7.29.07: Monty Python’s Spamalot at Ordway Center

The Spamalot juggernaut has steamrolled into town, sweeping all criticism before it. The 2005 Tony winner for Best Musical might not be quite the biting social satire that the original film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was, but can years of sold-out houses on Broadway—and now around the country—be wrong? Well, maybe. The laughs are silly and often stupid, but they are also unrelenting, which is exactly what you would expect.

Lovers of the original film will find much that is familiar onstage at the Ordway. This fractured retelling of the King Arthur legend may have pretensions of skewering the romantic notions of chivalry, but it’s really just an excuse for grown men (and women) to behave outrageously—and for the audience to enjoy the experience vicariously. Who doesn’t enjoy a killer rabbit? Or people being slapped across the face with a fish?

It may be tacky to say that Spamalot makes an art out of flatulence that is befitting of the titular canned meat, but even if it is, it’s no tackier than the show itself. At its heart, however, the musical seems to draw on a different tradition than the film. The bad puns, the potty humor, the queer bits, the unconvincing drag and the rows of scantily clad chorines have always been part of the Monty Python oeuvre, but they also hearken back further to the old English pantomime and music hall traditions. That was certainly true of the original TV series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but it’s even more obvious in this incarnation.

What’s particularly enjoyable is how the creators (original Python Eric Idle writing the book and lyrics and collaborating with John Du Prez on the music) strive to modernize those traditions. Camelot comes right out of Las Vegas (the Round Table is a roulette wheel). And there is a wonderful Carmen Miranda number for a very fey Sir Lancelot and the boys. There’s more to this show than meets the eye—or at least I’d like to think so.

What I found quite unexpected was that the big production numbers, like “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway (if you haven’t any Jews),” were the most inventive and interesting parts of the event. They are clearly intended to be tasteless and offensive send-ups, but they still manage to be well-executed and loving homages to the genre as well. That’s not an easy balance to maintain, but when it succeeds, it gives the whole experience an added element of sweetness and heart that makes the antic clowning more palatable—and funnier.

The Ordway production is nothing short of lavish. No expense was spared, with elaborate special effects and even pyrotechnics on frequent display. But in the Broadway of Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber, over-the-top production values are almost de rigueur. (Though Idle and Du Prez do get their revenge: much of the music for the Lady of the Lake is a subtle but deliberate lampooning of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hyper-romantic style.) Visually, it’s Tim Hatley’s costumes that are the true works of art; they are stunning to look at and contain more visual allusions than there are musical ones in the score.

Offering an actual critique of Spamalot is pointless, because it’s more than just a show—it’s a phenomenon. It’s juvenile and silly, often profoundly so, but there is always a place for such well-done low comedy. For the next couple of weeks, that place is Ordway Center for the Performing . . . uh, Arts.

7.29.07: Private Lives at the Guthrie

The Guthrie’s production of Noël Coward’s smart romp Private Lives should have been wonderful. In fact, I don’t know why it wasn’t. It had everything going for it. The actors were outstanding. Peter Rothstein’s stylized direction was inventive and playful, and the sets and costumes were divine. Peter Moore choreographed a deliciously ridiculous fight scene that included people breaking phonograph records over each other’s heads. What’s not to love? Maybe I inadvertently left my sense of humor in the parking garage.

Veanne Cox plays Amanda Prynne, an imperious, manipulative, and sexually irresistible divorcée. The play begins on the day she arrives at the Deauville, France, resort she’s staying at for her honeymoon with her new husband, Victor Prynne (Kris L. Nelson). This is the same day that Elyot Chase—Amanda’s droll, self-assured ex—arrives at the exact same Deauville, France, resort, where he’s staying for his honeymoon with his new spouse. Better yet, their rooms share the same veranda (Above, photo by Michal Daniel). When Amanda and Elyot discover the situation, trouble ensues.

Both Amanda and Elyot  (a divine Stephen Pelinski) have devoted a considerable amount of time to bad-mouthing their exes and thus refuse to tell their new partners about what’s happened. Instead, Elyot and Amanda balk, preen, panic, and flirt. Realizing their all-consuming passion is as red-hot as ever, they ultimately decide to run off with each other. It’s so wrong, but it feels so good!

Meanwhile, Elyot’s new wife, Sybil—pretty-in-pink Tracey Maloney—is half his age and not very smart. (That’s why he married her.) Victor, Amanda’s nebbish husband, is naïve and forgiving. That’s probably why Amanda married him. When Sybil and Victor figure out they’ve been ditched, they go searching for their egocentric other halves.

In the meantime, Elyot and Amanda have holed up in an opulent Parisian suite. Their relationship is as volatile, feisty, and sexually charged as ever. Just as in real life, passion doesn’t always inspire domestic bliss, and much of the rest of the play consists of physical and verbal barbs (some subtle, some not), played with relish by Cox and Pelinski. Their chemistry and comedic precision propel the play toward its climax, which includes a brilliant cameo by Sally Wingert, who arrives via elevator in a cloud of smoke muttering unintelligibly in French.

To get back to my initial question: what’s not to love? For me, personally, the script itself might be the problem. I appreciate Noël Coward’s wit, but the plot and characters just didn’t grab me the way I wished they would. If Rothstein could use the same cast for Blithe Spirit (another classic Coward farce, with a similar plot but involving a dead ex-wife and all sorts of hokie malarkey), I’d be a very happy theatergoer indeed. Maybe next season?

