The last time the Guthrie mounted a production of Macbeth was 16 years ago, when Robert Foxworth (then a TV star known mostly for his portrayal of Chase Gioberti, the patriarch of a California wine-making dynasty on the show Falcon Crest) played Macbeth, and generally stunk the joint up. Talk about a vat full of bubbling trouble. 

Read more.

One by-product of modern healthcare and better pharmaceuticals is the increasingly frequent use of the term "living legend." Legends, especially musical ones, used to die fairly young. 27 is a very popular year for legends to die, for example—Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain all died at 27, as did a long list of other musicians.

Read more.

Dinner theater has never gotten much respect. Bad food + mediocre theater tends to equal an unsatisfying experience, like brushing your teeth with baking soda. But what if you upped the quality of the food, hired the best actors and playwrights in town, set the whole event in a cool place, and kept the beer flowing all night long?

Read more.

The title of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll suggests a rollicking, free-spirited experience that the play, alas, does not deliver. Audiences looking for a nostalgic romp through the musical meadows of their youth are likely to leave the theater wondering how they ended up listening to so many long, dialectical discussions on the relative merits of communism, socialism, and capitalism, so many in-depth historical dissections of Czechoslovakian history, and so many endless references to bands and people they’ve never heard of, particularly an underground Czech-rock group called the Plastic People of the Universe. 

Read more.

Last year’s collaboration between the Guthrie Theater’s BFA graduates and The Acting Company yielded a spirited version of Henry V that toured the country and received a great deal of critical acclaim. The two companies are trying to recreate that magic this year with Romeo and Juliet, which will also hit the road after its run here on the Guthrie’s McGuire Proscenium stage. 

Read more.

Only 300 people will get to experience German experimental theater troupe Rimini Protokoll’s Call Cutta in a Box: an International Phone Play, the first installment of the Walker Art Center’s 2010 Out There series—so spoiler alert if you’ve already got a ticket: the following may contain details you would rather learn by surprise, because you paid for them, rather than read about them here for free. 

Read more.

Two episodes of Jesse Ventura's preposterous but surprisingly entertaining new TV show, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, have now aired on TruTV, the channel responsible for such thought-provoking programs as Bait Car (carjackers caught on tape!), Inside American Jail (real criminals stabbing each other!), and Party Heat, a show that follows cops around as they arrest drunk/stoned/tripping college students on spring break.    

Read more.

Nobody holds onto Washington Heights for very long. Even its namesake, the great General George himself, coughed it up to the British after a few months during the Revolutionary War. As the tallest hill on Manhattan Island, it’s the perfect spot for a last stand, and over the last hundred years it’s served as a demographic Alamo: first being handed off from the Jews to the Irish, then from the Irish to the Greeks, then from the Greeks to the Puerto Ricans, and then from the Puerto Ricans to the Dominicans. 

Read more.

It’s been a while since I wrote about the Walker Art Center—so, over Thanksgiving weekend, while recovering from an overdose of tryptophan, I paid a visit . . . and discovered, quite happily, that everything about the place has changed, most of it for the better. Which is good, because the permanent exhibits were getting stale, winter is approaching, and there hasn’t been much to chew on at our favorite contemporary art museum since the The Quick and the Dead stopped melting minds back in September. 

Read more.

Granted, the premise of Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather sounds like the setup for an SNL skit: “Hey, how about we take the plot of The Godfather and make the dialogue sound like Shakespeare? That’d be funny, wouldn’t it?” 

Read more.