"There may have been a bit of necromancy"

Image by Whittney A. Streeter

I was able to kick off Halloween -- truly the greatest time of the year -- with Black Death: The Musical, which merged real-life terrors (the plague that nearly destroyed Europe in the 14th century) and some drawn from the imagination of show creator Susan Woehrle (an army of undead raised by an alchemist's spell).

The songs are pretty cool, too.

Set in France during the first outbreak of the plague in the 1340s, Black Death: The Musical offers a kaleidoscope of horrors as bodies pile up in the countryside. Doctor Guy de Chauliac knows that there are some simple solutions (like regular bathing), but needs the assistance of Pope Clement VI to convince the masses.

On the road he meets up with Sister Julianna, who also knows that the piles of dead bodies aren't good. As most of the priests have also died from the plague, she has a solution: let the nuns perform last rites so the bodies can be buried at last.

Those plot strands are based in history. The third has more than a bit of Mary Shelley in it. The alchemist Nicodemus watches his son Morvyd succumb. Nicodemus has access to an ancient spell that can bring the dead back to life, but what comes back isn't exactly the same as before.

Woehrle's script is grotesque and darkly funny, and the company relishes heading into those dark places. Rodolfo Nieto, in particular, relishes every moment in his dual role as the libertine Pope and the studious alchemist.

Musically, Scott Keever merges ancient styles with a contemporary twang that adds to the show's unsettled vibe.

Black Death: The Musical only runs over the weekend, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Sabes Jewish Community Center, 4330 Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis. Visit online for more information.

If you are looking for additional horrors this weekend, the fifth Twin Cities Horror Festival kicks off tonight at the Southern. A diverse cast of creators, from the over-the-top terrors of Dangerous Productions to off-kilter creations of Four Humors, provides a mini-Fringe Festival of more than a dozen productions. Visit online for more information.

Photo by Hilary Roberts

This final show isn't scary, though maybe the trip to Bloomington may give city dwellers hives. The little-seen musical The Baker's Wife is running at Artistry. The plot is fairly simple: a new baker comes to an isolated, tiny French village. The older man has a young wife, who catches the eye of one of the young lads.

When those two run off, the baker descends into despair and stops making bread. The desperate villagers put aside their differences to get the couple back together.

Even though it features songs by Godspell/Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz, The Baker's Wife has never really caught any traction. Joseph Stein's book, which spins its wheels around the same never-evolving conflicts, may have something to do with that.

Once you get past that, the musical has some wonderful romantic (and not so romantic) songs. There are terrific performances from the cast, led by the always wonderful Bradley Greenwald as the loser-at-love baker.

The Baker's Wife runs through Nov. 12. More information here.

Ragtime: As current as today's headlines

Photo by Dan Norman

A year ago, I considered topping off my review of Theatre Latte Da's fall show with a headline like, "Holy fuck, go see 'Sweeney Todd.'"

I can pretty much say the same thing about Latte Da's autumn show for this year, "Ragtime."

Strong performances from top to bottom anchor Peter Rothstein's deep and thoughtful production. That the play -- based on a novel from 4 years ago about events more than a century in the past -- is utterly  current only adds to its impact.

Set in and around New York City at the turn of the 20th century, "Ragtime" tries to compress the American experience into a two-and-a-half hour package. That comes through in three interlocking stories. There is an upper-class family, an immigrant father and daughter right off the boat, and a black musician and his lover.

The link comes from the son of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. and Sarah. The out-of-wedlock child is abandoned by Sarah and is found by Mother (the wealthy family is not identified by names). Instead of passing the child and mother off to the authorities, she instead takes them into their home.

Coalhouse tries to woo his lost lover to marriage, and does it in a decidedly American way: buying a flash Model T. A black man in a nice car doesn't sit well with those in New Rochelle. That is especially true of some racist volunteer firemen.

Coalhouse's hope is dashed when his car is trashed. In an effort to get justice, Sarah is killed by the police when they think she is going to attack a politician. That drives Coalhouse to acts of revenge, as he begins to burn down firehouses around New York.

Meanwhile, recent immigrant Tateh and his daughter struggle to make their way in their new world. Rising from intense poverty, Tateh finds the kind of success that America promises, but can never shake the feeling that his real background marks him as an outsider.

That's already a lot, but the musical also tosses in plenty of historical figures, from Henry Ford to Harry Houdini to Booker T. Washington.

