Category: theatre criticism
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Not unlike Moses himself, the Andria Theatre’s production of The Prince of Egypt takes a while to find its footing and has to deal with flaws and missteps along the way, but it still ultimately becomes a moving and inspirational piece of theatre. The first few scenes showcase both the production’s highlights and its flaws.…
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Larissa Fasthorse is known today as a world-renowned playwright, with noteworthy works such as The Thanksgiving Play (recently seen on Broadway), a revised script for the current tour of Peter Pan, and For the People (which was co-written with Ty Dafoe and premiered at the Guthrie in 2023), but she got started as a ballerina.…
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Eddie Cantor’s 1935 song “Merrily We Roll Along” (later immortalized as the Looney Tunes theme) is about a couple who stick together through hardship and poverty because they believe in each other and what they do. Stephen Sonheim and George Furth’s 1981 musical of the same title borrows the title (but not the song) to…
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Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is one of the quintessential pieces of absurdist theatre, a genre I’m not typically all that fond of. In the wrong hands, absurdist and surrealist humor can come across as opaque and self-indulgent without having much to say. Thankfully, due to the strong directorial hand of Joseph Haj and…
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Lend Me a Tenor is such a perfectly executed farce that it could practically serve as an object lesson. The script by Ken Ludwig has all of the classic ingredients – broad, archetypal characters, misunderstandings, schemes, the possibility that the whole thing could collapse at any given moment – and the direction from Patrick Spradlin…
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The Little Falls theatre community theatre’s production of Into the Woods shows that there’s still plenty of creativity to be found in this material. It’s probably my favorite musical of all time, and I’ve seen more than a half-dozen productions of it in different capacities. This production, directed by Emma Ahlin, shows a great deal…
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Theatre is about telling stories, music is about capturing emotion, and art is about representing life. Artistry MN has accomplished all of that with their new production of In the Heights. Director Maija García’s production of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical about a few days in the life of a Washington Heights community embodies the joy…
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It seems weird that it took until now for me to finally see Wicked live. I was generally aware of the musical’s premise and performed a couple of the songs in high school band, but it wasn’t until the film duology was released that I actually saw any of the show itself. Of course, the…
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“The butler did it” is one of those turns of phrase that has existed as a cliché for so long that it’s impossible to think of a context in which it could be used seriously. Jeffrey Hatcher’s new play The Butler Did It, having its world premiere at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, is…
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It may be a musical comedy by genre, but there were times as I watched the Brainerd Community Theatre’s production of Mean Girls that had me so stressed out I felt like I was wriggling out of my skin. Co-directors Amy Borash and Travis Chaput are able to capture the anxieties of being in high…
