Local Community News
Crimes of the Heart is a tragic-comic Southern Gothic piece by playwright Beth Henley, and will be at the Guthrie on the Wurtele Thrust Stage until June 15. The play is a Pulitzer Prize recipient and is also well-known from the 1986 film adaptation. It is set in the small town of Hazelhurst, Mississippi, in the late 1970s and follows the reunion of the McGrath sisters, Lenny, Meg, and Babe, in the wake of a crisis.
Theatre Latté Da is currently producing the play Our Town at The Lab Theatre in the North Loop. Originally written in 1983 by American playwright Thornton Wilder, local director Peter Rothstein has transformed this decades-old performance into a modern-day conversation on life, marriage, death, and the purpose of it all.
“Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome – to my crotch! I’m your sexy emcee for the evening, welcome to the Kit Kat Klub. And my crotch. I’m going to hump everything for a while, and then the Nazis are going to come.”
The Loudmouth Collective goes all out and full volume in Fuddy Meers, David Lindsay-Abaire’s in-your-face comedy about memory loss and family. The humor meanders from zany into full blown hysteria, with a virtual clown car of crazy characters, and several plots intersecting for one wild ride.
If there’s a must-see musical of 2013 in the Twin Cities, it’s this one.
The hit musical Wicked flew into Minneapolis on September 18th and I had the privilege of being in the audience last weekend. The play was nothing short of magical. Not a single actor or actress was off key, not a single line was missed; it was exactly what you’d expect from a Broadway original: perfection.
There are two big shows happening at the Guthrie right now. On the McGuire Proscenium stage we have Clybourne Park, a new play by Bruce Norris. On the Wurtele Thrust stage we have a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice.
Urinetown at the Jungle Theater will appeal both to musical theater people and those who mock them. The show, directed by John Command, satirizes and pays homage to countless musical theater conventions. The music and lyrics of Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis flit from Fiddler on the Roof to West Side Story to Les Miserables to a Brechtian tone without missing a beat. Somehow, even as the genre changes, the show remains an aesthetic whole.
This is an impressive staging of a tongue and cheek musical that speaks directly, and a little conspiratorially, to the audience. It’s a biting, uproarious satire not only of musical theater styles, but also fascist capitalism, corporate greed and government control.
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