"Mistletoe & Mayhem" by Just Us Theater at the Phoenix Theater

I caught Just Us Theater's new Hallmark holiday movie spoof Mistletoe & Mayhem on their final weekend. I wasn't sure I could fit it in during this busy #TCTheater holiday* season, but my fellow Twin Cities Theater Blogger The Stages of MN assured me it was worth it. So I drove to the Phoenix Theater in snowy Uptown, got a decaf mocha from their extensive concessions counter, and settled into the theater for some festive comedy. I found it to be charmingly goofy and delightfully spoofy, poking fun at all of those holiday romance tropes, and even includes an original song! Mistletoe & Mayhem would be a great 70-minute-no-intermission show, if not for the unnecessary intermission, with only a couple shows left before it closes on Sunday.

"A Pink Triangle" at the Phoenix Theater

Local playwright Kirby Taylor has written a new one-act play called A Pink Triangle, referring to the symbol that gay men imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps wore on their clothing. In addition to targeting all Jewish people and pretty much anyone who disagreed with him, Hitler also attempted to stamp out the thriving gay culture that existed in pre-WWII Germany (see also Cabaret, for which this play could be the sequel). The 1979 play Bent, which I saw a production of in 2019 by The BAND Group, also covers this topic in a pretty horrific way. The horrors in A Pink Triangle are more implied, not explicitly seen but ever-present. It's really more of one long conversation between a father and son, both imprisoned in a concentration camp for reasons that become clear. Both actors in this two-hander give powerful performances, in a story that's becoming more and more relevant as our own government begins to take action against and slowly chip away at the rights of various marginalized groups. The short run of A Pink Triangle concludes with two final shows this weekend.