"Floyd's" at the Guthrie Theater

I interrupt the constant Minnesota Fringe Festival coverage to bring you a world premiere new play by Lynn Nottage, the only woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for drama, commissioned by and debuting at the Guthrie Theater. Floyd's is a sort of follow-up to one of her prize-winning plays, Sweat, which I saw on Broadway in 2017 and look forward to seeing at the Guthrie next summer. For both plays, Lynn and frequent collaborator, director Kate Whoriskey, interviewed people in Reading, PA, a town thrust into poverty at the closing of a steel mill in 2008. Sweat deals directly with that issue, and is as devastating as it is true to American life. Floyd's is a bit lighter, perhaps not exactly a comedy, but it focuses more on the healing and moving on of people coming out of prison (including one of the characters from Sweat). With crisply drawn characters beautifully brought to life by the strong five-person cast (three of whom appeared in Sweat on Broadway), Floyd's is a funny, surprising, moving, and very human play.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "Glass & Lady M."

Day: 1

Show: 3

Title: Glass & Lady M.

Category: DRAMA / MYSTERY / PHYSICAL THEATER / LITERARY ADAPTATION / POLITICAL CONTENT / SHAKESPEARIAN ELEMENTS

By: Full Circle Theater Company

Created by: Lindsey Bushnell and Martha B. Johnson

Location: Dreamland Arts

Summary: New #TCTheater company Full Circle Theater gets Fringey with two short plays proving commentary on patriarchy and the troubling legacy of America.

Highlights: The new play Glass by Lindsey Bushnell imagines four women trapped in a room, waiting for a man to come through the glass and bring them "blessings" or "luxuries." One has apples, one is constantly sweeping, one is holding a baby, and one is obsessively applying make-up and checking her looks. In what is a pretty obvious metaphor for patriarchy, the women discuss their situation and how to get out of it, alternately chiding and supporting each other. Lady M. is a brief reimagining of Macbeth by Full Circle Co-Artistic Director Martha B. Johnson (who directs both pieces), with the bloody ambition of the Macbeths compared to the bloody ambition of America and the wake of tragedies left behind in the pursuit of "Manifest Destiny." A strong cast of four women (Alice McGlave, Charla Marie Bailey, Delinda "Oogie" Pushetonequa, and Marci Lucht) perform in both plays, fully committing to the absurdist style of the two pieces that speak to each other nicely. As an independently produced Fringe show at Dreamland Arts in St. Paul, this one is a little out of the way, but worth the 10-minute drive from the Cedar-Riverside hub to see this powerful, relevant, weird, and beautifully done new work.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "A Confederate Widow in Hell"

Day: 1

Show: 2

Title: A Confederate Widow in Hell

Category: COMEDY / DRAMA / HORROR / ORIGINAL MUSIC / HISTORICAL CONTENT / POLITICAL CONTENT

By: Breaker/Fixer Productions

Created by: Willi Carlisle and Joseph Fletcher

Location: The Southern Theater

Summary: A widow of a confederate soldier and mistress of a great plantation returns to discuss the legacy of the South.

Highlights: As you can tell by the many category tags, this show is very many things. I saw this out of town company's crazy brilliant show There Ain't No More two years ago, and was blown away by the genius mix of music, history, and social commentary in a show about folk music. This show is that same wild ride, but with a more sobering and relevant topic - the legacy of the antebellum Southern economy built on slavery. Willi Carlisle plays the dead widow (as well as several other characters), come back to tell her story, while Joseph Fletcher is the headless sidekick providing sound effects and atmosphere. She talks about her legacy, which is the legacy of the South, and how it continues today. And it's not pretty. The show is entertaining, engaging, and creepy cool, with impressive lighting and sound effects for a Fringe show, not to mention transparencies and a projector, which always delights me. But below the surface is some pretty spot on and sobering social and political commentary, as the widow compares the current free market economy to slavery - the mostly white upper class still exploiting and benefiting from the labor of the poor and people of color. It's a lot to take in and a lot to think about in a whiplash 60 minutes of music, theater, poetry, and effects. The creators recommend the Southern Poverty Law Center for more info and action on the subject.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "The Shrieking Harpies"

Day: 1

Show: 1

Title: The Shrieking Harpies

Category: COMEDY / IMPROV / MUSICAL THEATER

By: Shrieking Harpies

Created by: The Shrieking Harpies

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: "Shrieking Harpies is a fierce femme powered musical improv trio dedicated to bringing bad-assery to the improv stage."

