by CHRISTINE SARKES Inclusiveness and gratitude were the themes of the 12th Annual Ivey Awards held last evening at the Historic State Theater, downtown Minneapolis. Theater professionals honored their own and one of ours–Star Tribune theater critic Graydon Royce–as they reached beyond the typical candidates by awarding a non-actor, costume designer Trevor Bowen, with the Emerging Artist Award. Bowen got his…
By LIZ + BRYCE BYRON. Victor + Valentine is a new play by new theater company Collective Unconscious Performance. The play centers around storyteller and puppeteer Victor von Valentine as he puts on the final performance of his world-touring Cabaret For The Broken-hearted. Featuring artistic re-tellings of classic fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, Victor’s cabaret includes The…
By ERIKA YASMEEN SASSEVILLE, Guest Reviewer Lorna Landvik, nationally known author and locally known actor/playwright presents an annual solo improvisation show on the Bryant-Lake Bowl stage through the end of January. From the moment she steps on stage, Landvik creates interesting and energetic audience-suggested characters, complete with costumes and props. Wigs, facial hair and 70s rec…
By LIZ BYRON. I remember being wildly unimpressed the first time I read The Misanthrope. I was a college sophomore taking my first French literature class, and my impatient 19-year-old brain thought it was slow, wordy, and didn’t particularly seem to have a plot. A few years later, I re-read it for a graduate class…
By LIZ BYRON. Frequently it seems that a play is either insightful and poorly staged, or else fluffy and well staged. Time after time do I get the impression that it’s an either..or.. deal: either you get a thought-provoking script that raises important questions, or you get a well-acted, well-directed performance. It was with delight,…
Today’s Fringe adventure was another blind guess. We showed up to the Bryant-Lake Bowl and didn’t see the name of the show until we were handing over our passes to get tickets at the box office. There was a considerable line (and the show sold out only 10-15 people behind us in line), but sometimes…
Aaaaaand Fringe 2014 is on! Check back throughout the festival to see what shows we’re hitting up. First up: Shakespeare’s Histories: Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace. It’s pretty much all right there in the title for you! Timothy Mooney is a joy to watch in this one-man show, as he flies through the history…
As the lights dimmed in the Bryant Lake Bowl theatre, and Seth Lepore started his performance, I was confused. Lepore sat on stage, nervously glancing around the audience, making disjointed comments about being in Antarctica. The audience was laughing — because this was an inside joke I didn’t get? Because they were uncomfortable? Because they…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The sad comedian might be a cliche, but playwright Thomas Ward has turned the stereotype into some very three-dimensional characters in his insightful short play International Falls. Directed by the Jungle Theatre’s Artistic Director Bain Boehlke, International Falls is being performed at the Bryant Lake Bowl, a much more fitting venue for a peek into a night…
by SOPHIE KERMAN It is too bad that God Rest Ye Scary Gentlemen is such a good idea, because that makes its execution all the more disappointing. The mission of the Hardcover Theater is to adapt texts for the stage, and for their latest production, they have chosen to spook up the holidays with three 19th-century ghost…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 