"Actually" by Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company at the Highland Park Center Theatre

I don't think there's ever been a time in our culture in which we've been so aware of the issue of consent. It wasn't a thing when I was growing up. But thanks to the #metoo movement, there's much more discussion and awareness of consent in the last several years, so naturally it has made its way into theater too. In Anna Ziegler's new play Actually, receiving its regional premiere at Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, two college students find their lives upended by their (mis)understanding of consent. Featuring two of #TCTheater's best young actors, Actually is a powerful and incredibly timely play that will hopefully get audiences thinking and talking about this important issue.

"Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" at the Jungle Theater

Continuing with their trend this season of presenting plays with music, the Jungle Theater opens Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill on this holiday weekend. This play with music premiered off Broadway in the '80s and on Broadway in 2014, winning Audra McDonald her sixth Tony. It takes place during one concert at the end of Billie Holiday's life, playing out in real time, as Billie tells stories from her past, her family, her husbands, and the racism she's dealt with in her career and as a black woman living in America in the first half of the 20th Century. Acclaimed director Marion McClinton directs Thomasina Petrus in this role that she's performed before, and was born to play. It's a perfect marriage of actor to role, with wonderful music and impeccable design that really makes you feel like you're watching the tragic end to this brilliant musician.

"Pink Unicorn" at Illusion Theater

When you need to dig in your purse for a tissue to blow your nose after seeing a play, you know it was a good one. I don’t cry, but @IllusionTheater #pinkunicorn made me cry with its beautiful message of love, hope, & acceptance.
#tctheater #bringtissues #openheart #walkwithme

Thus reads my 280-character immediately post-show Twitter review of Illusion Theater's production of the one-woman show The Pink Unicorn. Kate Guentzel plays the widowed mother of a teenage girl who one day says she doesn't identify as a girl, she's gender queer. In Elise Forier Edie's beautifully written play, we witness this small town woman's journey to reluctant activist, all for the love of her child. With this very personal script in Kate's deft hands, it's an incredibly moving experience. The Pink Unicorn plays for three weekends only, so waste no time in making your way to Illusion's inviting space on the 8th floor of the Hennepin Center for the Arts in downtown Minneapolis (click here for more info and to purchase tickets).

"Miranda" at Illusion Theater

The titular character of James Still's new play Miranda is like Homeland's Carrie Mathison, but more grounded in reality, without all of the soap opera drama. A CIA operative currently based in Yemen after years of working in the Middle East, she's good at her job, but has begun to grow weary with all that her job entails. The playwright notes, "While the pursuit of happiness may be one of the inalienable rights guaranteed in our Declaration of Independence, Miranda is too smart not to know that happiness is elusive. She's thrived during her years in the CIA in the pursuit of meaning, not happiness. But what if that meaning and sense of purpose has faded with time and age - what now?" Miranda is a dense and fascinating play about the women and men who immerse themselves in foreign lands to secure intelligence for the US government, but also find themselves getting entangled in the lives of the people they live among.

"Bars and Measures" at the Jungle Theater

I've only recently become aware of what an incredible resource we have in The Playwrights' Center, located right here in Minneapolis (even if there are occasional bats in the performance space). PWC fosters new playwrights and supports experienced playwrights, helping them to develop new work through various programs, workshops, and readings. Much of this work ends up on the stage, not just here in the Twin Cities but around the country. This spring saw the local premiere of three plays developed at the Playwrights' Center, The Changlings, Scapegoat, and Le Switch. The latter was at the Jungle Theater, which is following that up with another new play by a Playwrights' Center playwright, Idris Goodwin's Bars and Measures. The Jungle's production is one of four around the country in the National New Play Network's Rolling World Premiere. It's a sharp, intense, lyrical, topical play, and in my completely unbiased opinion, I cannot imagine a better production of it than the Jungle's with this incredible cast, director, and technical team.

"Scapegoat" at Pillsbury House Theatre

The new play Scapegoat by local playwright Christina Ham (whose work can be seen on several stages around the Cities this spring) explores a little known part of American history, the Elaine, Arkansas race riot of 1919, which led to the landmark Supreme Court case Moore v. Dempsey. The full story of events (in which hundreds of black sharecroppers were killed by white mobs in response to their attempts to unionize) is tragic, epic, and complicated. Rather than try to tell the whole story, the play focuses on two sharecropper families, one white and one black, and the unspeakably horrible murder that ties them together. The second act takes place in the present time when two interracial couples from New York visit the area while on vacation and are shocked to discover the history, each of them affected in different ways. Similar to Clybourne Park, Scapegoat looks at a racial conflict of the past from the perspective of that time, and also looking back at it from today in our supposedly post-racial society, showing how much things have changed, and how much they haven't.

"Naked Darrow" at Illusion Theatre

Friends, I have a confession to make. If you had asked me last week, "Who is Clarence Darrow?" I would have answered, "Um... a lawyer?" I didn't know much about one of America's most famous lawyers, but in the tradition of "everything I know I learned from theater," after seeing the one-man show Naked Darrow at Illusion Theater, my eyes have been opened. Gary Anderson has spent years perfecting his performance as the famous lawyer in the play that he wrote, and it shows. He's not so much acting as being Clarence Darrow.

