"Lend Me a Tenor" at Old Log Theatre

Now playing at the oldest continuously operating theater west of the Mississippi: the madcap comedy Lend Me a Tenor. Although written in 1989 by playwright Ken Ludwig (see also the madcap Sherlock Holmes comedy Baskerville), the play is set in 1934 and harkens back to the days of classic film comedies like It Happened One Night. Old Log Theatre has taken that cue beautifully, and created a piece of theater that feels like one of those old movie comedies come to life, except in three dimensions and full color! With a sparkling eight-person cast, sharp design, and impeccable timing on this complicated farce, Lend Me a Tenor makes for a fun night at the theater. Combine it with an afternoon or evening spent shopping and/or eating in the almost too charming lake town of Excelsior (which, when I visited, featured a horse drawn buggy and softly falling snow on the beautifully lit main street), and you have a wonderful day in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. Lend Me a Tenor continues through February 16, the snow will probably continue much longer.

"Musical Mondays" at Hell's Kitchen, November 2016

I don't know about y'all, but it's been a pretty busy and stressful week for me. So it's taken me a few days to get around to writing this, but I don't want to let the 4th birthday of Musical Mondays at Hell's Kitchen go by unmentioned! This fabulous monthly cabaret series hosted by super talented local actor/singers and real life BFFs Sheena Janson and Max Wojtanowicz began in November of 2012. Four years, 43 shows, over 200 performers, and over 300 musicals (what?! who knew there even were that many musicals!) later and they're still going strong. On the first Monday of every month, from 7 to 9 pm (morning people everywhere rejoice) at Hell's Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis, some of our top local talent can be seen singing songs from musicals beloved and obscure. The goal is to provide performing and networking opportunities, to celebrate musical theater, and to have fun! Their next event is on December 5 when the theme will be a grown-up Christmas wish list. Watch their Facebook page for more details.

"A Night in Olympus" at Illusion Theater

An unpopular high school girl wants to be pretty so she can go to prom with the popular jock. Not exactly a compelling theme for a musical or one I'm particularly interested in seeing. But this tired old story, seen often in fairy tales and '80s movies, is so charmingly told in the infectious new musical A Night in Olympus with a dynamic cast, that it's almost possible to forget that it's about a prom. And the tired story is given a bit of an interesting twist with the injection of Greek mythology. So while I can't really get behind a story written and directed by men in which a girl just wants to be pretty, even if she does learn the obligatory lesson at the end, it's hard not to have a good time at this campy fun musical.

"Richard III" at Theatre in the Round

There's no tale more twisted than that of the English monarchy. Betrayal, murder, illness, disappearances, fierce battles, and marriage between close relatives are common occurrences. King Richard III's brief two-year reign in the late 15th Century was marked by all of the above, and therefore makes for good fodder for historical fiction. I recently read Philippa Gregory's Cousins War series, which was made into the Starz drama The White Queen, and tells Richard's story along with others of that era. One of the things that makes these books so fascinating is that they're told from the very different perspectives of the women in the story, including Richard's sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth, his wife Anne Neville, and the mother of the man who dethroned him, Margaret Beaufort. The first two are also characters in Shakespeare's version of Richard III historical fiction, currently playing at the longest-running Minneapolis theater, Theatre in the Round. I went into the play with all of this background, and therefore unlike a lot of Shakespeare, I was able to follow the many characters and plot twists and quite enjoyed this take on a bizarre and fascinating period of history.

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" at Theatre in the Round

Muriel Spark's 1961 novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has been ranked among the best English-language novels of the 20th century. In the late '60s it was turned into a play and movie (the latter starring Dame Maggie Smith as the title character, for which she won an Oscar). Theatre in the Round is presenting the play as part of their 63rd season (they're the oldest theater in Minneapolis, by the way). It's a fascinating look at a complicated woman, but in the end, I wasn't quite sure what to think about her.

Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher at a private girls' school in Scotland in the '30s (an accent that the large cast accomplishes with varying degrees of success). But not just any teacher, she's a special teacher with her own ideas of what should be taught and how it should be taught. She focuses less on the prescribed curriculum and more on imbuing "her" girls with a sense of confidence and independence. She takes them on outings to museums, theaters, and the countryside, and favors telling romanticized stories from her past over teaching them history from books. But it's not all as rosy as it sounds. She also uses her students as pawns in her romantic entanglements with two fellow teachers, one a married man. As the girls progress through school, they remain under Miss Brodie's influence, for better or worse. She has left her mark on all of them, and some of them will pay the price.

I had a had time with the character of Miss Brodie; I wasn't sure if I was supposed to like her or not. In the end I decided I didn't like her. She talks a lot about educating her girls and forming them into the best they can be, but mostly what I saw was a woman reliving her youth through these vulnerable girls, regaling them with thrilling stories of her past, convincing them to do things like fight for a cause that maybe wasn't theirs, or "pose" for an artist, knowing full well what that would lead to. Several of the girls were bullying another girl, a fact she either was ignorant to or didn't care about. She gained their trust, brought them along on fun outings, treated them as confidantes, but wasn't there for them when they truly needed her. It seemed like a lot of talk that covered a lack of any real feeling for these young women.

Miss Jean Brodie (Anna Olson) with her girls

The young actors playing these young women influenced by Miss Brodie range in age from 14 to 23, and all are wonderfully real and in the moment. McKinnley Aitchison is a standout as Sandy, the one Miss Brodie singles out as her chief confidante, and believably portrays her transformation from teacher's pet to disillusioned young woman. As Jean Brodie, Anna Olson effectively conveys the complexities of the character. Maybe headmistress Miss MacKay was supposed to be the bad guy, but in the form of Mary Kay Fortier Spalding, I found her to be sympathetic and reasonable.

It's always fascinating to see how Theater in the Round deals with the "problem" of a 360 degree stage, and as per usual, it leads to some creative and well thought-out staging, in this case by director Dann Peterson on a set designed by John A. Woskoff. The teacher's desk and students' benches take up half of the stage, with the art studio a tiny but well-used raised space on the side, while other scenes take place in the open area.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie continues weekends through February 1.