If you are familiar with Latte Da's work, you know "Ragtime" features tight, expertly sung and well-rounded performances. The stark staging focuses our attention on these characters rather than the set dressing. (Coalhouse's Model T, for example, is a baby grand piano.)

The only weakness is out of the creative team's control. The musical itself struggles to find its footing in the second act, as we move away for long stretches from Coalhouse's story to other less compelling parts of the story, such as a baseball game that Father and Little Boy take in at the old Polo Grounds in New York.

That doesn't undercut what works here, such as the act one closer, as we don't just watch and hear, but absolutely feel the grief that Coalhouse (and the family) feel after Sarah's death. Director Rothstein intensifies this in an incredibly simple way. After the finale is over, there isn't a blackout. Instead, the actors hold their positions on stage, waiting for the loud applause to finally die out, and then silently march off stage. For a show where the lively, no life-affirming music of the early 20th century is so present, this silence says as much as a million words about the state of America.

"Ragtime" runs through Oct. 23 at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis. Visit online for tickets and more information.

Four Humors makes the unreal real in Don Quixote

Photo by Dan Norman

Considering I picked up about 20 feet of Star Trek books last week, it was fitting that I would take in a show about the power of stories and the desire to have beloved characters live beyond the confines of their original tale.

In Four Humors' The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, Cervantes' tale goes through the wringer, with modern nods and a fluid interpretation of the original material.

After all, as noted near the end of the production, few have read the original work. (I haven't, though I'm pretty sure a copy has been on my bookshelf for a couple of decades.) We know the story from the endless remakes and riffs; from Man of La Mancha to the documentary about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to film the story.

The company, who has tackled the likes of Candide and Lolita in the past, in absolutely in their element here. Don Quixote's fantastical adventures are brought to life through simple puppetry, video projections and lots of guts and guile by the actors.

Don Quixote (Ryan Lear) is a bookish middle-aged man who is drunk on tales of knights and chivalry. The fictional adventures have poisoned his brains and he decides to engage in some 17th-century cosplay, as he roams the Spanish countryside in search of castles, giants and battles.

Instead, he finds grungy inns, the famous windmills and flocks of sheep. No matter, Don Quixote, along with his faithful servant Sancho (Brant Miller),  sees what he wants to see and is ready to defend the honor of his beloved by doing grand deeds.

All the while, the man's nephew (and his trusty companion, Scott) attempt to bring don Quixote home,  but it seems that Sampson is falling to his own kind of obsession and madness as he takes on the role of our hero's tormentor.

There are plenty of delights here, from Lear and Miller's terrific double act to the clever way puppets and the projection screens are used. A few cotton balls on sticks turn into massive flocks of sheep, while a puppet lion represents a massive, caged beast.

Despite the humor, we don't lose sight of the characters or the idea that stories can be bigger than any one person to contain or control. But never mind that, I've got some Star Trek books to read.

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha runs through May 22 at the Guthrie Theater.

Table 12: A funny existential crisis

Photo by Scott Pakudatis

In No Exit, Jean-Pau Sartre posited that Hell is being forced to spend time with other people. Freshwater Theatre's Table 12 ramps that idea up a notch, by pushing the mismatched souls together at that most fiendish of modern-day gatherings: the wedding.

Freshwater mades its debut at the Minnesota Fringe Festival and is revisiting the show as part of its 5th anniversary. It's a glorious, funny, and strangely life-affirming piece.

Table 12 is where the misfits at this particular wedding have been stashed away. Here we find the freaky next-door neighbors, the newly made husband's boss, the sort-of family member (he divorced the bride's sister), the embarrassing friend, and Charlie.

Charlie's a very special case. He's family (a cousin of the groom) and he dated the bride for a couple of weeks in the past. He's also crashed the rehearsal dinner by singing a full set of altered love songs to express his life to a woman who had chosen another man.

Cute in a romantic comedy. Stalker-ish in real life. Family connections kept Charlie at the wedding, but there are some rules, which are closely enforced by the table's waiter.

That's the set up. What happens is what you would expect from a gathering of mismatched souls lubricated by alcohol and either angry at their place at the wedding, or resigned to the fact that they are at the losers' table.

It's howlingly funny, too. Like a lot of comedies, there are people here you probably wouldn't want to spend much time with in real life, but are a lot of fun to watch. It's not just a zoo exhibit. Eventually, you begin to side with them -- even sad-sack Charlie and drunk Amy, who invited a blind date to the wedding; a date that didn't show.

