Tag Archives: Rita Joe

Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew Is GableStage Benchmark Triumph

Amid a constellation of superb theater from GableStage comes a supernova of passion, pain and socio-political protest in a scorching drama Skeleton Crew. Its portrayal of African-American workers in a Detroit auto plant teetering on closing incisively examines racial issues that intensify impending tragedy, but also a world evaporating under our feet whuch crosses all demographic boundaries.

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No Doubt At All: Playhouse’s Doubt Will Make You Think

Actors’ Playhouse’s Doubt is not about guilt or innocence. It’s about doubt. The nature of doubt. The fallout of doubt. Living with doubt. Deciding whether to act when you have doubt. In these extreme days when some people believe truth is fungible or fear that it is can never be divined, John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play is excruciatingly resonant.

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Powerful Performances, Direction Make New City’s ‘Raisin In The Sun’ A Must See

Attention to detail in each element of New City Players’ Raisin in the Sun makes it truly spectacular on every level, and that especially goes for the directing and the acting.

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Irreconcilable Viewpoints Clash In Outre’s The Christians

All too apropos for our bitterly divided time, Outré Theatre Company’s intellectually stimulating production of Lucas Hnath’s The Christians asks what happens when two sincerely held but diametrically opposed viewpoints inescapably clash.

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‘White Guy on The Bus’ Is GableStage’s Shattering Incisive Dissection Of Race Relations

White Guy on the Bus at GableStage is a merciless dissection of race relations in the 21st Century, but stunning plot twists prevent us from explaining much further than a wealthy white businessman strikes up an acquaintanceship with an African-American nursing student on a bus. But superb performances and a fierce script make this a don’t miss.

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M Ensemble’s Seven Guitars Is Virtually Music As Theater

In the current production of The M Ensemble Company, August Wilson’s legendary Seven Guitars almost plays like a musical or a folk opera akin to Porgy and Bess or Floyd Collins.

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MSP’s This Random World A Challenging Study In Character

Main Street Players challenges itself and its audiences in This Random World, this 90-minute think piece that will make you question some of your own connections to the people in your life. But the complex story has trouble flowing because of necessary scenery changes.

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Outre’s Reservoir Dolls Is Intriguing Idea That Stumbles

You can’t really blame the playwright Erika Soerenson or artistic directors for thinking that a distaff reinterpretation of the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs might make an intriguing, funny and even socially revealing stage adaptation, Reservoir Dolls. But the Outré Theatre Company’s production iunderscores what a misbegotten idea this was because either the playwright did not know what she wanted in the end or Outré never communicated it.

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Winter Shorts: Welcome Holiday Warmth Against The Chill

Over 21 years, City Theatre’s ever-expanding enterprises have developed and maintained a brand-level reputation for entertaining theater; its return to cool weather programming with the current edition of Winter Shorts is just as diverting.

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Lost And Adrift In The ‘Hood: The Mighty Gents At AHCAC

The Mighty Gents is a poignant moving tale worthy of a Greek tragedy except that the protagonists are members of a street gang from the mid-1960s, emotionally, economically and sociologically lost in a Newark ghetto in 1978.

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