great Zora Neale Hurston, written for the stage by George C,…
The Amen Corner by Penumbra Theatre Co., performing at the Guthrie
Luke staggers into his ex-wife Margaret’s Harlem flat – it’s the closest thing he has to “home” – carrying one thing: his shiny, lovingly maintained trumpet. Margaret, popular pastor of a fundamentalist church, is appalled to see him. He represents…
I Wish You Love at Penumbra Theatre Company
I approached the production of Dominic Taylor‘s powerful I Wish You Love (Penumbra Theatre, through May 22) with some trepidation. Dennis W. Spears is lavishly talented, tall and charismatic, with a presence as big as the grand outdoors. We recently…
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a Penumbra Theatre production at the Guthrie Theater
On rare occasions in theater, all the critical elements seem to converge in one glorious experience. The script is brilliant, the actors are perfectly suited to their roles, and the director, with great respect for both, seems to simply open…
“Black Nativity: Now’s the Time” at Penumbra Theatre
This year’s Black Nativity, an annual tradition at Penumbra Theatre, takes a modern approach, hanging the nativity story on a contemporary American family. Conceived by Lou Bellamy and T. Mychael Rambo, and directed by Dominic Taylor, Black Nativity: Now’s the…
Sleep Deprivation Chamber at Penumbra Theatre
The incident detailed in Adrienne and Adam P. Kennedy‘s harrowing and autobiographical Sleep Deprivation Chamber (at Penumbra, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul, penumbratheatre.org) is, unfortunately, as common as rain: a policeman commits a vicious assault and then concocts a…
Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking at Penumbra Theatre
In his lovely Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking (Penumbra, 270 Kent St., St Paul, through May 23, penumbratheatre.org) playwright Gus Edwards presents us with two gentlemen of a grand experience of life, inhabiting the trash strewn corner…
Black Pearl Sings at Penumbra Theatre
Playwright Frank Higgins does two very smart things with his vivid Black Pearl Sings! (at Penumbra, 270 N. Kent Street, St. Paul, through March 14, penumbratheatre.org). First, he shoehorns an amazingly wide range of Depression-era America into his story: the humid…