Table 12 comes with a prologue as well: two pieces from another Fringe show, An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein. The pieces are equally absurd slices of life. In one, the worst father in the world gives his daughter her 13th birthday gift (it doesn't go well). In the second, a husband confronts his wife about her habit of raiding garbage cans (it goes worse).

The shows are presented in rep with We Just Clicked: A Festival of Short Plays about Online Dating at the Phoenix Theatre. Find the details online.

Photo by Heidi Bohnenkamp

A couple of notes about other recent shows seen:

Ed confession time. I don't get Disney musicals. I mean, I know why they are popular and understand at an intellectual level what the appeal of them is for audiences. Yet, since I grew up during the dark times for the company, so unless they produce musicals based on The Rescuers or The Black Hole, I'm not going to have any nostalgic connections to the material.

That doesn't mean I can't have fun at the shows, it's just that certain bits expected by the rest of the audience leave me cold. This brings me to Beauty and the Beast, now at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.

It's a handsome, well-directed and performed production that still  had me looking at my watch more than once. Much of that was during the scenes involving Gaston, the vain real villain of the piece. The show spends so much time with him -- and away from building the relationship between Belle and the Beast -- that I started to wonder who the stars of the show were supposed to be.

That slows the show down, but there is eventually enough good will to win you over, especially with the winning performances by Ruthanne Heyward and Robert O. Berdahl in the title roles; Mark King as Lumire; and Scott Balckburn as Cogsworth. Also, special note to Rich Hamson's terrific costumes, which bring all of the cursed souls of the castle to life in a much more limited budget than your Broadway, or even touring, production. The show runs through Sept. 24 at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.

Finally, you only have a week left to do this, but if you haven't made it over to the Jungle for Two Gentlemen of Verona, you definitely should. Sarah Rasmussen's all-women production is a pure delight.

We could talk about the politics behind putting women into these highly "masculine" roles, but really what we have here is a chance for a terrific ensemble of actors to work together. And really, the chance to see the likes of Sha Cage, Christiana Clark, Mo Perry, Wendy Lehr, and a host of others work together should be enough to get you to Lynn-Lake.

And if that's enough? Well, there is Bear the dog playing Crab the dog -- complete with a Elizabethan ruff. Two Gentleman of Verona runs through March 27 at the Jungle Theater.

Happy Days: No, not that one...

Courtesy Open Eye Figure Theatre.

A couple of years back, one of the Twin Cities theaters announced a production of a musical version of Happy Days. My heart cheered for a few moments, until I read on and realized it was the Fonz and company version of Happy Days, not some music-loaded rendition of Samuel Beckett's play.

No matter. Beckett's odd creation about a woman buried up to her waist in rocks -- and not feeling too bad about herself -- offers tremendous rewards even without a song or two, as the new production at Open Eye Figure Theatre proves.

Under the watchful direction of Michael Evan Haney, Amy Warner (also Haney's wife) stars as Winnie, the woman so long trapped by her circumstances that life has been reduced to the most mundane of routines. She greets each day's morning bell with a smile, and then fills the time with incessant chatter about the contents of her bag, her tattered memories of a long-ago normal life, and the way she fills up the endless hours of each endless day in her trapped state.

She isn't alone. Her husband Willie (a shirtless Michael Sommers) pops up from behind the rocks from time to time, reading an ancient newspaper and making the occasional comment.

As difficult as Winnie's state is in act one, it gets worse in act two. Her limited mobility is cut even further, leaving her almost entirely alone with her words and thoughts.

When I saw earlier productions of Happy Days, I relished in the sheer absurdity of the script and the action. Now that I'm older, I know more about Winnie's state of mind. The endless chatter, the forgotten names and terms, the sense that you are frozen in place while everyone else moves freely about you is a perfect description of middle age.

The show is also an extreme acting exercise. It's one that Warner takes up quite well. The happy facade of the first scenes eventually melts away into the final moments of desperation. Some of the moments in between are a bit wobbly. It seemed that the tone at the top of act two was pushed too hard. A softer touch there would have made the final moments all the more effective.

Sommers -- who also provides the simple but effective set design -- makes the most of his brief moments on stage. He is able to wring out the humor of the most simple gesture or action. He also looks great in act two, when Willie finally gets to be in front of the rocks -- and appears in full evening dress, like the demented cousin of Vladimir and Estragon.

Happy Days plays through March 19 at Open Eye Figure Theatre.

Guthrie goes for critical mass with double feature

The cast of The Real Inspector Hound (Photo by Scott Suchman).

Nobody likes a critic, but artists are in a unique position to strike back beyond letters to the editor wondering if the writer in question had "seen the same show."

