Minnesota Fringe Festival 2025: "Grief, It's What's For Dinner"

Day: 7

Show: 22

Title: Grief, It's What's For Dinner

Category: Comedy / Drama / Puppetry

By: Aethem Theatre

Written by: Kayla Hambek

Location: Open Eye Theatre

Summary: A funny and moving play about caregiving, loss, and finding your way through the difficulties of life with the help of friends.

Highlights: It's not the Minnesota Fringe Festival if I don't cry a few tears, so thanks to Kayla Hambek for letting me cross off that bingo square. She's written a really beautiful autobiographical show (she steps out of character at the end to tell us the real details) that's so relatable to anyone who's experienced loss or caring for an aging parent. She plays a character named Kate who (along with her dad) is caring for her mother who has early onset Alzheimer's, while also dealing with a neurodivergent sister. Her mother is still with them, but the daughters are mourning the mom they knew. She has a therapist and support group to help her through, and maybe even meets a boy. The small ensemble (Danielle Krivinchuk, Emma Paquette, Sher U-F, and Courtney Vonvett) plays everyone in Kate's life, most of them playing multiple very different roles. The use of hand puppets (to represent her inner self as a rainbow puppet, some of the support group members, and silly little musical numbers) adds a whimsy and charm to the story. Like the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine (a story about grief) go down. Grief is a sweet, funny, relatable, and moving show.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here. 

"Afterlife: The Experience" by Sparkle Theatricals at the Wabasha Street Caves

I know Sparkle Theatricals for their dance and movement-based shows, but they also produce more immersive, experiential work. My first experience with the latter is their current production, Afterlife: The Experience, running for one more night only at the Wabasha Street Caves. I'll admit, part of the draw was to see the Caves, built into the sandstone bluffs on the Mississippi River across from St. Paul originally as storage, and later turned into a speakeasy during Prohibition with rumored visits from some of the era's most notorious gangsters. Now it's an event center, and a very cool theater venue. The conceit of Afterlife is that we're all (recently) dead, and our souls have arrived at the Caves on our way to somewhere else. A number of previously departed souls are there to guide us on our way. I found it to be overall a unique, interesting, and fun experience, although parts of it were a little too interactive and participatory for this introvert (I don't want to be part of the storytelling, I want to be a witness to it). A mix of theater, storytelling, party games, food and drinks, and dance, you have one more chance to enter the Afterlife on October 25.

"Radiant Vermin" at Lyric Arts

"We are thrilled to have you join us on this wildly dark, complex, and comedic ride... This show touches on a variety of intricate themes that include the unhoused, gentrification, myths surrounding the middle class, religious trauma, morality, and so much more. While I could try to explain further, it's better not to give too much away and just let you experience the journey." This note in the program from director Callie Aho pretty much sums up everything that can be said to someone considering seeing Lyric Arts' production of Radiant Vermin. The premise of the smart, funny, and super dark three-person play is so outrageous, I can't even begin to talk about it without spoiling the experience of seeing this play. But I will add that the direction, acting, and design are spot-on, so if any of the above sounds intriguing to you, I highly encourage you to head up to Anoka to see this play before it closes on March 24.

"Silent Sky" by Theatre Pro Rata at the Bell Museum

'Tis the season for Lauren Gunderson's smart, funny, modern, and inspiring plays about female scientists in history, and I am here for it (keep 'em coming, #TCTheater). A week after seeing DalekoArts' lovely production of Ada and the Engine (about mathematician and computer programmer Ada Lovelace), I saw Theatre Pro Rata's production of Silent Sky (about astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, which I had seen at Lyric Arts a few years ago). It's a great play, but what makes this production truly special is that it is staged in the planetarium at the Bell Museum on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. Despite the fact that I got my graduate degree (in statistics, you can see why I'm so drawn to women in science plays) at the U of M, I didn't even know this museum existed (in my defense, the gorgeous new building just opened a year and a half ago). I hope to return to tour the museum sometime, but my first experience to it (through theater, natch) was a wonderful one. Being able to look up at the stars as Henrietta talked about them made the story feel so real. A truly inspired pairing of play and location by Theatre Pro Rata.