7.27.07: No Mittens Film Festival at Rosalux Gallery

It’s counterintuitive to program a winter- and sleep-themed film festival in the middle of the blazing hot days of summer. Is that why so few of the shorts screened last night at Rosalux Gallery’s No Mittens Film Festival adhered to those advertised themes? Or maybe the number of films submitted for the one-night fest were just slim enough that Weisman guest curator Diane Mullin needed to relax the thematic-compatibility requirement. My money’s on the latter.

Too bad. Winter and sleep have proven an intriguing backdrop for some great films—The Machinist, The Shining, The Ice Storm, and Fargo, for starters—and it would have been nice to see the homegrown talent riff on these decidedly Minnesotan preoccupations. With the fest’s focus on emerging filmmakers, short works (five minutes or less), and Rosalux’s way-cool home in Open Book, I was rooting for a stellar lineup that would attract a broad audience. It was certainly standing-room-only in the narrow downstairs gallery-turned-screening-room, but the crowd was mostly friends, family, cast, and crew. And the final mix of shorts was an uneven grab bag of narrative and experimental works sadly unlikely to convert those already wary of films and film venues outside the multiplex mainstream.

One highlight was Peter McLarnan’s Duplex (left), an experimental work along the lines of the impenetrable fare on continuous projection in the Walker’s galleries. It follows in split-screen a 1950s husband and wife going about their separate rituals (he: shaving and then putzing about downstairs at his workbench; she: steaming her face and sewing), and finally working together to create the night’s dinner, a highlighter-yellow gelatinous pie that they methodically construct from separate rooms, connected only by dumbwaiter. The film has no dialogue, no soundtrack, and to my eyes nothing at all to do with winter and sleep, but it’s riveting nonetheless in its creepy, cold domesticity.

Lora Madjar’s Snow settles into its own unsettling rhythm but with a stop-motion–animated doll that doesn’t exactly have nine lives but certainly many as it continuously loses its cotton innards to a murderous music box, surgical tools, and assorted other dangers, but always manages to put itself back together from its snowy grave. It’s anyone’s guess as to what the hell it all means, but then again if you’re looking for those kinds of answers in this kind of film, you probably should have been standing in line for The Simpsons Movie at Block E instead.

Even when the winter and sleep themes were largely thrown out the window, there was a little something for everyone. Erin Hael screened two dance videos, Kern and White, the latter of which (left) has fun with choreography and color in dance sequences that remind me of Michel Gondry’s “The Hardest Button to Button” video for The White Stripes. Brent Braniff’s Do You Have a Dog? showcases the filmmaker’s moody experimental pop and the sleeping visage of a friend for several languorous minutes, while Debby Moe’s hybrid documentary/music video Ivy Morrison on the local hip-hop dancer/choreographer plays like a trailer for a feature-length film I wouldn’t mind seeing.

The most memorable short of the evening, though, was Gudrun Jessica Lock’s pitch-black Fritz the Pig, which opens innocently enough with a screen that’s dark except for an indiscernible object slowly coming into focus in the foreground. A woman speaks casually in voiceover of growing up on a farm with the eponymous pig that meets his maker in the slaughterhouse. Her father cruelly decides that Fritz’s disembodied head should remain perched on a farmhouse fencepost visible from their breakfast table. As the narrator’s story builds, the camera pulls into focus Fritz’s snout, frozen in a post-mortem sneer. It’s a spooky denouement to a punchy, no-frills short that I’m not likely to forget anytime soon. It’s certainly not everyone’s idea of a nice Friday night at the movies, but here’s hoping Rosalux or others continue their bold challenge to that very idea.

7.26.07: The FootHolds Project at the Ritz Theater

There are a lot of artists in this town who make work constantly but quietly. Because they’re not affiliated with a large organization, you don’t notice them. Then, suddenly, the quiet artists put on shows of work ranging across years, and you wonder where they’ve been all that time.

Jim Lieberthal is one such artist. His FootHolds Project concert includes work from 1984 to 2007, as well as a new work created for him by Germaul Barnes. At its best, Lieberthal’s choreography is quirky, interesting, built around vignette and gesture rather than story and long dance phrase. Lieberthal’s work is full of animals and characters: in 1984’s “FlashCard Menagerie,” Bernard Brown lies on his side, finning his feet elaborately; later he sneaks, slump-shouldered, around the stage. In a harlequin costume, he’s a human fly or an architectural figure. Lieberthal’s good, too, at the short drama, at getting it right in a moment. The second section of “FlashCard” is the Ariel-protagonist’s agony, but it’s brief (perhaps thirty seconds), ending in a sudden fall and blackout. What else do we need?

Lieberthal’s premiere, “Cri de Coeur,” shows the same expertise in moments. Blackouts highlight action, the lights falling and lifting again suddenly; dancers enter unexpectedly, a man dragging a woman onstage. Later, the woman (Debra McGee Weatherup) springs up from the floor in a sudden fierce embrace, her legs around the man’s waist; after a blackout, they’re revealed in the same position, but she’s already fallen a little away; a second blackout and lights up finds her on the floor. In “Cri de Coeur,” Lieberthal gives a good sense of the interruptedness of modern life. The dancers—a lot of them, seemingly more than necessary—come and go like traffic, their connections intense but fleeting.

