THEATER REVIEW | Minnesota Opera’s “Carmen” heats up the Ordway

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The opera Carmen needs little introduction, but much can be said about how Minnesota Opera’s current production does things well. This classic femme fatale story is presented in Spain in the 1970s, when the Sexual Revolution first began to erode the edges of a conservative Catholicism previously enforced – sometimes brutally – by the repressive fascist regime of Generalissimo Franco. (The modern stereotype of sleazy Spanish men comes from just after this period.) This decision by director Michael Cavanagh heightens many tensions within the source material, and is a splendid excuse for a retrofabulous costume excursion. The music may be the same as normal, but the updated setting makes the characters much more relatable and heightens the already elevated emotional stakes. Note: This review discusses the Vargas cast of MN Opera’s Carmen, performing May 8 and 9; Check back later for our review of the Sourouzian cast, performing May 7 and 10. Continue Reading

THEATER REVIEW | “Detroit ’67” at Penumbra Theatre: A look back at the future with a great soundtrack

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The Penumbra Theater brings to life segments of history that many of us didn’t read in our textbooks. Detroit ’67 is an inside look at the race riots from the view of a basement in Detroit near the epicenter of the riots. Main characters Chelle and Lank have inherited the house from their parents. They host house parties in the basement to make money; the work is more regular and profitable than factory jobs. The house parties feature Motown music that punctuates the action throughout. An interesting tangent in the play is the change over from records (45’s) to 8 track tapes – a movement that represents a leap into the future. Continue Reading

THEATER REVIEW | “Fruit Fly The Musical”: Fringe show buzzes back at Illusion Theater

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This is the season of Minnesota Fringe Festival show planning. Lottery numbers were drawn in late February, venue assignments and showtimes went out to producers last week, and Minnesota Playlist is sprouting Fringe-related casting notices and other classifieds. For some teams, now is the time when the writers first begin to frantically craft material; for others, the scripts and scores were set in stone well before their applications went in. The clock is ticking: in less than four months’ time, the country’s largest unjuried theatre festival will have come and gone, bringing about 50,000 attendees – 10,000 more than Target Field’s maximum, and about 91% of the capacity of the old Metrodome – to Minneapolis stages.So what happens to a Fringe show once the festival has come and gone? For most shows, a quiet repose and a few playbill credits await. Continue Reading

THEATER REVIEW | The Chameleon Theatre Circle’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” powerful, frightening

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Passion Sunday has come and gone, but the passion and drama live on in Burnsville in The Chameleon Theatre Circle’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This staging of the classic musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber is recast by co-directors Jim Vogel and Bradley Donaldson as a pot of mob violence on the verge of boiling over. The result is striking, arresting, and often frightening in its power.When the music of Jesus Christ Superstar was first released 45 years ago, the BBC banned its broadcast on the grounds that its content was sacrilegious. This ban proved much more temporary than the musical’s success, which was enormous. As stagings proliferated around the world, however, many of the once-controversial elements in the story—the sympathetic treatment of Judas, erotic overtones in Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus, and Jesus’s struggles with his impending crucifixion—have been toned down.“Toned down” scarcely describes CTC’s production. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Information Society at The Fine line Music Cafe

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The crowd for Information Society’s April 18 homecoming show at the Fine Line Music Cafe appeared to have been mostly in junior high and high school while InSoc was releasing the albums that made them a hit. DJ Jake Rudh began the evening with music and media designed to take us back to that time, when a handful of weird kids with samples and synthesizers could become a band and an enduring band at that. Stony-faced and ambitiously coiffed young musicians of thirty years ago shared the screen with Star Wars sequels and Daleks to create a 1980s just a bit better than the decade we actually grew up with.When locals Dance Assault took the stage to open, the time warp was complete. While their music wasn’t derivative of any one band or even style from the era, its mix of New Wave, Disco-influenced electronica, and seduction rock would have made it perfectly at home on the radio in about 1983. A strong use of rhythm, particularly in transitions within the songs, had people dancing from the first few notes while avoiding the sense that we’d heard the whole thing before.After Dance Assault, another local electronic band took the stage. Continue Reading

Record Store Day 2015: 10 stores, 5 hours, 2 cities

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Saturday, April 19 was Record Store Day. My favorite 10 year old and I made our second annual pilgrimage to as many shops as we could visit in St Paul and Minneapolis. We started at Extreme Noise Records on Lake Street. We rushed to get there at noon to see Grant Hart. We got there a little late and heard a young hard core band instead. For better or for worse I learned from the very young gentlemen next to us that we hadn’t missed him; he hadn’t played yet. Continue Reading

“Down Below or The Womb of the World: A Shadow Opera” on the life of Leonora Carrington

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Leonora Carrington was an artist and writer. Her art is like a mashup of Beatrice Potter and Hieronymus Bosch, intricate and complicated with the nursery rhyme sweetness of Potter and dark edge of Bosch. There’s something compelling that makes you look closer. Her life reads the same way.Born in the UK, Leonora met fellow artist Max Ernst and moved to France until Ernst was arrested by the Nazis for “degenerate art.” After that she moved to Spain where she became increasingly anxious and had a breakdown. Eventually she moved to Mexico where she wrote about her psychotic experience in her novel Down Below.Down Below or The Womb of the World is also a shadow opera playing at Bedlam Theater; it presents vignettes from her life and work based specifically on three stories, The Hearing Trumpet, The Stone Door and The Oval Lady. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Charlie Hunter Trio, Molly Maher & Gabriela Sweet and Erik Koskinen on Real Phonic Radio

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Thursday, April 16 I heard a cover of Lorde’s Royals on the trombone and I’m not even sure if that’s the best thing I heard that night. On the Third Thursday of the month, Real Phonic Radio Hour presents music at the James J Hill Reference Library. Each month is something different; April was a month of instrumental wows!The Charlie Hunter Trio brought us Jazz – really happy, very loud Jazz with a twist of upbeat blues. Charlie Hunter plays guitar. It’s not experimental, but it’s different. Continue Reading

THEATER REVIEW | “The Other Place” transcends subject matter at Park Square Theatre

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The Other Place, one of the most powerful plays I have seen in the last year, opened at Park Square Theatre on April 3. Shari White’s play concerns a medical researcher working on a drug to combat dementia who, herself, is suffering from early on-set Alzheimer’s. Aditi Kapil masterfully directs this intense show which highlights how fragile the mind can be.Given the subject matter, one at first cannot help comparing this play to the recent movie Still Alice. But any comparisons soon go by the wayside. In Still Alice, the audience sees the character’s illness from the perspective of people who still have their minds. Continue Reading

THEATER REVIEW | “And the World Goes ‘Round” showcases John Kander and Fred Ebb’s hits (and nonhits) at Jungle Theater

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And the World Goes ‘Round  at the Jungle Theater is a musical revue of songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, the team that gave us the great musicals of Cabaret and Chicago. The production was “conceived by” Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman and David Thompson. Although the songs from these two musicals are featured, so are the songs from lesser known musicals by the pair including The Happy Time, The Rink, The Act, Woman of the Year, and Flora, The Red Menace. Unfortunately, for the most part the songs in these lesser known musicals only serve to demonstrate why they are lesser known musicals.Among the plusses in this production directed by John Command is the very talented singing of the performers and Raymond Berg’s musical direction of the orchestra. As fitting for a Broadway musical revue, the orchestra plays on stage against a colorful back drop of the New York City skyline. Continue Reading