Highlights: The Shrieking Harpies perform regularly at Huge Theater, usually past my bedtime, so I was happy to finally see a full set from them. It's great fun, very feminist (in the mostly male-dominated world of improv), and a perfect way to start my 2019 Fringe. Based solely on the audience suggestion "astronaut," performers Lizzie Gardner, Taj Ruler, and Hannah Wydeven created an entire story with multiple characters and a beginning, middle, and end, that even mostly made sense! The show you see will be different than what I saw, but I loved this tale of female astronauts (and their moms) finally getting to be heroes in space. Because women were born for space! It's pretty remarkable to watch them create the story live in front of you, and with songs too! They improvise funny, clever, silly, melodic songs (with harmonies), along with Justin Nellis improvising on the keyboard (and playing not just for the songs, but providing an improvised soundtrack for the entire story). If you like improv, and musical theater, and women telling women's stories - don't miss this one!

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.

"42nd Street" at the Ordway Center

Come and meet
Those dancing feet
On the avenue I'm taking you to
Washington Street

Washington Street in downtown St. Paul, the address of Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, is the new 42nd Street. The Ordway Original production of 42nd Street is an expertly updated classic that in three words is: Fan. Freakin. Tastic. I've seen the show several times, but never like this. The show opens with the above familiar refrain, the curtain lifting a few inches to reveal feet moving in classic tap-dancing style. Then producer Julian Marsh says something along the lines of - we've done that before, let's do something new. What follows is something entirely new, while still paying homage to the beloved 1933 movie (adapted to the stage in 1980). These dancers (comprised of local and national talent) are some of the best I've ever seen performing this whirlwind tapping, the lead and supporting actors are divine, and the music is familiar yet excitingly modern. If you're a fan of music-theater, get yourself to "naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty" Washington Street as soon as you are able! But hurry, the show closes on August 11 after a too-short three-week run (click here for all the deets).

2019 Minnesota Fringe Must-See List

I don't know about you, but this summer has flown by faster than usual. Friends, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is almost upon is! Family Fringe begins this weekend (for all the deets on that check out this preview by my friends at Minnesota Theater Love), with the full Festival running August 1-11. I'll admit I haven't spent a lot of time reviewing the website or figuring out the new features in terms of ticketing and show structure (what exactly are Independently Produced shows?), but I have read through all show descriptions. I've come up with a list of 20 must-see shows out of the 140-ish in the fest, presented below in alphabetical order.

"Stinkers" at Jungle Theater

Friends, I had a little rough day yesterday. No specific reason for it, I was just feeling a little crabby. And then I had to drive to Uptown which makes me really crabby, and then I realized I forgot my wallet at home so I had to drive around and find street parking. But nothing turns around a "little rough day" faster than a show at the Jungle. Specifically a comedy at the Jungle. More specifically a world premiere new comedy at the Jungle, about a family of people having their own kind of little rough days. Whether the rough day is due to not getting the cookie they wanted, or trying to find a way to launder the money they embezzled, they get through it together. And live to face the next little rough day. Stinkers is a hilarious and heartfelt comedy about family, relationships, and a pickup with the hiccups.

