We asked the Twin Cities Daily Planet’s Resident Classical Music and Drama Critic Basil Considine for a retrospective top 10 list of favorite shows from the 2014-2015 theatre season in the Twin Cities. Basil refused to play favorites, but offered this list of 10 scene-stealing performances, loosely construed and in no particular order:
- The rescue kittens in the Jungle Theater’s production of You Can’t Take It With You, which mewed appreciably and peaked out of aprons.
- Anna Sundberg as Alice in the Jungle Theater’s production of You Can’t Take It With You, grabbing attention instantly and not letting it go until she left the stage.
- Caroline Innerbichler as Rose in the Ordway’s production of The Pirates of Penzance.
- Jay Albright as Peter Quince in the Guthrie Theater’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- Michelle O’Neill (as Elizabeth Proctor) and Erik Heger (as John Proctor) in their joint interrogation scene in the Guthrie Theater’s production of The Crucible.
- Tyler Michaels as an irresistibly energetic Peter Pan in the Children’s Theatre Company production of Peter Pan.
- Anna Hopps’ sparkling, crackling script in Burntail Arts’ Reinventing the Wolf.
- Brenda Harris as the master manipulator (and masterfully creepy) Eleanor Iselin in Minnesota Opera’s The Manchurian Candidate.
- Siena Forest and Bergen Baker as Carmen’s galpals Frasquita and Mercédès in Minnesota Opera’s groovy, 1970s Spain production of Carmen.
- Realizing mid-performance that the three wives in Michelle Lowe’s The Smell of the Kill were planning on offing their husbands (Lemming Productions).
Twin Cities Arts Reader
The Twin Cities Arts Reader is an arts and lifestyles magazine whose coverage examines arts and selected activities in the state of Minnesota and across the country. It provides Minnesota's largest source of in-depth, critical theatre coverage, and reaches more than 600,000 readers per year.