REVIEW: Victorian Cinderella Revival (Children’s Theatre Company) Arts Dance Music Theatre by Bev Wolfe - November 24, 2016November 25, 2016 Cinderella (Traci Allen Shannon) flees the ball. Photo by Dan Norman. A Victorian Christmas, a vaudeville show, and a romance are all encompassed in the Children’s Theatre Company's latest production of the fairy tale Cinderella. It is a remount of the show that CTC performed during the in 2013-2014 season with many
REVIEW: Pleasant, Familiar Sounds in Christmas Carol (Guthrie Theater) Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - November 22, 2016November 22, 2016 Ryan Colbert (Fred) and J.C. Cutler (Ebenezer Scrooge) at work. Photo by Dan Norman. The Guthrie's 2016 production of A Christmas Carol will not surprise you if you've seen it in recent years. J.C. Cutler is still excellent as Scrooge, Mathew LeFebvre's costumes are still pretty dandy, and the music is just
REVIEW: Leaky Passage (7th House Theater/Guthrie) Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - November 20, 2016November 20, 2016 Mary Bair and Alejandro Vega in The Passage. Photo by Amy Anderson. The Passage or What Comes of Searching in the Dark has a lot of good things going for it. The visuals are engaging, the child actors are fantastic, and Grant Sorenson is a standout member of the ensemble. Musically, however, it is as eminently
PREVIEW: 7th House Theater’s The Passage Arts Music Theatre by Twin Cities Arts Reader - November 18, 2016November 18, 2016 7th House Theater's production of The Passage or What Comes of Searching in the Dark. Photo by Amy Anderson. There's a joke that's sometimes tossed around the Twin Cities theatre community that goes like this: "What is Graydon Royce's perfect show?" "Eighty minutes, no intermission." 7th House Theater's The Passage, which opens tomorrow at
REVIEW: Das Rheingold Glitters, Commands (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Lydia Lunning - November 15, 2016March 11, 2017 Steampunk elements in Minnesota Opera's Das Rheingold. Photo by Cory Weaver. Minnesota Opera’s eye-popping (er…sorry, Wotan) production of Das Rheingold, the first installment of Richard Wagner’s epic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, takes the stage at the Ordway Music Theater in St Paul through November 20. Such a cultural touchstone as this
INTERVIEW: On Orphans and Orphan Trains – A Chat with the History Theatre’s Ron Peluso and Anya Kremenetsky Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - November 13, 2016November 13, 2016 A group of orphans with their chaperones in New York City's Grand Central Station in 1923, prior to being sent to Minnesota. On Saturday, November 19, the History Theatre opens its holiday revival of Orphan Train, a critically praised musical about orphan children from New York City who were shipped off
INTERVIEW: Shoot the Glass’s Ryan Nielsen on Company Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - November 9, 2016November 12, 2016 The cast of Shoot the Glass Theater's upcoming production of Company. Tomorrow, Shoot the Glass Theater opens its second-ever production: Stephen Sondheim's classic 1970 musical Company. This show, which plays at the New Century Theatre in Minneapolis through Sunday, November 20th, was lauded at its premiere for its exploration of changing
FEATURE: Anti-Women’s Suffrage Cartoons Arts Lifestyle Music Visual Arts by Twin Cities Arts Reader - November 8, 2016November 8, 2016 Today is Election Day in the United States, when Americans cast votes for presidential, congressional, state, and local elections. Art and politics are rarely separated for long; one form of art, editorial cartoons, feature a long history of engagement with politics. One of the fallacies often said of art is that
FEATURE: Provocative Ideas at ASTR Conference Arts Lifestyle Music Opera Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - November 4, 2016November 4, 2016 Kellen Hoxworth of Stanford University presents his paper "Transoceanic Blackface; or, The Silver Belt Jig" at ASTR 2016. The early morning session at an academic conference is usually considered the kiss of death for attendance, but more than 150 people showed up for the opening plenary on Day 2 of the
REVIEW: Crashing STOMP (Ordway) Arts Dance Music by Dan Reiva - October 30, 2016October 30, 2016 Photo by Steve McNicholas. The performance of this year’s STOMP tour at the Ordway Center in St. Paul, met audience expectations, and then some. It is a most unique theatre experience, being a mix of dance, vaudeville, symphonic percussion, avant-garde theatre, performance art and musique concrète (music from found objects). Like