Lieberthal’s work gets muddier when he mixes ballet with his modern dance. Where his modern’s sharp and alert, his ballet’s unfocused and at times even unmusical. It’s clear that he likes the gorgeous lines of ballet, but the lines don’t feel earned.

Barnes’s work for Lieberthal, “Doing or Not,” has Lieberthal pouncing and posing around stage while dramatically reciting an Ogden Nash poem about sins of commission versus sins of omission. For most dancers, this would not work. But Lieberthal is that rare person who seems born for the stage in all respects. His Gumby-body, his malleable face (from innocent to tempter in 0.3 seconds), his absolute confidence untainted by vanity or self-consciousness—he is a kick to watch, and it’s too bad we don’t see more of him in this concert.

Lieberthal’s brilliance as a performer gives a clue to his choreography: he’s a dancer’s choreographer. His dancers range from the forceful, mature Weatherup to the ballerina Julia Tehven to livewire Bernard Brown to Kelly Radermacher, with her black hole-dense presence, to the young swan Alexandra Baldwin, and more. It’s clear Lieberthal loves them all. What finally holds about this concert, when the bows are being taken, is the heart of people like Lieberthal and his dancers. Dance is so hard. These dancers practice four to seven days a week, two to six hours a day, and all they get is one weekend of light, three evenings of our applause. (The pay is minimal, if in fact there is pay at all.) We, on the other hand, just walk in and, for a small sum, soak up all this effort of theirs so easily. We are living on their generosity.

The Footholds Project runs through July 28.

7.24.07: Sounds of the Underground at Myth

I’m aware that some parents might question the decision to take my fourteen-year-old son and a friend of his to see Sounds of the Underground, a heavy metal festival currently touring the country and featuring bands with such spiritually uplifting names as Goatwhore, Necro, Darkest Hour, Mushroomhead, and Every Time I Die. I know I did.

These are the sorts of events that are designed to shock parents, entertain counter-culturally inclined young people (to whom nothing is more entertaining than shocking their parents), and provide a break from the tedious freedoms of summer. Having ventured into the breach myself, however, I can now report with some relief to all the concerned parents out there that your children were as safe at Sounds of the Underground as they are at the local playground—maybe safer—though judging from the listless throngs lining the walls at the Myth, some may have left with their tedium intact.

With one notable exception, Sounds of the Underground traffics in a brand of speed-thrash doom metal that is as homogenous as a glass of milk and as predictable as a Big Mac. The band names change but the “music” all sounds the same—which, to my middle-aged ears, is like a grizzly bear caught in a wood chipper. It’s as if to qualify for the tour each band had to fill out an official doom-metal checklist:

▪ Machine-gun guitar riffs? Check.
▪ Concussion-bomb drumming? Check.
▪ Sonic-boom bass blasts? Check.
▪ No women in the band? Check.
▪ Long-haired guitarist (dreadlocks optional)? Check.
▪ Arm tattoos? Check.
▪ Unintelligible lyrics? Check.
▪ Smoke machine? Check.
▪ Seizure-inducing strobe lights? Check.
▪ Iconography of evil (e.g., skulls, pentagrams, mutants, fire, etc.)? Check.
▪ Liberal use of words that begin with “mother”? Check.
▪ Faux fondness for death, destruction, mayhem, and anarchy? Check.
▪ Pretend rage against all forms of pretentiousness? Check.
▪ Anti-everything (except metal bands)? Check.

These last two are particularly amusing, considering that the tour is sponsored by the clothing and accessory store Hot Topic, which is owned by Abercrombie & Fitch, the most pretentious company in existence—and that the venue, Myth, is located in Maplewood across the street from a Best Buy, an Ashley Furniture Home Store, Mattress Giant, and Toys "R" Us. Suburban hell, in other words.

The audience for this event was equally diverse and imaginative. White guys. Black T-shirts. No black people. A guy-to-girl ratio of about fifty to one. If it weren’t for the final band of the night, Gwar (pictured above), the whole thing would have been a disappointing yawner. Before Gwar took the stage, even my son and his friend—for whom this was his seminal first “real” concert—rated Sounds of the Underground a ho-hum “6.” And that was after the band Chimaira (sic) led the house in a sing-along to their anti-social anthem, “Pure Hatred,” the chorus of which—“I hate everyone!”—surely warms the hearts of malcontents everywhere.

Gwar received an emphatic “10” from the boys, however, and here’s why: They are absolutely hilarious. Honestly, Gwar is one of the funniest acts I have ever seen—that is, if you can get past the fact that their shtick is basically hacking various creatures to pieces and spraying fountains of blood into the audience. But it’s OK, because they do it while wearing crazy alien monster warrior uniforms and ostensibly ridding the planet of human scum to appease the “Master” and release the giant maggot that lives at the center of the earth. Or something like that. When we walked into Myth, the place was enshrouded in white protective plastic, even on the ceiling. I didn’t understand why until Gwar began spraying 100-foot streams of “blood” (colored water) everywhere. Limbs and heads were hacked off, and blood spewed. A giant birdlike creature showed up, and he too was slain, as was a voracious Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the end, everyone within 150 feet of the stage was soaked, and the Myth’s protective measures just seemed like good solid business sense.