Playwrights classic and modern get their digs in the Guthrie's double header of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's (by way of Jeffrey Hatcher) The Critic and Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. Yet for all the jabs directed the ink-stained set, much of the humor in the pair comes at the expense of theater itself.

The pieces come to the Guthrie by way of Washington D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company, where they were first produced, for a mostly delightful evening of wild comedy.

In The Critic, Sheridan sets up a farce where a pair of critics (the lovely named Mr. Dangle and Mr. Sneer) take down an aspiring colleague -- Mr. Puff -- by encouraging him to adapt and twist his new play to the supposed whims of the unseen Sheridan himself.

Their commands sound like demented improv games. Sheridan, they tell Puff, can't abide Spanish names. That's a problem, as the play is about the Spanish Armada. Poor Puff and his sorry cast has to work on the fly to remove the name of the hero at every turn, with increasingly comic effect.

While bad acting and overcooked historical dramas are the name of the game in The Critic, it's the English country-house murder-mystery on the dock for The Real Inspector Hound.

This time, we have a pair of critics, Moon and Birdboot, watching a dreadful English country-house murder mystery. While the Noises-off-like disaster plays out on stage, the pair find themselves drawn into the action, eventually taking over in the show, while a pair of the former characters sit and watch them act out the show.

So, typically Stoppard, but well played and produced. It's the stronger half of the evening, though both offer plenty of fun. There's just a bit more bite to what Stoppard has to say, though the outright comedy side belongs to The Critic.

The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound run through March 27 at the Guthrie Theater.

Clybourne Park latest in string of winners for Yellow Tree Theatre

Photo by Keri Pickett

Dan Hopman, Laura Esping, Ricardo Beaird and Joetta Wright

Clybourne Park is a thorn-thicket of a play, as it delves into issues that people either pretend don’t exist; or engage in with all of the sudelty of a two-by-four to the face.

Yellow Tree Theatre — the little theater in ex-ubranian Osseo that has yet to meet a challenge they weren’t willing to meet — makes the most of the opportunities in Bruce Norris’ script.

The main issue on the menu? Race. Specifically, America’s uneasy relationship with the issue. Norris uses the landmark play, A Raisin in the Sun, to set his stage. In that play, a black family escapes inner-city Chicago for a new home in a white neighborhood. There, they find a different set of problems.

Clybourne Park is really two one-act plays connected by a single place. In act one, it is 1959, in the days immediately before the Younger family moves to the Woodlawn neighborhood. Act two finds the us in the same location 50 years later. The decades have not been kind to the home, which has become an abounded ruin amid a now predominately black neighborhood. This time out, a white couple is looking to move in, but finds resistance to their plans from their black neighbors.

That’s the structure — and Norris puts plenty of overt and sly connections between the two halves (one character in act two, for example, is an unborn child in the first act) — that the playwright then uses to probe into society's changes over the decades. It's not just race. The original home owners are selling to escape a neighborhood that has turned its back on them after their son came back from Korea in disgrace.

Patriarch Russ is tired of the bullshit that surrounds him, and offers an increasingly caustic and angry reaction to the neighbors who drop by, especially Karl, who wants to scuttle the home sale and keep the neighborhood white.

When we flashforward 50 years, the dynamic has changed. The folks gathered in the ruin of the house are there for a negotiation. A young white couple has bought the house and wants to make considerable renovations. The local community -- now primarily black -- doesn't want the historic character of the neighborhood to change.

Each time, the conversation goes from polite to caustic and angry, which provides not just food for thought, but a chance for the performers to dig deep into their characters.

Patrick Coyle leads the charge as Russ. The character has descended deep into grief and rage, but Hopman works to earn every hard moment for the character. He is well matched by Laura Esping, who plays his equally hurt wife, Bev.

Jason Peterson, Yellow Tree's co-artistic director, plays a pair of clean-cut unlikable chaps. In act one, his slimy Karl never knows when to quit, which triggers Russ' final rage. In the second half, he is one half of the young buyers, who is clearly the kind of person you can tolerate for about ten minutes before building a strong, abiding hate.

Director Craig Johnson controls all of this chaos, building in parallels between the two acts in the way the show is staged and maintaining a strong pace throughout. There is also enough room for the performances to breathe, so we build sympathies with (some of) the characters and are able to ponder these people leaving politeness behind and finally say what they really are thinking.

Clybourne Park runs through March 6 at Yellow Tree Theatre. Visit online for tickets and more information.