"Come Back, Little Sheba" by Dark & Stormy Productions at Gremlin Theatre

Minnesota Fringe Festival is over, and the 2025-2026 #TCTheater season has not yet begun, which means it's time for another Dark & Stormy Production, a company that very smartly programs one of their unique offerings during this relatively quiet time. But this time, they're not serving us one of their usual dark comedies. The 1950 play Come Back, Little Sheba, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Inge, is all dark and no comedy. It's a tragic play that mostly makes me think about how women's choices were so limited in the past, and in many ways still are today (and becoming more so). But it's thoroughly engaging and full of captivating and complex characters, beautifully brought to life by the cast and creative team. See it at Gremlin Theatre through September 7.

"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.

"Red and the Mother Wild" by Transatlantic Love Affair and Illusion Theater at Center for the Performing Arts

This spring, Transatlantic Love Affair is back at Illusion Theater, the artistic partner of this Minnesota Fringe-born physical theater company for a decade and a half. TLA typically debuts new original pieces at Fringe, and then in the next year or two continues to develop and expand the show into a 75-ish minute piece produced by and staged at Illusion. This year, they're remounting/revisiting their 2011 Fringe hit Red Resurrected, which I first saw in 2013 in the expanded Illusion Theater version. Retitled Red and the Mother Wild and with some additional content/themes added, it's still an exquisitely lovely and achingly beautiful piece, as all of TLA's work is. It's essentially a coming of age story of a young orphan girl who finds her purpose in the supposedly dangerous woods, told without any props or set pieces (or shoes), but simply using the voices, bodies, and souls of the talented seven-person cast. Experience the magic that is TLA at Center for the Performing Arts in Uptown through April 12.