"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.

"Marjorie Prime" by Prime Productions at Park Square Theatre

New #TCTheater company Prime Productions "seeks to explore, illuminate and support women over fifty and their stories through the creative voice of performance." Hooray! Their third full production just opened at Park Square Theatre, and it's another high quality thought-provoking play featuring women in their prime. The regional premiere of the new play Marjorie Prime by playwright Jordan Harrison is, like his play Maple and Vine, a little trippy and creepy. But instead of a scary Stepford society, it deals with artificial intelligence and the benefits and possibly scary consequences of technology. But it also deals with very human issues of aging, death, grief, and complicated family relationships.