Faith healers, super monkeys, and dueling Othellos: The fall theater season
Bedlam Theater's "Million Dollar Museum"
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Local theater companies are hoping that the success of the Fringe Festival this summer set the tone for the 2009-2010 season. During a recession when theaters have had to tighten belts as audiences have shrunk, the Fringe sold more than 46,000 tickets, up 13 percent from the previous year. It may just go to show that in times of hardship, meaningful theater and the sense of community that comes from live performance may be all the more valuable. From scrappy collaborative works to award-winning dramas to classics, here are some offerings for the best of the Twin Cities' fall theater season.
The Million Dollar Museum
Bedlam Theatre is a community incubator for grand ideas and wild schemes. For the grandest and wildest, look no further than The Million Dollar Museum, a new work by Josef Evans, the author of 2006 Fringe hit Love In The Time Of Rinderpest, about a cranky, eccentric old woman who has spent years creating a tourist site in the desert that just might hold the key to understanding the universe. Directed by Bedlam Co-Artistic Director Maren Ward, Museum features a set of dioramas from 12 collaborating artists, use of multiple spaces in Bedlam’s building, video, and sound design by circuit-bending band Beatrix Jar to create its own wild universe.
Sept. 11-Oct. 3: Bedlam Theatre, 1501 S. Sixth St., (612) 341-1038, bedlamtheatre.org
Eric MelzerSuper Monkey
Super Monkey creator Jon Ferguson has won an armload of awards for his fiercely physical plays tackling politics (Animal Farm), obsession (Or The White Whale), and sweet old-fashioned love (You’re My Favorite Kind Of Pretty) with passion and wry humor. Super Monkey is a tale of status obsession and fear, but don’t expect all doom and gloom—with a cast that includes talented comic actors such as Jason Ballweber and Sara Richardson, Super Monkey should leave you with a smile, if not an overwhelming urge to eat bananas.
Sept. 19-Oct. 4: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. Second St., 612-377-2224, guthrietheater.org
Radio Golf
Radio Golf is the final installment of longtime St. Paul playwright August Wilson’s 10-part Pittsburgh Cycle, completed shortly before his death in 2005. The decalogue of plays examines the black experience in America, with one play set in each decade of the 20th century. One of the crowning achievements in American theater, the cycle netted Wilson' two Pulitzer Prizes along the way. Penumbra Artistic Director Lou Bellamy has long nurtured Wilson’s work, including key stagings of plays from early in Wilson's career. After Bellamy's acclaimed presentation of Gem Of The Ocean, the first play in the cycle, at the Guthrie last year, Penumbra’s production of Radio Golf—Wilson's take on the '90s, complete with backroom politics and housing crises—should be prescient and powerful.
Oct. 1-25: Penumbra Theatre Company, 270 N. Kent St., 651-224-3180, penumbratheatre.org
Ruined
Mixed Blood brings one of the most acclaimed plays of 2009 to the Twin Cities. Ruined won a Pulitzer and an Obie after its premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, and not because it made the critics feel warm and fuzzy. The hard-hitting play by Lynn Nottage, an homage to Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, follows an anti-heroine who runs a brothel in a mining town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and documents the often-brutal lives of women trying to survive in the war-torn central African nation. Go on a night you're feeling up for a challenge.
Opens Oct. 16: Mixed Blood Theater, 1501 S. Fourth St., 612-338-0937, mixedblood.com
T. Charles EricksonFaith Healer
He hasn't taken the stage as an actor for 20 years, but Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling will hit the boards as well as co-direct a new production of Faith Healer, the 1979 play by Irish playwright Brian Friel. Dowling has interpreted Friel’s work many times before, sometimes with mixed results, but his familiarity with the play should be a boon. Faith Healer uses a Rashomon-like structure of overlapping narratives to tell the story of a holy man (and possible charlatan), his wife, and the village where he does his miracles. The production also features Guthrie stalwarts Raye Birk and Sally Wingert, who could get laughs out of a rock.
Oct. 17-Dec. 6: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. Second St., 612-377-2224, guthrietheater.org
The Walworth Farce
The Walker Art Center joins with the Guthrie to present Irish company Druid’s production of The Walworth Farce by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The dystopic tale places an Irish immigrant and his two grown sons in seedy flat in London, and is full of, as the New York Times put it in 2008, “cheerful integration of homicidal horror into daily domestic routine.” The play was a hit in Galway, Edinburgh, and New York, and whatever terror might be there is balanced out by the great Irish storytelling tradition and the sweetness of the family bond.
Oct 21-25: Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave S., (612) 375-7600, walkerart.org
Othello
Ten Thousand Things is one of the most unusual theater companies in a town full of unusual theater companies. The troupe performs with the lights up and with minimal costuming, the better to allow the language of the play to shine out. TTT also perform in prisons, women’s shelters, and rehabilitation centers, so that by the time the play gets to the paying public, it has been thoroughly turned, opened, dissected, and honed down to the marrow. With powerhouse Ansa Akyea taking the title role in Shakespeare's tragedy of obsession, jealousy, and revenge, paired against the impeccable Luverne Seifert as master backstabber Iago, Othello promises to be an immediate and radical experience.
Oct. 23-Nov. 8: Open Book Literary Arts Center, 1011 Washington Ave. S.; Nov. 13-15, Minnesota Opera Center, 620 N. First St., 612-203-9502, tenthousandthings.org
Othello
Yes, again. Perhaps it's only appropriate considering that the play gave the English language the eternally useful phrase "making the beast with two backs," but Othello will pull double duty in the Twin Cities this fall. St. Paul's Park Square Theater stages its own production, starring James A. Williams—named 2008's Artist of the Year by the Star Tribune—as the murderous Moor, and local favorite Stacia Rice as the doomed Desdemona.
Oct. 16-Nov. 8: Park Square Theater, 20 W. Seventh Place, St. Paul, 651-291-7005, parksquaretheatre.org
Elijah’s Wake, A Visual Poem
Open Eye Figure Theatre was created by Michael Sommers and Susan Haas in 2000 as an intimate space to explore big ideas. Sommers is a master puppeteer, and his work engages in sleight-of-hand, clowning tricks, and small wonders that add up to meaningful and touching theater. Premiered in 2003, Elijah’s Wake won high praise for its scope and artistry; this highly deserved remount ought to attract a new audience.
Oct. 23-Nov. 8: Open Eye Figure Theatre, 506 E. 24th St., 612-874-6338, openeyetheatre.org
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