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 TAMAR NEUMANN: The Whale is about a 600 pound man who lives alone in Idaho and the moments in his life that lead him to this particular period. Of course, it’s not just about him—it’s about questioning the role of religion in our lives (and I do mean religion and not faith) and about how…
By LIZ BYRON. In old western movies, the good guy wears a white hat, and the bad guy wears a black hat. In Gabriel, the good guy (good lady?) wears a pretty dress and the bad guy wears a Nazi uniform, which seems rather unsubtle, but as the play unfolds, the divide between right and…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE How do you take Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of The Three Musketeers, which is over 600 pages long, and condense it into a fresh version for the stage? Director Amy Rummenie and playwright John Heimbuch of Walking Shadow Theatre Company began by reading the story aloud over the course of several…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Charlie Bethel has garnered rave reviews, both locally and nationally, for his one-man adaptations of classic texts from Beowulf to Gilgamesh and, now, The Odyssey. Local critics seem to enjoy listing positive adjectives to describe Bethel’s performance: Dominic Papatola calls him “dazzling”, Ed Huyck says the show is “funny, thrilling, moving, and educational”, and John Olive qualifies Bethel…
By MIRA REINBERG The year 1800, when Schiller (the German poet, playwright, and philosopher) published his play Mary Stuart, was one moment in a formidable transformation in European aesthetic understanding.The conception of history was turning away from the rational terms of Enlightenment philosophy whereby art strives to be a true representation of life, to an…
by SOPHIE KERMAN What’s in a number? Well, when it comes to sex, numbers can mean a heck of a lot. Ian MacAllister-McDonald‘s The Sexual Life of Savages begins when Hal discovers that he and his girlfriend Jean are numerically mismatched – where he has had 7 sexual encounters, Jean’s number may be up beyond 25 –…
by SOPHIE KERMAN The 2013 Ivey Awards, the Twin Cities’ celebration of the best of theatre, have been awarded! How many have you seen? Lifetime Achievement Award: playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, nationally-renowned playwright, the Lifetime Achievement Award, Aisle Say reviews of a few of his plays: Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, Standing on Ceremony (contributor),…
By guest reviewer YONATAN REINBERG The all-male cast in The Shadow Company’s performance of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, by playwright Moisés Kaufman, play a variety of characters from prostitutes to queens, lovers to judges, press to persecutors. As the clever plot device played by a rascally professor makes clear, however, the…
by SOPHIE KERMAN Need a break from winter? Step into the Walking Shadow‘s inventive production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a well-timed throwback to the distant autumn days when the leaves – not the snow – crunched underfoot and it was the shivers down your spine, not a feel-good Valentine’s card, that made you sit just…
Aisle Say - Twin Cities 