"The Norwegians" by Dark and Stormy Productions at Grain Belt Warehouse

Seven years after their debut, during which time they've brought us a couple of dark and stormy little plays every year, Dark and Stormy Productions is doing their first remount. If you're going to remount a show, the hilarious and very Minnesotan dark comedy The Norwegians, first presented in 2016, is a great choice. This story of two Southern women so beaten down by Minnesota winters and bad relationships that they hire Norwegian gangsters to kill their exes is worth seeing again. In 2016 I called the play "a cross between a Prairie Home Companion sketch and an episode of Fargo, with more edge than the former but without the latter's ominous cloud of despair." They've reunited most of the original cast and creative team, with a few new faces, for what is once again is a very funny, entertaining, and intimate anti-holiday* #TCTheater choice.

"The Song of Summer" at Mixed Blood Theatre

After a pretty intense 2018-2019 season of plays that included Is God Is, the trilogy Prescient Harbingers, Roe, and Autonomy, Mixed Blood Theatre is beginning their 2019-2020 season with something a little lighter. Playwrights' Center Affiliated Writer Lauren Yee (whose work has been seen in #TCTheater most recently in the Guthrie's production of The Great Leap) brings us a sweet and fun play that's almost a rom-com. The Song of Summer is not without substance, dealing with relationships, pop culture, and celebrity, but the story at its heart is one we've seen many times before. But it's told in a unique framework with an appealing cast, so it's a story I'm happy to watch. It's OK for theater to be light and sweet and fun, even at Mixed Blood, especially when this well written, directed, and acted.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" by Theater Latte Da at the Ritz Theater

I've been excited to see Theater Latte Da's production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, starring multi-talented #TCTheater artist Tyler Michaels King, since they announced their season last spring. I've loved Hedwig since seeing the movie in the early aughts, and even more so since seeing her Broadway debut five years ago in the person of Neil Patrick Harris. Even though punk rock isn't usually my scene, I really connect with this queen of the misfits and losers who encourages us all to be ourselves, and reminds us that we are worthy and whole exactly as we are. Latte Da's production captures all that and more - part fantastically fun rock concert, part transformational journey to the self. The piece is co-directed by Artistic Director Peter Rothstein and Annie Enneking, #TCTheater's preeminent fight choreographer and headliner of the rock band Annie and the Bang Bang. Through this perfect combination of Peter's clear vision for music-theater storytelling and Annie's rock star sensibilites, they have created a piece that's epic and intimate, loud and in your face, yet beautiful and touching.

"Fellow Travelers" by Minnesota Opera at the Cowles Center

I'm not much of an opera-goer, mostly because there's so much theater to see, and also because I have a hard time connecting to a story that's sung in a language I don't understand. I like my opera in English, modern (or modernized), and in a small(er) house (see also Skylark Opera). Minnesota Opera's final production in their 2017-2018 checks all of those boxes, plus it's directed by my favorite director of music-theater, Peter Rothstein. So I made a spontaneous trip to the opera yesterday (performed in the Cowles Center Goodale Theater) to see Fellow Travelers, commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera in 2016. Based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers tells the story of two men who fall in love in 1950s Washington, D.C., during the Lavender Scare, something I was not previously aware of (bonus: educational!). It's an exceedingly beautiful piece - a heart-breakingly tragic love story, an examination of a dark period in our history, and commentary on the world today, all told with gorgeous music that heightens the emotions of the story. I'm rethinking my position on opera.

"The Norwegians" by Dark and Stormy at Grain Belt Warehouse

To close out their fourth season, Dark and Stormy Productions once again brings us an anti-holiday selection. Except that this one takes place in winter in Minnesota, so it's pretty holiday appropriate, even if it is about two women who hire two Norwegian gangsters to kill their exes. Austin-based playwright C. Denby Swanson was inspired by her time in Minnesota at the Playwrights' Center* to write this darkly funny play that pokes fun at all things Minnesota in a fun-loving way. The Norwegians is a cross between a Prairie Home Companion sketch and an episode of Fargo, with more edge than the former but without the latter's ominous cloud of despair. Director Joel Sass and his dynamic and dynamite four-person cast bring this wacky story to life in an intimate setting, providing a truly entertaining 90 minutes (no intermission!) of theater. And as if all this wasn't enough to make me love the play, any mention of the 1991 World Series Champion Minnesota Twins (or 1987 of course) is a surefire way into my heart!

"And So It Goes" by Dark and Stormy Productions at Grain Belt Warehouse

"If this isn't nice, I don't know what the hell is." This quote by American author Kurt Vonnegut is also a line in Canadian playwright George F. Walker's play And So It Goes, in which Vonnegut is a (ghostly) character. And it's a fine way to summarize the experience of watching Dark and Stormy's production of the play. The "this" in this case is a funny/tragic script brought to life by four of the Twin Cities best actors with an interesting and intimate staging in an unconventional space. It doesn't get much better than that, friends. And even though I've never read Vonnegut and don't know much about him (I was a math major), I do know theater, and this is great stuff.

"Doubt" by New Epic Theater at the Lab Theater

Friends, I know that there are a lot of theater companies in the Twin Cities, so many that it's hard to keep track of them all and impossible to see them all. But you would be wise to take note of New Epic Theater. With just their second production outside of the Fringe Festival and their first full season of programming, they've already established themselves as one to watch with smart, intense, risk-taking, aesthetically beautiful productions. Their new production of John Patrick Stanley's 2005 Tony-winner Doubt re-imagines the new classic with inventive staging that brings the themes of doubt vs. certainty, racial and gender inequality, and the power hierarchy of the Catholic Church into almost painfully sharp focus.