"Stop Kiss" by Theater Mu at Gremlin Theatre

Yesterday was a tough day here in Minnesota. It began with horrific politically motivated attacks on our state legislators that resulted in two deaths and two people severely injured. It then transitioned into inspiring "No Kings" protests in our state capital and around the country. I ended the day at the theater, seeing a queer Asian story about love in the face of hate and violence, and found great solace there. Sadly, hate and violence are a part of our world that never seems to go away, but the hope is that we can make the voices of love, connection, and community loud enough to drown out the hate. Stop Kiss, written almost 30 years ago by Asian American playwright and screenwriter/producer Diana Son, is about two women, in this production Asian American women, who fall in love and are confronted with violence because of it. It's a beautifully written play in two timelines, as funny and sweet as it is tragic and heart-breaking, and Theater Mu's nearly flawless production is a must-see. Even now. Especially now.

"The Adding Machine" by Clevername Theatre at the Hive Collaborative

Clevername Theatre's production of the 1923 play The Adding Machine feels like a sequel of sorts to last year's production of the 1928 play Machinal, or at least a continuation of the theme. Both plays are a little weird and dark, performed in an Expressionist style, are about the mundanity and absurdity of everyday life, and even share some cast and creative team. Where Machinal focused on a woman trapped in societal expectations and the extremes she goes to to escape, The Adding Machine tells the story of a man fired from his boring job of 25 years, also going to extremes to escape, only to find more of the same. Once again, Clevername has taken a hundred-year-old play, performed it in the style it was intended, and made it relevant to today. See it at The Hive Collaborative through June 22.

"Passion" by Theatre Latte Da at the Ritz Theater

Updating my Sondheim spreadsheet this morning (because of course I have a Sondheim spreadsheet), I have now seen ten of the 17 musicals for which he wrote music and lyrics, in a total of 31 productions (most of which you can read about here). Can you guess which theater company I've seen do Sondheim the most? Theater Latte Da of course, whom I've seen do seven different shows (they've done more, but a few were before I "discovered" them). I was able to check Sondheim show #10 off my list* this morning thanks to their new production of the rarely done Passion, which Latte Da's Artistic Director and director of this piece Justin Lucero calls "one of the most divisive works in the American musical canon." I can see why it's not done as often as, say, Into the Woods (the Sondheim musical I've seen the most productions of). It's a messy love triangle with not very likable or even at times understandable characters. As Justin notes, it's "not a traditional love story - it's a meditation on obsession, vulnerability, and the aching rawness of human need." It's not a pretty love story, but the score is very pretty, the characters are fascinating and compelling, and Latte Da's production is all-around gorgeous. It's an unusual musical for sure, but that's not a bad thing, in fact in this case it's a very good thing, and I'm grateful to Theater Latte Da for the chance to experience yet another intricate creation by arguably the best musical theater creator of the 20th Century. The messy, tragic, gorgeous Passion continues through July 13 at the Ritz Theater.

Twin Cities Improv Festival at the Phoenix Theatre

With the closure of HUGE Theater last year, the Twin Cities Improv Festival has a new home - Phoenix Theater in Uptown. For four days, you can watch improv troupes from here in the Twin Cities (and we have a lot of great ones) as well as troupes from around the country and even some from other countries. I attended the first, all-local, night of the festival and had a great time watching some beloved familiar improvisors and some new-to-me improvisors. Each had their own spin on the artform, most started with a suggestion or two from the audience and they took that somewhere unexpected. The Phoenix is a great welcoming location (despite the never-ending construction on Hennepin), with snacks and drinks (including espresso drinks) sold in the cozy lobby. Keep reading for my thoughts on the eight improv troupes I saw (two or three troupes are grouped together in each set, with up to four sets a night), and click here for the schedule of shows continuing through Sunday.

"Sixpack" at Jungle Theater

I'm not really a sports person (with the exception of my Minnesota Twins), but sports is a great metaphor for life, and a great framework to build a play around. Mixed Blood Theatre has done a couple of great ones - Colossal about football, and Safe at Home about baseball in a site-specific production at CHS Field (home of the Twins' Triple-A affiliate team the St. Paul Saints). Even more relevant to this discussion, Jungle Theater has done two productions of The Wolves, about a high school girls' soccer team, and last year Penumbra Theatre staged FLEX, about a high school girls' basketball team. With the growing attention on girls' and women's sports, it's a great time to debut another play in this genre - Katie Ka Vang's Sixpack. Drawing from her own history and culture, Sixpack features a group of Hmong women who play volleyball together (and sometimes against each other). But as with all of these plays, it's not really about volleyball, it's about friendship, mother-daughter relationships, and community. See this funny, real, and ultimately heart-warming world premiere play at Jungle Theater through June 29.

"Mae West and the Trial of Sex" by Walking Shadow Theatre Company at The Crane Theater

Censorship in theater is a hot topic in 2025, with many theaters losing NEA funding for doing plays that allegedly do not align with mandates from this administration. The government is trying to tell artists what kind of plays they can and cannot do, but artists will be artists, and tell the stories they want to tell, even if that has become more difficult. Nearly a hundred years ago, the New York theater scene was also facing censorship, with artists receiving jail time and fines for doing "immoral" plays, and theaters being closed for a year or more. Walking Shadow Theatre Company's new play Mae West and the Trial of Sex chronicles one such battle against censorship, in a story that feels very timely and relevant. See it at the Crane Theater in Northeast Minneapolis through June 22.

