- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Evil Queen Patrizia Telleschi brought a dominatrix stomp to her dances, dragging Snow White by the mouth with her poisoned apple and piercing the rest of the cast with her clawed gloves and stiletto heels. Image credit: JC Carbonne One of the hardest parts of writing reviews is seeing a
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Michael Christie is the definition of Wunderkind. At 37, his biography reads like a who’s-who of the classical music world. From the New York Philharmonic to the Zurich Opera, he has directed some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras. So the announcement that he would be joining the Minnesota Opera
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Like the wacky un-birthday songs in Alice and Wonderland, The Birthday Partyturns the traditional notion of birthday festivities darkly upside down. The show, at the Jungle Theater through May 13, details two days inside of a boarding house, where an unkempt and unmotivated piano player, Stanley, lives with the house’s owners,
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Much has been said about the correlation between frank conversations and the presence of food. The New Century Theater’s current show,Mary a la Carte, is a worthy exemplar of this familiar kitchen table conversation. In a choose-your-own-adventure-story style, it allows visitors to “order” from Mary’s menu of stories about her
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
The principle of karma dictates that good deeds beget more good deeds (we’re paraphrasing centuries of philosophy here, but you get the idea). As wallets get thinner and demands on our time multiply, it’s easy to forget that doing good is more than just another thing to put on our
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Martin Kaye, Lee Ferris, Derek Keeling, and Cody Slaughter assume the roles of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins in ‘Million Dollar Quartet.’ Image credit: Joan Marcus/Hennepin Theatre Trust What if four of music’s biggest legends spent an evening together early in their careers jamming together
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Under-40 music fans intimidated by opera no longer have any excuse to avoid it. Tempo, the Minnesota Opera’s hip, young fan group, provides wonderful preview events to help patrons understand each opera of the season, as well as connect with fellow opera lovers and the Twin Cities arts community. Their
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
Park Square Theatre’s “American Family” is a classic example of the difficulties of writing a play about racial issues It’s been a very bluesy spring. On the heels of the Minnesota Historical Society’s extremely popular 1968exhibit come a spate of plays focused on race and music in the mid-twentieth century American
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
It’s not every day you come across a Phantom of the Opera-meets-Appalachia performance, but that’s what arrived at the Walker Art Center last week. Unfortunately, the sum of this eclectic mix wasn’t quite as wonderful as each of its parts. The 802 Tour, billed by the Walker Art Center as a bluegrassy
- Becki-Iverson
- September 24, 2012
When it comes to describing the blues, Guy Davis said it best when he sang “I’m laughing just to keep from crying.” The most recent touring Broadway production at the Ordway, Memphis, exemplifies this phrase from start to finish in a Cadillac Records-meets-Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom style. Memphis follows an unconventional, uneducated young white