Kevin's Minnesota Theatre Adventures - RENT and SECRET WARRIORS- Page 3

[THDavis]

Posted: 3/10/25 at 4:28pm

I’m a Twin Cities native (LA now) and Guthrie fan - SUPER excited to see their Come From Away! 

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 3/23/25 at 9:16pm

ELEEMOSYNARY is the second show produced by a local-ish group called Kitchen Sink Productions - their first  was a production of Two Rooms a few months ago - I don't know if the producers have a thing for Lee Blessing plays or if this was just a coincidence, but I guess we'll see what happens when they announce their next show.  At any rate, Eleemosynary is a much different play, somewhat more light-hearted, and with a more personal scope,  It tells the story of three generations of women, all of whom varying degrees of intellectual and eccentric, and how their relationships became strained as they react to each others' sometimes abrasive personalities,  Three actors play the women at varying ages as the play wheels through time, sliding back and forth between the various characters' POV.  Echo is the youngest, a spelling whiz who near the start of the play encounters an existential crisis when she realizes that after winning the national Spelling Bee, there's no adult equivalent way to apply those skills.  Her grandmother is Dorothea, a self-styled eccentric who tries to find ways to make humans fly and communicate with the dead, among other thing, and in between the two generations is Artemis, a brilliant scientific mind who felt alienated from her mother and ended up alienating herself from her daughter.  The actors playing Echo and Artemis gave fantastic performances... the actor playing Dorothea was fine, but felt a litte muted and stiff in comparison to her co-stars.  The production was fairly simple - like Two Rooms the venue was a showroom in a thrift store, this time made up into a rudimentary prosencium rather than the previous production which was a rudimentary theatre-in-the-round, and I have to give them credit for some really precise and effective lighting in their makeshift location.  Overall, this was a really moving and well-acted drama and a terrific sophomore effort by the company.

The Guthrie's A Midsummer Night's Dream was a delight.  Not quite as slick as the previous productions of Hamlet or The History Plays, but working with one of Shakespeare's messier and more complicated comedies brings its own scrappy charm.  It starts out a little slow with a lot of set up before the characters run off to the woods, but once it gets there the show finds its groove and the energy level reaches a fever pitch.  This is a very music-heavy production, with songs and live accompaniment by Jack Herrick that helps at time turn Shakespeare's verse into lovely lyrics.The core foursome are Ari Derambakhsh (Hermia), Jonathan Luke Stevens (Lysander), Justin Withers (Demetrius) and Royer Bockus (Helena), who all show wonderful chemistry, with Bockus in particular showing truly delightful comedic chops.  John Catron and Regina Marie Williams do double duty as the human and fairy royals, adding a sense of continuity to the worlds inside and outside of the woods, with Williams displaying her trademark magnetism during her seduction of Bottom.  William Sturdiant, so good as Henry IV, is a bit underused here.  As Egeus he mostly seems to yell his lines... he's better as Peter Quince ,bouncing off the other actors in the company with good comic timing.  Remy Auberjonois as Bottom is absolutely hilarious, taking on the classic character of the actors whose ego is as big as his talent is limited with aplomb.  The scene-stealer of the cast, however, is Jimmy Kieffer as Puck.  Seeming to operate in his own little world, he sometimes sings his lines like Elvis or cackles with delight at the chaos he has unwittingly unleashed.  He lights up the show whenever he's on stage. The choreography is also really fun - this is the most funny involcation of "She be little, but she be fierce!" I have ever seen, to say nothing of the hilarious way the show recaps the first act following intermission.  I also have to mention the incredibly cute gimmick of the show composing an original song based on the love story of a couple from the audience - this performance's song was about a woman and her wife who met while camping and have been together for 40 years - it was genuinely very sweet and moving.  

I'm currently in the last week or so of rehearsals of a community theatre production of The Play That Goes Wrong, and I'm having a lot of fun.  There's a bit of meta-amusement that our production has had its share of mishaps already, including parts having to be recast and various issues involving a a door sticking in place or falling on actors, but everything is coming together the way community theatre always does in the home stretch.  I can't be sure what else I'll be seeing soon (i've had to give away several tickets to shows due to time conflicts with my own performances) but I'll definitely do my best to see a nearby production of Rent.

Updated On: 3/24/25 at 09:16 PM

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 4/19/25 at 11:39pm

I admittedly was never all that familiar with Rent as a musical except by reputation, so when I saw the new production from one of the local theatre groups I've enjoyed watching and also working with, I wasn't sure what I was in for. This is a show that sneaks up on you, starting out small by introducing its characters, their passions, and their problems. This made the early scenes feel a little bit messy and disorganized - a lot of characters and setup with not a lot of plot to move them foward. But as the play progressed, I saw eventually the show was about how the world these characters have built up for themselves, small and insular as it sometimes may be, still matters. It matters because they live in it, and many have nowhere else to go. This show has a wonderful cast. - my favorites were the actors playing Angel, Mimi, and Collins, but the director found ways for even the individual ensemble performaners to be given chances to shine. The actor playing Roger was a bit one note at first, but once Mimi entered the show to give him someone to bounce off of he became much more engaging. There were some technical issues - the mics worn by the actord didn't always work and the use of projections for the documentary at the end felt uninspired, but what felt truly inspiring was the obvious love for the story and material that radiated from all of the performers. 

I was able to catch one of the final performances of Secret Warriors at the History Theatre, which was yet another engaging and thought-provoking play that illuminates a provocative piece of history that might otherwise be forgotten. The show tells the story of four Japanese-American soldiers who were recruited to serve as translators and interpreters in the Pacific Theater during World War II - a time when most of their families were being held in internment camps. What does it mean to serve a country that doesn't see you as a real citizen? How do you trust a government that doesn't trust you? This play by R.A. Shomi (whose noir pastiche Fire in the New World I very much enjoyed at Park Square Theatre a few years ago) deftly directed by Lily Tung Crystal, directly confronts those and other issues. Erik Ohno Dagoberg gave an incredibly charismatic performance alongside the more sensitive and interior Clay Man Soo as a pair of recruits whose ambivalence about their place in a country that's actively discriminating against them doesn't hamper their devotion to their duty. Their performances help make some of the more heavy-handed and on-the-nose elements of Shiomi's script work. The first act showcases the soldiers going through their training, communicating with their interred families, and even finding time for romance (an element of the story I was fully prepared to roll my eyes at, but the relationships ended up being genuinely sweet, and I soon found myself fully invested in them). The second act shows the men on duty in the Pacific, leading to some excellently directed scenes of suspense as the soldiers engage in combat both physical (on the front lines in Burma) and psychic (through interrogation). The Japanese soldiers are wisely portrayed as just as complicated, human, and devoted to their country as our Japanese-American protagonists, which was a touch I really appreciated. All of this culminated in an epilogue that is moving and poignant that brought genuine tears to my eyes.

For my part, I just finished a run of The Play That Goes Wrong that despite some early misgivings and worries ended up being an incredibly satisfying show to be part of, one that the audiences clearly loved. I had a ticket to see the tour of Mean Girls, but I had to give it away to a friend, and they told me they had a really fun time.