October 2009
October 30, 2009"Faith Healer" Reviewed, Plus Weekend Picks!
The man who shambles onto the Guthrie Theater stage in a rumpled trenchcoat and fedora, like a shorter, sloppier Robert Mitchum, resembles Joe Dowling only around the edges—the accent, partly; the seductive wash of language; the resolute bearing, however unhinged. In acting for the first time on his own stage, Dowling, the Guthrie's artistic director, successfully becomes a stranger in his own home. Curiousity about Dowling's performance may be selling seats for Faith Healer, staged now through December 6, but the story itself quickly becomes the main attraction. Told in... Read more » Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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October 22, 2009Best Play in the Nation at Mixed Blood Theatre
It's not easy for an off-Broadway theater to pick up a Pulitzer Prize-winning play in the same year it was honored, much less a midsize theater in Minnesota. But that's the coup that Mixed Blood pulled off, aided by a little negotiating with larger players, and as a result we're now being treated to Ruined, at the West Bank theater now through November 22. The drama centers around a businesswoman in Africa, though not just any businessman—a brothel owner, a madame, in the war-torn Congo. An opportunist who nonetheless finds her jungle outpost becoming an oasis for women fleeing the terror of rape and other abuses. The play was written by Lynn Nottage,... Read more » Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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October 15, 2009"Radio Golf" Brings History to the Fore at Penumbra
Penumbra Theatre, in St. Paul, has for the past couple of years wended its way out of sequence through August Wilson's monumental 20th Century Cycle of 10 plays about African-American life (one for each decade of the last century), alighting first in the 1930s and now in the 1990s with "Radio Golf." In this final play, Civil Rights have been won (at least on paper), some blacks have power (though it may be contingent on white support), and at last it appears that the past can be forgotten and all the privileges of the present be taken—but at what cost? The play gets off to a wobbly, almost pedestrian start as the... Read more » Posted on Thursday, October 15, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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October 9, 2009Is "A Serious Man" Better Than "Fargo"?
The new Esquire has come out (yeah, it's the one with the mostly nude Kate Beckinsdale on it, asserting she's the Sexiest Woman Alive) raving about "A Serious Man," the Coen brothers movie that opens in wide release this weekend. The magazine suggests that the movie, filmed in St. Louis Park and Minneapolis (about four blocks from my home), among other locations, is the Coen brothers' wisest since "The Big Lebowski." Great movie, "The Big Lebowski." Cult classic even. (Yesterday, I passed a car with the bumper sticker, "Not on the carpet, man," a memorable line from the film.) But... Read more » Posted on Friday, October 9, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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October 7, 2009There's Something About "Mary's Wedding" at the Jungle
If the Jungle Theater has specialized in anything it's the telling of emotional stories just this side—the good side—of sentimental. And with founder Bain Boehlke on sabbatical, we're getting a glimpse into the likely future through the design and direction of his heir apparent, Joel Sass, the deft visual artist behind some of the Jungle's most engaging shows. Sass has given "Mary's Wedding," playing now through October 25, the full sensual treatment—it's a literate romance novel come to life, in a good way, what "The English Patient" attempted onscreen and imagined here in 3-D. Set around World War I, the young Charlie and Mary fervently approach... Read more » Posted on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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October 1, 2009"nobody" Puts MN Film Back on the Map Tonight
Posted on Thursday, October 1, 2009 in Front & Center | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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This is a big week for Minnesota film, with two major movies filmed here in the past year premiering: 