"Man of La Mancha" by Mounds View Community Theatre at Chippewa Middle School

This is my annual PSA to support your local community theater! Especially if one of your favorite #TCTheater director/choreographers is involved. I'm lucky enough that Joe Chvala (founder of the dance company Flying Foot Forum) is directing and choreographing a production for Mounds View Community Theatre for the second time (after helming a delightful H.M.S. Pinnafore two years ago). This Man of La Mancha, playing at a middle school a mile from my house, is as good as what I see on professional stages around town. Of course there's fantastic dancing in Joe's trademark rhythmic percussive style, but he's also assembled a really talented cast, most of them unknown to me, with impressive set design, all of which combines for an all around funny, engaging, and inspiring show. This story of the idealistic noble knight fighting injustice in the world is one that we always need to hear.

"Footloose" at Artistry

Artistry is opening their 2019-2020 season with the musical adaptation of the hit 1984 movie Footloose. I've seen it once before, at the Chanhassen pre-blog, which means I remember nothing about it. As a musical it's pretty weak, but there is still plenty to enjoy about it, including the talented young cast. The other musicals in Artistry's season (in addition to the classic play Our Town) are ones I'm more excited about - the rarely done A New Brain and Mame, and the regional premiere of The Bridges of Madison County (which, despite being a movie/book adaptation, features a flawlessly stunning score by Jason Robert Brown). In the meantime, you can enjoy some fun '80s tunes in Bloomington this summer.

"Samuel J. and K." at Gremlin Theatre

"A sports play written by Mat Smart? I'm in! (See also Tinker to Evers to Chance.)" I wrote this on Instagram last night, but as it turns out, Samuel J. and K. is not really a sports play. It's a play about brothers, family, betrayal, loss, and love. In the same way that Tinker to Evers to Chance (seen in a fantastic production at Artistry earlier this year) is not a sports play, but a play about family, grief, love, connection. There's something about sports that loosens people up and allows them to connect and talk about deeper things, and Playwrights' Center core writer Mat Smart uses that to great advantage in these plays. Here, two brothers (one adopted from Cameroon when he was three years old) bond over a game of basketball. Gremlin's production features two talented actors in their cozy intimate theater space, transformed into a basketball court and a hut in Cameroon by deceptively simple design.

"The Merry Wives of Windsor" by Classical Actors Ensemble at Tony Schmidt Regional Park

Summer in Minnesota means outdoor theater. Every year, Classical Actors Ensemble braves the elements (which last night included excessive heat, bugs, and a train) to bring us Shakespeare as it was always meant to be - fun, playful, accessible, and engaging. They're in the final weekend of this year's production, The Merry Wives of Windsor. I saw the show at a park less than five miles from my house (which, as a suburbanite, always makes me happy); tonight they're performing in St. Paul's Newell Park, with two final shows in Minneapolis parks this weekend (click here for details). Bring chairs, a blanket, an umbrella, a picnic, sunscreen, bug spray, water, and settle in for a fun, colorful, silly show.

2019 Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona

Last weekend I attended the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona for the second year in a row. I had such a great time with my fellow bloggers from Minnesota Theater Love and Twin Cities Stages last year that we decided to go again this year. If you're looking for a fun Minnesota theater vacation, GRSF is it. Winona is a charming river town that's just a two-hour drive from the Twin Cities, with lots of hotels, restaurants, shops, outdoor activities, and an impressive art museum. And for those of us who love theater, there's truly nothing better that getting away from daily obligations to immerse yourself in theater for a few days. Especially when the theater is so well done, so thoughtful, so inclusive, and so engaging, like it is at GRSF. I don't recall another theater experience where the Managing (Aaron Young) and Artistic (Doug Scholz-Carlson) Directors of the theater can be seen mingling with the audience before, during, and after every performance, and where there are so many opportunities to interact with the artists through various programs and events. It really feels like a fun, festive, community event celebrating theater (mostly but not exclusively written by the Bard). Ticket prices are quite reasonable, with four-show passes ranging from $85 to $140 ($21 to $35 per show). The festival runs through August 4, so you still have time to visit this year. See the GRSF website for all the details, and check out VisitWinona.com for all of the other activities available (if you can tear yourself away from the theater).