Gwar has been around since the late 1980s, so they’ve been serving up their schlock-metal spew-fest long enough to be a nostalgia act on the metal circuit, which may account for some crowd-thinning near the end. If you’ve seen their act before, I can understand why one might choose to beat the traffic instead. But for my son, his friend, and me, first-timers all, it was a blast. On the way out, a guy who called himself Hardcore Dave pronounced us all “anointed.” Thus consecrated, we dutifully purchased an armload of CDs and paraphernalia in the parking lot and headed home, where the boys headed immediately to the shower to wash off the stink and sweat, happy for the moment to be teenagers living in a suburban hell—at least one that, every now and then, books a band like Gwar.

For a sample of what Gwar does, check out this YouTube video:

ArtCar Pre-Parade Party

"I'm not a dentist," is the first point on an artist's manifesto stuck to the window of the "Chewbaru," a '95 Subaru refashioned into a moving homage to teeth or, more specifically, to dentures and partials of all shapes and sizes. Points nine and ten of the statement rule the Chewbaru out as the work of a twisted funeral director or kleptomaniac retirement-home worker with a thing for teeth. The inspiration? "I found a seventy-five-pound box of recycled dentures on eBay." The rest is ArtCar history.

The Chewbaru was one of a dozen-plus art cars lined up outside Midtown Global Market last night for a pre-parade party that was mainly an opportunity to examine the cars (and their people) up close. There was the camera van covered in cameras of every shape and size, several "animal" ArtCars (polar bear, dog, etc.), a fairy-themed VW bug, a car covered in toys and a mosaic of plastic beads and stars—the list goes on.

Further down the line was a Dust Bowl–inspired jalopy worthy of a Steinbeck character—every surface covered in salt-of-the-earth wisdom and the pots, pans, lamps and other necessities—not to mention some more whimsical elements, such as a rubber chicken dangling from the side.

Walking down the row of ArtCars, it's impossible not to consider exactly what kind of car you might create. The consensus at my house? Bumper-to-bumper Pokemon cards.

For more about this annual event, go to artcarparade.com. 

7.17.07: Traki at Minnesota History Center

Who knew Bulgarian folk music could draw a crowd in St. Paul? But, as with every performance in the Minnesota History Center’s 9 Nights of Music—a free, live outdoor music series—that I’ve been to over the years, the courtyard was packed for last night’s performance. Not surprising when you consider the setting: the skyline of downtown on one side, the cathedral lit up by the setting sun on the other.

Traki, a five-person ensemble, performed a dozen or so Bulgarian folk songs, each punctuated by the high notes of the gaida, an instrument that resembles a small bagpipe and produces a sound not unlike the trills of a snake charmer. The rest of the instruments are equally unfamiliar to those with only a passing acquaintance with music from the Balkans: the violinlike gadulka, the tambura, which looks like a mandolin with a long neck, and the tuppan. Mesmerizing is a good word to describe the collective effect of instruments and vocals.

History Center performances aren’t just entertaining, though. They offer mini lessons in culture. Each performance—whether tango or Cajun or French musette—includes dance instruction, which produces some rather amusing scenes. It’s not every day that you see a middle-aged Midwesterner in shorts, white sneakers, and visor dancing a Bulgarian pavo or rachenitsa.

Still, something about people dancing, hand-in-hand, in a circle transcends the thin veil of modernity. The music and dancing bring a sense of cohesiveness and wholeness to an otherwise highly diverse crowd: the woman in the crocs and long braid hand-in-hand with the hipster in oversized glasses. And that, I suspect, is what really keeps people coming back.

For the complete lineup of upcoming Tuesday-night performances at the Minnesota History Center, visit mnhs.org.  
 


7.16.07: Summer Music & Movies in Loring Park

Some things are just better outdoors: burgers, beer, and baseball, for example. And, as Walker Art Center has been proving for more than three decades, so too are great tunes and vintage movies in a grand old city park.

Last night, the Walker’s beloved Summer Music & Movies series opened its thirty-first season in Loring Park with mild weather, a sultry performance by buzzed-about local band Black Blondie, and a screening of the 1955 hothouse melodrama All That Heaven Allows. Sure, you could watch the Criterion Collection DVD comfortably at home on one of those gigantic home theater systems that are slowly destroying what’s left of our communal moviegoing experience—but why would you want to? 

For starters, you would have missed Black Blondie, which played its moody blend of hip-hop, trip-hop, soul, rap, and jazz to the huge crowd that filled the east side of the park with ad-hoc picnic spreads, dogs, babies, and a few illegal substances. The shuffleboard and pick-up basketball games continued on the courts nearby as vocalist Samahra Linton took the stage with Liz Draper on upright bass and electric bass, Tasha Baron on keyboards, and Kahlil Brewington on drums. Absent was co-vocalist Sarah White, who recently announced she’s leaving the band to pursue a solo career in New York. Linton, who seems a little raw as lone frontwoman, made an oblique reference to the reconfiguration, deeming a new song “sacred” because the four of them wrote it together.

