"Dial M for Murder" at Yellow Tree Theatre

Yellow Tree Theatre is opening their 17th season in a cozy strip mall in Osseo with a classic: the 1952 play Dial M for Murder, adapted into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and now smartly adapted by local prolific playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. The Guthrie produced this adaptation earlier this year, so I wasn't that excited when I heard Yellow Tree was doing it so soon after. But seeing the show last night, it totally won me over. It's a classic for a reason - an intricately plotted thriller with a strong female heroine who escapes death - and this new adaptation honors that but makes the story more modern with a few slight changes (the murderous husband is a failed novelist rather than former tennis celebrity, and the American writer named Max that his wife has an affair with is a woman). Yellow Tree's production on their sweet little intimate stage (as opposed to the Guthrie's expansive and lush thrust stage), with a fantastic four-person cast (one less than at the G), is definitely worth seeing, whether or not you've seen this story before. Dial M for Murder plays Wednesdays through Sundays until October 13.

"Toil & Trouble" at Yellow Tree Theatre

In recent years, Lauren Gunderson has become one of my favorite playwrights, with her fresh, modern, feminist plays about women in history, and her Christmas at Pemberley series, the best Pride and Prejudice fan fiction (co-written by Margo Melcon). And I'm not alone in my love for her plays; she's one of the most produced playwrights in recent years. So whenever a theater programs one of her plays, I'm all for it (I would like to request #TCTheater productions of the women-in-science plays The Half-Life of Marie Curie and Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight next season). But I'm not sure I would have recognized Toil & Trouble, now playing on Yellow Tree Theatre's Osseo stage, as one of her works. It might be the only one of her plays set in modern times that I've ever seen, and it's much darker than her other work that I'm familiar with. But it's still smart, funny, modern, and feminist (because women can be murderers too!). Yellow Tree's production is perfectly cast, with abundantly detailed design, and darkly hilarious. Go get your Lauren Gunderson fix in Osseo now through March 3 (and follow it up with Silent Sky at Theatre in the Round, opening soon).