Comedian Mike Birbiglia. A clean comic can be hard to find these days. Not in terms of personal hygiene – that's something we wouldn't presume or want to have to judge – but in terms of content. Shock-value, fame, and R-rated comics seem to go hand-in-hand, which does tend to segment
Author: Basil Considine
Basil Considine is the Performing Arts Editor and Senior Classical Music and Drama Critic at the Twin Cities Arts Reader. He was previously the Resident Classical Music and Drama Critic at the Twin Cities Daily Planet and remains an occasional contributing writer for The Boston Musical Intelligencer and The Chattanoogan. He holds a PhD in Music and Drama from Boston University, an MTS in Sacred Music from the BU School of Theology, and a BA in Music and Theatre from the University of San Diego.
Basil was named one of Musical America's 30 Professionals of the Year in 2017. He was previously the Regional Governor for the National Opera Association's North Central Region.
INTERVIEW: Mike Birbiglia on The New One and Opting Out of Winter
Comedian Mike Birbiglia, who performs at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul from Oct. 17-19. When reviewing comedian Mike Birbiglia's latest solo show The New One, the New York Times' Ben Brantley decided to wax poetic. "Mr. Birbiglia’s voice," he wrote, "becomes a low, wraparound, pleasure-drenched caress.
REVIEW: Pleasant, Low-Calorie Most Happy Fella (Skylark Opera Theatre)
REVIEW: Powerful, Bloody Elektra (Minnesota Opera)
A scene from Minnesota Opera's new production of Elektra, which opened Saturday in St. Paul, MN. Photo by Cory Weaver. Before there was Kill Bill, there was Elektra: a drama from Classical Greece whose culmination is a well-telegraphed murder. Did your father kill your sister and your mother kill your father?
REVIEW: Ephemeral Mean Girls Just Gotta Have Fun (Orpheum Theatre)
INTERVIEW: Ilana Ransom Topelitz on Sharpening Rocky Horror‘s Bite (Park Square Theatre)
INTERVIEW: Mariah Rose Faith on Mean Girls and Her Personal Screen-to-Stage Journey
Jonalyn Saxer, Mariah Rose Faith, Megan Masako Haley, and Danielle Wade in a promotional photo for the national tour of the musical Mean Girls. Photo by Mary Ellen Matthews. Minneapolis is about to get mean. Mean Girls, that is. The brand-new national tour of this Broadway musical kicked off in Buffalo, NY
INTERVIEW: Sabine Hogrefe on Battling the Soprano-Wrecker in Elektra
Costume sketches by Mathew LeFebvre for Minnesota Opera's upcoming production of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra. The Soprano-Wrecker. The End of Harmony. The Most Horrific Tragedy in Opera. The First Freudian Opera. These are but a few of the nicknames for the opera Elektra. Composed by Richard Strauss, the opera first took
REVIEW: Vibrant, Satirical Chicago Sends Up Celebrity Justice (Latté Da)
Britta Ollmann and Michelle de Joya in Theater Latté Da's production of Chicago. Photo by Dan Norman. You never know what you're going to get with Ebb, Fosse, and Kander's musical Chicago. Some productions are downright joyful, some are dark, and others morbid. Theater Latté Da's new production, which opened last night
REVIEW: Sardonic Humor in Glass Menagerie (Guthrie Theater)
Grayson DeJesus (as Jim O’Connor) and Carey Cox (as Laura Wingfield) in the Guthrie Theater’s production of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, now playing at the Guthrie's Wurtele Thrust Stage in Minneapolis. Photo by T Charles Erickson. Memories are a tricky thing. As recounted by Tom in the prologue to The