Sexy and provocative, Black Blondie’s performance was an amusing counterpoint to last night’s movie. All That Heaven Allows is a buttoned-up Douglas Sirk–directed melodrama that follows a small-town widow (a startled-looking Jane Wyman) who falls in love with a strapping young gardener several years her junior. Rock Hudson plays the Thoreau-reading hunk, instantly identified as salt-of-the-earth by his flannel shirts and corduroys and his melting-pot group of friends. The mismatched couple’s cut-to-chase (but decidedly chaste) romance-turned-marriage-proposal quickly sparks uproar among Wyman’s stuffy country club friends and her bratty college-age kids who are appalled by her paramour’s age and working-class pedigree. “All you see is a good-looking set of muscles,” her son snips.

Aided by his signature stylized lighting, set design, and camerawork, Sirk amps up the over-the-top music and finds resonance in the wooden (but amusedly prescient) dialogue, as when Hudson explains how he convinced a war buddy to turn his life around. He taught his friend to not be afraid, he says, to be a man. “So you want me to be a man?” Wyman asks. “Only in that one way,” Hudson replies in an irony-laced line that drew some knowing hoots from the crowd.

In their day, Sirk’s films were dismissed as simplistic and overwrought, weepies aimed at women, and certainly not pictures to be dissected as they are today by Sirk acolytes such as director Todd Haynes. Haynes remade All That Heaven Allows in 2002 as Far From Heaven, casting Julianne Moore in Wyman’s role, but as a woman in love with her black gardener and married to a closeted gay man. His was a respectful homage, recognition of the real substance buried in those preachy old scripts.

And they are certainly preachy. When the original All That Heaven Allows was first released, a critic for Time magazine compared the experience of watching it to “drowning in a sea of melted butter, with nothing to hang on to but the clichés that float past.” From the sounds of it, even Sirk himself was none too pleased with the quality of stories he was often asked to adapt in his prolific ten-year stint with Universal Pictures. But he made smart aesthetic choices that illuminated his protagonists’ tormented psyches and the suffocating rigidity of the times. He finds that balance in All That Heaven Allows, a film that works on multiple levels: as an unintentionally hilarious relic of a moviemaking era long past, as a quietly subversive work of an overlooked director, and as an immensely entertaining diversion for a long summer night.

For more Sirkian melodrama and great music, check out the remaining installments in the Summer Music & Movies series: The Plastic Constellations and There’s Always Tomorrow (July 23), The Knotwells and The Tarnished Angels (July 30), Metronomy and Written on the Wind (August 6), Robert Skoro and Imitation of Life (August 13), and Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective and Magnificent Obsession (August 30).

7.13.07: The Nightwatchman at 7th St. Entry

When I walked into The Entry for The Nightwatchman show last night, the place was packed with what most Minnesotans would recognize as The Wellstone Nation. Ike Reilly, an Irish-American protest singer from Libertyville, Illinois, with a rabid local following, was onstage warming up the troops. He usually plays with his band, The Assassination, but tonight he was playing St. John to The Nightwatchman’s Messiah. “It feels like a Catholic White Mass in here,” he joked. It was met with smug laughter that sounded like crackling tinder. There was a union-hall energy to the place, so much so that before The Nightwatchman “rose from the crypt,” as Reilly put it, I remembered Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, who before receiving a sentimental Irish Nationalist speech thought, “Noble words coming. Look out.” 

The Nightwatchman is Tom Morello, the Harvard-educated, African-American lead guitar player for Rage Against the Machine, the great leftist metal band, and Audioslave, the great cash-in-your-chips all-star band. He’s earned a deserved reputation as an innovator by making his guitar sound like a hip-hop turntablist, making it scratch and squeal in ways never heard before (although since ceaselessly imitated). As The Nightwatchman however, he was touring an acoustic socialist protest album, twelve rebel songs in the tradition of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. The record is okay; Morello’s baritone evokes a young Leonard Cohen, and the music itself is straightforward and driving, but the lyrics can be laughably bad. For instance, on the title track, “One Man Revolution”: “On the streets of Havana/I got hugged and kissed/At the Playboy Mansion/I wasn't on the list.” So sad, Nightwatchman.

But live it’s a different deal. Live, the lyrics can chill; such as on “Flesh Shapes the Day: “Yeah, I support my troops/They wave black flags/They wear black masks.” And The Nightwatchman’s guitar is a powerful weapon (as he says in “Maximum Firepower”: “this machine here kills fascists too”). Even unplugged. He hits each chord with authority, malice even. The highlight was a nasty blues-guitar-and-harmonica version of Rage’s “Guerilla Radio,” and he had the nineteen-year-old kids in the pit pogo-ing to a hip-hop take on the “uncensored” version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

But ultimately, it was just too much. Standing there in the crowd, watching The Nightwatchman compare himself to Christ on at least five songs, watching the coffee shop kids raise their fists in solidarity as their leader urged them to take back the People’s Republic of Minneapolis, well, it was hard to take seriously. It’s difficult to predict how long the collective rage could possibly last. The guy can definitely fire up a crowd and sell T-shirts, but once The Nightwatchman’s fans walk out of the club, once they’re outside of The Nightwatchman’s comfortable embrace . . . well, to paraphrase my favorite antifascist comic book: who’s watching for the watchman?

7.12.07: Beauty Is a Rare Thing at Illusion Theater

Illusion Theater’s Fresh Ink series of new plays is precisely what it says it is: an opportunity to see scripts in various stages of development, before the ink has had a chance to dry. Last night’s presentation of a new play by Marion McClinton, called Beauty Is a Rare Thing, was little more than a reading exercise, with nine actors arranged in a semicircle using scripts bound in black, three-ring binders. Stage directions were delivered by a narrator—“Shatterhand shoots Billy Shakes in the leg”—which, if the actor getting shot was sufficiently in character, might elicit a wince or a “Damn!” but not much more.