Naked Darrow takes place in 1937, near the end of his life, when he was deep in the clutches of dementia (and possibly Alzheimer's disease). In a 90-minute stream of consciousness, Darrow talks to people who aren't there (including his wife and mistress), relives some of his more famous trials (including his own, for jury tampering), and gives some of his most compelling closing statements. He recalls moments from his childhood, time with his first and second wives, and in the most touching sequence, he visits his newborn granddaughter and sings her to sleep with "Solidarity Forever" (Darrow was a prominent labor lawyer). The play shows us the personal side of the famous public figure and the personal costs of being a lifelong public servant. The most compelling scenes are the ones in which Darrow delivers his famous speeches. He was an eloquent and persuasive speaker, and Gary Anderson portrays this very well. This is where he really shines as he commands the theater as Darrow legendarily did the courtroom. He transforms into the character so that no "acting" is visible to the audience; it's like you're watching the man himself.

The play was last presented in the Twin Cities at Park Square Theater in 2011. It has since been revised and performed around the country, including Off-Broadway. This production features direction by Illusion's Artistic Director Michael Robins, and a sparse set by Dean Holzman, with set pieces of a desk, a few chairs, a window, and a bookcase floating in the empty space as if in a dream. Lighting by Michael Wangen helps set the mood, and images projected on the window give us a visual of the various defendants and places being described (projection design by Jonathan Carlson).

If you're a legal buff, or just want to learn a little bit more about this famous and influential American, with a lived-in portrayal by Gary Anderson, get to Illusion Theater's lovely 8th floor theater space in the Hennepin Center for the Arts before Naked Darrow closes on April 12 (bonus - discount tickets on Goldstar).

"I Am Anne Frank" by Nautilus Music-Theater at the Southern Theater

I recently read The Diary of a Young Girl after seeing a moving production of the play based on the book, The Diary of Anne Frank, at Yellow Tree Theatre last fall. We're all familiar with Anne's story - she and her family hid in a "secret annex" in a building in Amsterdam in the mid-1940s, until they were found and sent to concentration camps. But what struck me most about the diary is how normal Anne seems, writing about typical teenage topics like sibling rivalry, parental trouble, boys, movie stars, books, school. She was an ordinary girl in an extraordinary situation. Perhaps that's the most remarkable part of her story, how she was able to carry out an almost normal life, growing up living in a small crowded apartment that she was never able to leave, with the threat of death and danger always so near. Nautilus Music-Theater's remount of their 2006 Ivey-winning production of I Am Anne Frank gives yet another perspective on that familiar story. Like all good musicals, when words aren't enough to express what you're feeling - there's music. Music communicates emotions in a way mere words cannot. And this piece expresses the joy, fear, longing, frustration, hope, and desperation of Anne's story.

A few highlights of the show:

• Vanessa Gamble gives a beautiful performance in what is almost a one-woman show. She really does become Anne in all her forms - stubborn, spirited, joyful, fearful. The music flows seamlessly out of the dialogue, often using Anne's own words from the diary. Vanessa's performance of this beautiful music (by Michael Cohen) gives us deeper insight into Anne's experience.
• It's "almost" a one-woman show, because Vanessa is accompanied on stage by the always excellent Joel Liestman. He spends most of the show sitting at the edge of the stage, watching Anne, reacting to her, and providing another character for her to play against. He occasionally joins in for a song or discussion, playing Anne's teenage friend and fellow annex resident Peter.
• The set is like a floating island in the beautiful cavernous space of the Southern Theater, a mostly bare square box with just the hint of a window and a desk and chair, and Anne's words on the back wall. Anne never leaves this small area, like the real Anne never left the small apartment. Peter never leaves an even smaller box on the side; even when they're singing and dancing together and exploring their relationship, they never cross that invisible boundary, adding to the feeling of isolation and loneliness of the situation. (Nautilus Aristic Director Ben Krywosz is responisble for the direction and set design.)
• The lighting (by Michael Wangen) is like a third actor on stage, creating moods, hinting at the time of day, showing us the stars on Anne's face.
• The simple choreography (by JP Fitzgibbons) flows out of the music and emotion of the words and feels very organic to the characters.

The show opens with the actors introducing themselves, listing a few personal characteristics, some similar and some different. Then they tell stories of genocide around the world, all of which have taken place since the Holocaust, a tragedy we swore to never let happen again. But it's still happening. Anne's words are so simple and profound, as she ponders why people kill people who are different from them, and who decided they were different in the first place. "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." Hers is an inspirational story, and this production by Nautilus Music-Theater does it justice.

Nautilus has been touring the show around the state for the past year or so, and it only plays for two more performances at the Southern Theatre. Buy your tickets here - it's a bargain at under $20 a seat for this beautiful and moving 90-minute show.

Vanessa Gamble as Anne Frank