"The Penelopiad" by Theatre Unbound at Gremlin Theatre

Homer's The Odyssey is one of our oldest stories; Wikipedia tells me it is "the second-oldest extant work of Western literature." But this story, as many old stories do, mostly focuses on the men, with the women as peripheral characters. What if we reimagined this ancient story with women at the center? Author Margaret Atwood did just that in her 2005 novella The Penelopiad, which she later adapted for the stage. It's fascinating and exciting to look at these old familiar stories in new ways, ways that feel more relevant and immediate and rich. Theatre Unbound is presenting this play to begin their 20th anniversary season, and it's a powerful, moving, tragic, and beautiful example of the work they've been doing for 20 years - women telling women's stories.

"The Drowning Girls" by Freshwater Theatre at the Crane Theater

Three victims of an early 20th Century English serial killer have their say in the haunting play The Drowning Girls, receiving its regional premiere with Freshwater Theatre. Based on a book about this true story, The Drowning Girls examines the life of these three women, their hopes in marrying a seemingly charming man, and the dire consequences when it's revealed he's a con man and serial marryer/murderer, after their money only. The play is ingeniously staged with three onstage bathtubs, shower-heads periodically pouring water into them, the three hardy actors working in water and wet clothes for the entire 75-minute show (which probably explains why the theater was toasty warm, a nice treat on a cold late winter day). The short run closes this weekend - just two remaining performances; click here for more info on how to see this fascinating, gripping, and well executed story.

Fringe Festival 2017: "Synchronicity"

Day: 7

Show: 26

Title: Synchronicity

Category: Comedy

By: Raw Sugar

Created by: Raw Sugar

Location: Mixed Blood Theatre

Summary: The story of a community synchronized swimming team in the early '90s marred by all the drama of being a teenage girl.

Highlights: This super cute show full of '90s references (Blossom, Joey Lawrence, Rainbow Brite) builds to the even cuter synchronized swimming routine. The girls in a summer team go to their first big meet, and inter-personal drama threatens to get in the way. The seven-person cast (Constance Brevell, Danielle Krivinchuk, Michelle Casali, Sarah Parker, Starla Larson, Sulia Altenberg, and director Rebekah Rentzel filling in when I saw the show) are all pretty adorable tween girls with all their drama and seriousness and note-writing and glee. In fact it's such an accurate (if exaggerated) depiction of that difficult age I almost felt sick to my stomach remembering the trauma! The costumes (designed by Sulia) are spot on with the stone-washed jeans and array of swimming suits, as is the styling, complete with side ponies. And seriously, that routine is the best!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Silent Sky at Lyric Arts

Have you ever heard of Henrietta Leavitt? Neither have I. But we should have. This early 20th Century female astronomer's discoveries gave us the ability to measure the universe. The much more famous (and male) astronomer Edwin Hubble built on her work and won the Nobel Prize for his work, which Henrietta could not because she died young before the full effects of her work were seen. None of us can control "who lives, who dies, who tells your story,*" but if the history books don't tell her story, we can be happy that theater is. Lyric Arts' production of Silent Sky (which, by the way, is written by a woman, directed by a woman, and features a mostly female cast) is a beautiful tribute to this brilliant, passionate, and dedicated woman who helped to quantify the idea that there is more out there in the universe than just this world we know.

Fringe Festival 2015: "Workshop"

Day: 7

Show: 31

Title: Workshop

Category: Comedy

By: AEthem Theatre Company

Written by: Kayla Hambek

Location: Minneapolis Theatre Garage

Summary: A group of friends commiserate about life, love, and their day jobs while planning the next season of their theater company.

Highlights: They always say, write what you know. The characters in this play, and perhaps playwright Kayla Hambek, have taken that to heart. Lindsey (Ali Close) is struggling to write a play for her theater company's upcoming season while dealing with the fact that she may lose her day job as a cardiologist and have to move away from the friends and the theater she loves. Monday night workshops with Rachel (Danielle Krivinchuk), Anna (played by the playwright), and British for no reason (other than it gives Kyler Chase a chance to show off his charming British accent) Nick become more stressful as they come closer to the season announcement deadline. Enter rival Charlie (Brendan Veerman) who Lindsey thinks stole one of her plays. Life, art, and friendship collide as the group contemplates the reality of possibly having to give up their dream. This appealing and very natural young cast delivers a sweet and funny play about the love of friends and theater.