The “play” in such readings takes place almost entirely in the audience’s imagination, much the way it does when someone reads a book to you out loud. The difference is that the people doing the reading are professional actors who can infuse their characters with an astonishing amount of depth and nuance, even when they’re just sitting in a chair. Such performances are done primarily for the benefit of the playwright, who uses the experience to help him improve the script. From the audience’s point of view, the thrill is in getting to see a new play in the process of being born. The downside is that quite often freshly born plays aren’t any more aesthetically pleasing than newborn babies; they need to be cleaned up a bit before they’re any fun to watch.

Beauty Is a Rare Thing is about a man named Hercules, who was once the powerful and feared leader of a gang called the Maroons, an occupation that landed him in a hospital for the criminally insane for many years. At the beginning of the play, Hercules is released from the hospital, supposedly “cured,” and heads back to his old neighborhood to reconnect and make amends. Throughout the play it is revealed that Hercules has done a lot of reprehensible things in the past, including beat his mother with a whip, but now he is more interested in finding beauty and hope where he can. Unfortunately, the old neighborhood has slipped even farther into hell—so far that characters named Judas Caesar, Napolean, Medusa, the Queen of Sheba, and a shadowy figure called “the prophet,” are now running the show. The moral of the story, as Hercules discovers, is that beauty is particularly hard to find in places where people spend so much time shooting at one another.

What sort of play this will turn into is anyone’s guess. Sometimes it’s necessary to sift through the grit to find the gold, and in last night’s performance it shone most brightly in Tracie Thoms as Medusa, a defiant, go-it-alone female boxer trying to pull herself out of the muck by holding onto a dream of fame and fortune as a singer. Thoms is better known as detective Kat Miller on the TV series Cold Case, and she has also appeared recently in The Devil Wears Prada, as well as the Quentin Tarantino half of Grindhouse. McClinton has cast her in a number of his New York projects, and it’s not hard to see why. The woman oozes talent, even in a reading, and it was a gesture of her respect and admiration for McClinton that she made the trip here at all. Whatever McClinton ends up doing with this script, he's bound to reserve a spot for Thoms. Talent like hers is a rare thing too, and McClinton clearly knows it. She’s only in town for a few more nights, though, so catch her while you can.

Beauty Is a Rare Thing plays July 13 & 14 at 8 p.m., and July 15 at 7 p.m., at Illusion Theater.

7.7.07: Prince at Target Center

After I came down from my high from seeing Prince at Macy’s, at 8:30 we headed over to Target Center. We were confident he wouldn’t take the stage at the published 8:30 start, but you can’t imagine the scene we encountered as we walked down 6th Street. First Avenue was closed off—and nearing 9 p.m. the doors to Target Center hadn’t yet opened. All I could do was laugh. It reminded us of a similar scene in downtown St. Paul years ago when Prince also kept the fans at bay. Only Prince can get away with this in his hometown.

The music finally started at 10 with the song Macy’s originally asked him to play at their place—"Purple Rain." What often becomes an encore song was his out-of-the-gate hit. I looked at my husband halfway through the song when I realized that's Wendy. There is no mistaking that stance, those guitar moves. Even in the shadows, Wendy Melvoin was at his side. Wow, first Sheila E. at Macy’s, now Wendy Melvoin at Target Center. Could there be a Revolution in the air?

Prince went on to lead the band through "Take Me With You," followed by the new "Guitar" (which I can’t get out of my head today). By 10:30, Prince told the crowd to "Call the babysitter, 'cause it’s gonna be a long night." (Thankfully, we had already arranged for our sitter to spend the night.)

The next hour and a half was filled with what I didn’t expect—pop hits from the past and, as Prince said, he got “old school, y’all.” We got some of my favorites: "7," "Do Me Baby," and "I Wanna Be Your Lover" (pretty much Prince solo on the keyboard), "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "Nothing Compares 2 U," and (OK, I could go home right now) "Sometimes It Snows in April." His acoustic set with Wendy ("Little Red Corvette," "Raspberry Beret") was like a gift.

Though I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, I missed not hearing more from Musicology and 3121—there's some kickass music on those two albums. Some complained that he didn’t give us the whole song when he played many of his hits—I quickly reminded them that Prince had once vowed on one of his tours that it was the last time he would perform his hits. I wonder if by playing only portions of them he is keeping his word.

It was a great show, but I do miss those days when Prince danced, shimmied, and gave us that signature funky footwork. That was another era that is still a part of the aura that fills the arena, though he commands the stage in a new way these days. (Those phenomenal dancing twin sisters help fill the gap of crazy moves that we no longer get from his majesty.) There is something at peace about him. He doesn’t have anything to prove. The music and legacy speak for themselves. And for fans like me, whose Prince concert stubs have climbed into the double digits, we know what we have experienced, and that this is the Prince of today.

