REVIEW: Realish Housewives of Edina, Season 2 Skewers Reality TV (Hennepin Theatre Trust) Arts Theatre by Basil Considine - March 18, 2017March 18, 2017 There's a drinking game for the Real Housewives television series where you take a drink when a character says something snarky in a camera confession. If you watched The Realish Housewives of Edina, Season 2 while playing this game, your liver wouldn't make it a quarter of the way though Act I. Alcohol is
REVIEW: The 24 Hour Plays: The Second Half (Hennepin Theatre Trust) Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - March 16, 2017March 18, 2017 There's always something exciting about a frenzied rush to create. Sometimes the work produced under pressure is brilliant, with daringness that would probably get sanded with too much reflection. Sometimes the results are...less than appealing, which is something that happens. Most often, the results are a mixed bag – which
REVIEW: Dinner at Eight, Performance Edition (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - March 14, 2017March 15, 2017 The eponymous dinner party in Minnesota Opera's Dinner at Eight. Photo by Cory Weaver. Minnesota Opera's Dinner at Eight, which premiered on Saturday at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, is a vibrant new comedy with an engaging score and finely tune libretto. This review focuses on the performances in the
REVIEW: Dinner at Eight‘s Splendid Comic Melodrama (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - March 14, 2017March 15, 2017 New money socialites Dan Packard (Craig Irvin) and Kitty Packard (Susannah Biller) squabble in the world premiere production of Dinner at Eight by Minnesota Opera. Photo by Cory Weaver. Contemporary American opera is usually no laughing matter. At any given opera premiere, you can expect an occasional inserted joke and perhaps some moments of wry underscoring,
REVIEW: Sweeping Grease Rides Again (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres) Arts Dance Music Theatre by Basil Considine - March 11, 2017March 11, 2017 The ensemble of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres' new production of Grease. Photo by Dan Norman. Grease is still the word in Chanhassen. The classic rock-and-roll musical roared back to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres last night with eruptions of applause, hoots of approval, and some spontaneous hand jiving in the audience. The last time Grease played at
PREVIEW: Dinner at Eight (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - March 10, 2017March 11, 2017 It took two and a half years for Edna Ferber to convince George S. Kaufman to cowrite the play Dinner at Eight (1932) with her. Ferber was already one of the best-selling writers in the United States, with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1924's So Big) to her credit. Nor was she unfamiliar to theatre
REVIEW: Sumptuous R&H Magic in The King and I (Orpheum/HTT) Arts Dance Music Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - March 1, 2017March 2, 2017 Laura Michelle Kelly, Baylen Thomas, and Graham Montgomery in Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I. Photo by Matthew Murphy. It was a full house at the opening of the Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I tour on Tuesday night. The Orpheum Theatre's seats were packed with an unusually broad balance of ages, waiting to
REVIEW: We Are Proud To Present Stabs You With Feels (Guthrie Theater) Arts Theatre by Basil Considine - February 28, 2017February 28, 2017 Lamar Jefferson (Actor 4), Nika Ezell Pappas (Actor 5), Sam Bardwell (Actor 1), Nike Kadri (Actor 6), Quinn Franzen (Actor 3) and JaBen Early (Actor 2) in the Guthrie Theater's production of We Are Proud to Present a Presentation. Photo by Dan Norman. The first hint that We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero
Fringe File 2017, #2: Minnesota Fringe Festival Announces New Executive Director Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - February 28, 2017July 21, 2017 A 2015 photo of the Art Shanty Project on White Bear Lake. Photo courtesy of the Art Shanty Facebook page. Last night was the Minnesota Fringe Festival lottery, where balls plucked out of a hopper determine the lineup of the country's largest unjuried arts festival. Attendees got an extra surprise: the
INTERVIEW: Composer Jodi Goble on the Art of Writing Art Songs Arts Music by Basil Considine - February 20, 2017March 15, 2017 Composer Jodi Goble at the piano. If you hang around classical singers, you're likely to hear the name "NATS" come up. No, not the things that fly around – the National Association of Teachers of Singing, one of the cornerstone institutions of the classical voice world. Know someone who took voice lessons in