"Matt & Ben" at The Hive Collaborative

When friends and #TCTheater artists Serena Brook and Shinah Hey were working at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres on Beautiful last year (Shinah playing songwriter Cynthia Weil, Serena in the ensemble and understudying Carole King), they had the idea to do the play Matt & Ben. Before The Office, Mindy Kaling wrote and starred in Matt & Ben (with Brenda Withers), which became something of a phenomenon and helped her land the job on The Office. It's a perfect 70-minute vehicle for two female actors/friends to play this famous Hollywood friendship. One year later, Serena and Shinah's idea has come to fruition; they recruited friend Derek Prestly to direct, and are collaborating with The Hive on the production (which is all about collaborating with and supporting artists in doing something new). The result is a hilarious buddy comedy about the creative process, celebrity, show business, and friendship. The short two-week run concludes on June 8 - click here for details and to purchase tickets on a sliding scale basis.

"Significant Other" at Lyric Arts

The 2017 Broadway play Significant Other had its regional premiere at Six Points Theater in 2020, just before the pandemic shuttered theaters for 18 months, and five years later this funny, poignant, relatable play is worth a revisit. Lyric Arts has programmed it as the penultimate show of what has turned out to be an excellent 2024-2025 season, and has found the perfect director, design team, and cast to put their stamp on this well-written play. Significant Other is about, well, finding a significant other. Society put so much pressure on us to be coupled, a pressure that our protagonist Jordan feels increasingly strongly as he watches his friends get married. I didn't think it was possible, but I loved this second experience with the play even more than the first. It's a perfect cohesion of script, direction, design, and performance that made me both laugh and cry - my favorite kind of show. See Significant Other at Lyric Arts in Anoka Thursdays through Sundays until June 22, and start your summer theater season off right.

"Ode to Walt Whitman" at Open Eye Theatre

While the lives of 19th Century American poet Walt Whitman and early 20th Century Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (whose play was the basis for the musical Bernarda Alba) did not overlap chronologically, their lives and their work did overlap thematically. And in fact, Lorca wrote a poem called Ode to Walt Whitman, which was the inspiration for a puppetry play of the same name, which Open Eye Theatre has brought to their stage as part of their Guest Artist Series. The 70-minute show feels very much like a poem with puppetry and music, and like all poems, does not follow a straight-forward narrative. Rather it's a series of images and ideas that evoke emotion. This lovely, inventive, thoughtful show is playing through June 8 only.

"ORLANDO: A Rhapsody" by Vinora Epp at the Southern Theater

In her directorial debut ORLANDO: A Rhapsody, Paris-based theater artist Vinora Epp talks about growing up in a theater, and the wonder and joy that brought to her childhood. The theater that she speaks of is one that's familiar to many in #TCTheater - Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which sadly closed its doors in 2008 just two years before I started this blog. Vinora saw her father Steven Epp, now Co-Artistic Director of The Moving Company, play Hamlet when she was seven years old, and was so taken by it that she wanted to play Hamlet too, unfazed by the fact that she's a girl and typically girls don't get to play Hamlet. Thus began a lifelong exploration of gender and storytelling, culminating in this piece that she co-wrote and performs with her father. Combining the writing of Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and personal stories, the daughter-father duo weaves a compelling and fluid narrative. ORLANDO: A Rhapsody performs at The Southern Theater on off days (typically Sunday through Tuesday) of The Moving Company's lovely original piece at low tide (performing Wednesday through Sunday). There are a couple of days with performances of both shows, which would make a nice double feature.

"The Addams Family" by Unlabeled Theatre Company at Park Square Theatre

I saw my second production by Unlabeled Theatre Company this weekend, and it was once again so heart-warming, inspiring, and fun. Unlabeled has a unique performance model, in which they pair an actor with a disability or who is neurodivergent with a neurotypical actor - a "shadow partner." Because everyone deserves to be part of theater, whether that's on stage, backstage, or in the audience. And theater is the better for it. In this difficult time in our country when inclusion, accessibility, and diversity seem to be dirty words, it's reassuring to know that our theater companies are continuing to not just say these words, but live them. The Addams Family is a musical that's all about familial love and loyalty, if a bit odd and macabre, and is another great choice for this company. The one-weekend-only run concludes tomorrow (click here for tickets), with their next scheduled production the super fun Something Rotten! next January.

"Berlin to Rügen" by Michael Rogers at Phoenix Theater

Traveling by train through Europe, specifically Germany (or even better - Switzerland), is one of life's greatest pleasures. I highly recommend it if you haven't done it yet. Firstly, it's so easy and convenient and accessible; you can get anywhere, and America has a lot to learn from Europe about public transit. But it's also a fun and relaxing way to travel. You can get up and walk around, get a snack, or just stay in your seat and nap or read or stare out the window. Watching the world pass by is an ideal environment for rumination, about the big and the little things in life. Such is the beginning of Michael Rogers' new solo show Berlin to Rügen. It starts off with a person on a train staring out the window and ruminating about their life, and then those ruminations go places I wasn't expecting. Places that are funny or heart-wrenching, and often both. See this new work by the artist who gave the best performance I saw a Minnesota Fringe last year, through Saturday only at the Phoenix Theater in Uptown.