Sheila E. eventually joined the stage for the final leg of the show. There is a history with those two that is unmatched. Her moxie and stage presence make her the perfect princess to our Prince. There aren’t many that can tell Prince “now we’re in my house” and get away with it. She also knows exactly how to work the crowd and get them going in that old-time Revolution way (think Sign O’ the Times—Live). That he ended his show with Sheila belting out "Glamorous Life" and then a get-the-funk-out solo was perhaps Prince telling us something about his respect for her. The stage went dark . . . there was a moment of anticipation . . . and then the house lights went on. We all knew he was already on his way across the street for his historical return to First Avenue. It was after midnight, and Prince’s night was likely just getting started.

7.7.07: Prince at Macy’s Auditorium

My Ultimate Prince Xperience began near the front of the media line at Macy’s. The crowd was surprisingly mellow. I imagined more Prince chatter from this bunch. But then it dawned on me—these folks have all been in line with each other for hours. And they also shared a line about a month ago when they gathered to get the Prince package in the first place. As usual, the true Prince fans—especially the females—always dress for the occasion. I guess I fall into the same camp. I wouldn’t think of wearing jeans to see his highness. C’mon, this is a dapper guy. A man of musical style and high style. He’s graced the cover of Esquire. He’s appeared in a Versace print campaign. He is Couture with a capital C. I saw one woman who either made, or had made, a black dress with purple trim, cut so low in the back that it revealed the famous Prince glyph at the base of her spine.

Prince took the Macy’s stage an hour late. Again, no surprise. The PA system kept us on our toes with a variety of Prince and eighties music, including a little Michael Jackson. I couldn’t help but think, And Michael thought he was the king of pop. I guess Prince has shown who had the staying power.

We took our spot just a person or two from the stage. I had eyed that telltale Sheila E. drum kit instantly and navigated my position at this standing-room-only event. Lately Prince has been more apt to turn his stage over to other musicians, so it wasn't too surprising when the Macy’s gig started out with a killer three-piece horn section filling the eighth floor auditorium with “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Then the smoking-hot Sheila E. came to the stage in a shimmering gold minidress reminiscent of J-Lo (frankly, I find Sheila more intriguing). Watching her obliterate the drums—standing in three-inch heels—is a rite of passage. I have seen her many times, including at Glamorama a few years ago, and she always blows the crowd away.

So the question was, What seven songs would Prince play? I had two guesses on what he would start with. He started with one of them ("3121") and ended with the other ("Let’s Go Crazy"). When he gave a shout out to Minneapolis, I couldn't help but glow. People around the world know of this place, Minneapolis, because of hearing Prince belt it out in songs over the years. To his international fans there is a mystical place called Paisley Park in a mystical land called Minneapolis. Kind of cracks me up. The lineup continued with "Girls and Boys" (from Parade), Sheila’s "A Love Bizarre" (Prince sang backup on the original 1985 song), "Get on the Boat" (3121), back at Sheila E. with "Glamorous Life" (from the album of the same name), "Take Me With You" (Purple Rain), and the super gnarly "Guitar" (from his forthcoming album). He then turned the spotlight onto one of his backup singers, who cranked out a rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy." Followed, of course, by Purple Rain's "Let’s Go Crazy."

Prince looked perfectly coifed—as always. Precision-cut white suit, black shirt, major bling cufflinks, and a black and white ascot. Oh, and white, heeled boots. Not as high as back in the day, but pimp nonetheless.

We left Macy’s on a major high. I think that was my fourteenth time seeing him live. The third being that close. I don’t feel so bad now that I haven’t made the trek to Vegas to see him. The auditorium show was very special, and the crowd was a Minneapolis who’s who. I gave a nod to the mayor—I’m sure RT has seen Prince at First Avenue. And I wish I could have been in Myron Johnson’s head as the Ballet of Dolls creative director and choreographer watched the twin sister backup dancers. I can’t even explain the moves and grooves these sisters throw out. As well as the hundreds of other fans who I knew were backed-up behind me basking in the purple reign.

7.6.07: Girl Friday's Our Town at Minneapolis Theatre Garage

Girl Friday Productions' Our Town is as unadorned and lovely as its characters. Director Craig Johnson follows the blueprint for Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece to a T, using a minimal set, sound effects instead of musical instruments and animals, and direct audience address—and for the most part does well by it.

Our Town is the story of the people who live in Grover’s Corners, a small town in New Hampshire, at the turn of the century. Over the course of three acts and the passing of twelve years, the characters present for the audience ostensibly quotidian moments in their lives. The play focuses on two neighboring families, the Gibbs and the Webbs. These families' respective children, George and Emily, go from friends to class leaders and, finally, to husband and wife.

Jenny Hollingsworth Kathman does a more-than-serviceable job as Emily Webb, nailing her sweet intelligence and optimism in the first two acts. Ian Miller as George Gibbs is a delight to watch. His sense of playfulness and yearning are endearing. Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs, portrayed by Bob Malos and Kirby Bennett, make a fine pair. Bennett brings an understated dignity to her role as George’s mother. Her counterpart, Mrs. Webb, is played by Heather Stone, who hasn’t quite figured out how to balance humor with drama and chews the pantomimed scenery from time to time. Johnson’s choice to divide the lines of the Stage Manager (as written, the narrator of the play) among the ensemble defuses and detracts from the storylines, and is just plain confusing. (Photo, above, back: John Middleton as Editor Webb, Jenny Hollingworth Kathman as Emily Webb. Front: Heather Stone as Mrs. Webb, Collan Simmons as Wally Webb. Photo, Richard Fleischman.)

