You don’t need me to tell you it’s going to be bitterly cold tonight. But I can tell you where to go to warm up your spirit, if not your hands (though at last check, all of these theaters had more than adequate heating…). Opening tonight is the Guthrie Theater’s Romeo and Juliet, a nationally touring show produced with The Acting Company and a fairly traditional take on the tale that puts the Bard’s terrific language front and center.
Opening at Theatre in the Round is Panache, a romantic comedy about a dissolute Brooklyn artist/fry cook who meets cute with a country-club girl when he winds up with her vanity license plate that says Panache. It’s right out of a Grant/Hepburn screwball comedy, and the kind of smile-all-night show that Theatre in the Round does as well as any theater, particularly with former Fringe Festival head Leah Cooper directing.
Tonight is also the opening for The Fresh Five—a handful of world premieres of new one-act plays at Bedlam Theatre, as produced by 20% Theatre. Get five stories in one night, from three local playwrights and two from afar.