The disquieting third act deals with Emily’s death and the universe at large—a daunting topic if ever there was one—and this is where Kathman, who has one of the most famous speeches in the play, struggles the most. Emily’s life-after-death experience is supposed to be a time of revelation—“Do human beings ever live life while they live it?” she asks—but Kathman doesn’t grasp the full meaning of the text. This doesn’t take too much power away from Our Town as a great work of art, but it does prevent this production from reaching its full potential.

In the play, there’s a character who addresses an envelope: “Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, North America, the Western Hemisphere, Earth, the Solar System, the Universe, the mind of God.” The postman delivers it, anyway. Girl Friday’s moving production, despite its missteps, delivers too. Go.

Our Town runs through July 28 at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage.

7.3.07: The Police at Xcel Energy Center

The Police at Xcel last night will be one of those shows that I talk about for years. Was it the best concert of my life? No. But there was something about seeing Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland, and Sting playing live all of that incredible music that brought full circle the impact of The Police on my life and the past thirty years of popular culture.

We literally were running in the doors of the X when they took the stage. I yelled to my husband who was still a half a block away, “We’re missing 'Message in a Bottle!' ” Our foursome took our $227-a-piece seats—or shall I say we took our spots, since we never sat down the entire show. Next came "Synchronicity," followed by back-to-back-to back hit after hit after hit. I had forgotten how many hits that band had. (Hey, a lot of years of passed since those chart-topping days.) Each time I thought, What else is there for them to play? they come at us with "Can’t Stand Losing You," or "King of Pain," or "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."

I heard the guy next to me say that he wished they’d throw in a B-side. There was only a moment or two that I thought the song I was hearing didn’t meet the expectation of how I know the song to sound. "Don’t Stand So Close to Me" was one of those. But I was there as a fan, not a music critic. I was wrapped in the memories of those songs and when they first entered my life. I had flashbacks of the kids in my high school that were into The Police. I was in high school from 1979 to 1982. To me, The Police were punk. The kids who were a bit more on the fringe were listening to that music. But it was around me. At parties. I eventually became a fan of New Wave music. That’s the thing about The Police—they not only launched their music, their sound, into our pop culture—The Police launched Sting. I’ve seen Sting twice before. I’ve always loved his sound. That voice. But he can come across as pretty cocky. I appreciated last night that it wasn’t about Sting. It wasn’t a Sting concert—it was a Police concert. The stage was pretty stripped down. The power trio was the focal point. Stewart Copeland is a legendary egomaniac. It didn’t show, and frankly I don’t care. When I watched him in such control of the percussion, that signature sound, I was mesmerized. Andy Summers is one of those steady rock and roll guitar players that pretty much stands there and does his thing. He knows most eyes are on that bass-playing vocalist.

Which of course bring me to Sting. I’m a chick, so I’m gonna go there. Sting is hot. He is so f-ing cool, I can’t stand it. I’ll restrain myself from going on and on about that fitted shirt. That toned body. Those military-style pants tucked into his combat boots. He is a rock star. (We did get a chuckle that Sting introduced Andy and Stewart, but no one introduced Sting. Apparently, the man needs no introduction.)

I rocked out so hard that I dropped $80 on a Police concert T-shirt. But it was worth it. These guys are rock and roll legends.

6.30.07: 1776 at the Guthrie

The opening moments of the musical 1776 are punctuated with the explosion of gunfire. It’s the sound of General George Washington’s undersized army of teenagers and old men fending off the British, and an exciting way to start a play about the birthing of the Declaration of Independence.

1776 is about the twenty-one men in the Continental Congress, whose bickering and lollygagging could have been, by all rights, nothing more than a dramatized history lesson of the kind one is forced to watch in grade school while throwing spitballs—but playwright Peter Stone and composer and lyricist Sherman Edwards don’t let that happen. More than anything, the play is about the idiosyncrasies of the men behind the famous document, and the fervent belief that the American spirit used to stand for something noble.

Director John Miller-Stephany keeps the set simple and wisely focuses on the actors, all of whom deserve high praise. Bostonian John Adams, “obnoxious and disliked” by pretty much everybody, is played with likeable irascibility by Michael Thomas Holmes. The Gout-ridden Benjamin Franklin is fond of quoting himself and napping during debates. Peter Michael Goetz’s good-natured interpretation is a hoot. Richard White has a show-stopping number as Richard Henry Lee called “The Lees Of Old Virginia.” Thomas Jefferson is played with brooding, taciturn grit by newcomer Tyson Forbes. There are other standouts as well: Bradley Greenwald, as South Carolina’s representative Edward Rutledge, sings an aria called “Molasses To Rum,” about Rutledge’s opposition to abolishing slavery. Greenwald performs it magnificently, even if the song does feel like an apologetic insertion by the authors. Lee Mark Nelson gives a skillfully nuanced performance as John Dickinson, the one delegate who refused to sign.

The play is bookended by two images: the seditious political cartoon of a snake cut into eight segments with the phrase “Join, or Die” printed beneath it, and the reenactment of the delegates as they sign the Declaration, their signatures highlighted above them (image courtesy T. Charles Erickson). Never has the phrase “John Hancock” been demonstrated so poignantly on the American stage.

1776 runs through August 26 at the Guthrie Theater.