Pittsburgh, ain't it purty?
Love to the Shiver Cities,
K
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Homecoming.... Is Coming!
So, as many of you know, I have been away from the Shiver Cities for a few months, stretching my Midwestern wings out east in Pittsburgh, PA.
It has been a FABULOUS time out here, but in a few weeks, it will be time to come home - back to the Shiver Cities! Once I'm home, I'll be back in action blogging about listening, looking, learning, Eating, drinking, acting, living, and loving in the Twin Cities. I look forward to hearing from you all again and returning to somewhere where the snow actually collects on the ground!
Love to the Shiver Cities,
K
Love to the Shiver Cities,
K
Friday, May 7, 2010
I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf? Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, early in the morning.....
This little ditty, which starts out as an attempt to remember funnier times, becomes, over the course of a few hours, the haunting theme song of some of the most despicable and tragic characters to ever grace the stage. In Edward Albee's seminal play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, now going on at The Jungle theater in Uptown Minneapolis, the play's three-hour duration simply flies by. Who can think about time, or anything else outside the darkened theater for that matter, when the lives of four people are being eviscerated on the stage in front of you?
It is perhaps the most violent play I've ever seen, and yet there is never a drop of blood spilled. Daggers are thrown verbally between each character, hitting their mark each time, and every highball glass that is strewn around Bain Behlke's fitting set might as well have been one part gin, two parts arsenic, because with every drink the audience can see what is left of Albee's tragic characters slipping away.
It would not suffice to call The Jungle's production "astounding." The magnificent mounting of the play, spearheaded by Bain Behlke and starring Michelle Barber, Stephen Yoakum, Sean Michael Dooley (filling in for Sean Neely, who was sidelined due to a medical emergency), and Jane Froiland, was sickening, and also one of the BEST I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.
The play, written by Albee in 1962, takes place between 2 a.m. and dawn at the home of George (Yoakam) and Martha (Barber), a middle-aged married couple who have invited young newcomers Nick (Dooley) and Honey (Froiland) over for a drink after a faculty mixer put on by Martha's father, the president of the university the men teach at. Over the next few hours, George and Martha succeed in plunging to new lows in their own volatile relationship while pulling Honey and Nick down with them. This is not to say that the rift created between Honey and Nick is solely because of the older couple's actions: in the production, Behlke succeeds in showing the audience that although Nick and Honey seem naive, happy, and fresh-faced when they walk in George and Martha's door, there is almost as much bubbling under the surface of their relationship as there is with the other pair - who spend half the production verbally abusing one another.
The play is scathingly funny, and despite the relationship bloodbath that is in progress, the talented actors managed to draw a laugh out of the audience whenever Albee's intelligent dialogue called for it. Speaking of the talent of the play's cast, it would be wholly unfair not to recognize what REALLY had me on the edge of my seat for three hours: Stephen Yoakam and Michelle Barber. I have never had the pleasure of seeing either of these Twin Cities mainstays in action before, and after seeing their work in Virginia Woolf, I feel I have been cheating myself from the best of what our fair cities have to offer. Barber was both frail and vulnerable and a legitimate ball-crusher at many times throughout the play. Where many actors would have failed at their attempt to exude Martha's scathing wit and callousness, Barber was able to use her physical presence and vocal authority to bring each and every verbal bitch-slap to life. She was as believable as they come - which she was able to do in no small part because of the believability that Albee infused into the play's intense and never-ending dialogue. The characters speak as if they were having a real conversation - something that may seem obvious, but that few scripts or screenplays are able to actually accomplish.
As George, Stephen Yoakam was able to transition perfectly and timely through each and every phase his character visits throughout the night. It is difficult to play one character, much less several throughout a play - and although George remained George, Yoakam was sure to keep his portrayal of the washed-up historian in exactly the spot he needed to be at exactly the right time. If ever someone had a perfect voice for the stage, it is Yoakam. If at any point in the show I became distracted, it was because I was concentrating too hard on how Yoakam delivered his lines - to someone with a musical affinity like mine, it was a joy to listen to.
Not to call out the two lead actors specifically, because Sean Dooley and Jane Froiland did a fantastic job in their own right. Dooley played Nick as the curious youngster - attracted to Martha, nay, anything with breasts, while both physically shunning his own wife and being hyper-aware of anything that came out of her mouth at the same time. Dooley shone in the part, and his natural affinity with Albee's lines and their directed delivery (lines he had less than one week to learn, mind you) was impressive. Although Froiland occasionally became cartoonish in her portrayal of Honey, she succeeded beautifully in following Honey through the many stages her character visits after she has a few glasses of brandy and the ugly side of her relationship with Nick. Although Albee only hints at it in his dialogue, Froiland also succeeds in bringing attention to a dimension of Honey that many Virginia Woolf audiences never get to see - her probable history of sexual abuse, when, wide-eyed and fear-stricken, Honey drunkenly believes she is somewhere else, in a memory where she screams "I don't want to anymore, get away."
The Jungle's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is theater at its best, and the entire cast, crew, and the production staff deserve the credit they clearly worked very hard for. I encourage everyone to go see it for themselves - and to leave some time after the play for decompression and thought about this pivotal work in American theater, done, I believe, how Edward Albee would have wished.
For more information, and tickets, go to The Jungle's website.
-K
This little ditty, which starts out as an attempt to remember funnier times, becomes, over the course of a few hours, the haunting theme song of some of the most despicable and tragic characters to ever grace the stage. In Edward Albee's seminal play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, now going on at The Jungle theater in Uptown Minneapolis, the play's three-hour duration simply flies by. Who can think about time, or anything else outside the darkened theater for that matter, when the lives of four people are being eviscerated on the stage in front of you?
It is perhaps the most violent play I've ever seen, and yet there is never a drop of blood spilled. Daggers are thrown verbally between each character, hitting their mark each time, and every highball glass that is strewn around Bain Behlke's fitting set might as well have been one part gin, two parts arsenic, because with every drink the audience can see what is left of Albee's tragic characters slipping away.
It would not suffice to call The Jungle's production "astounding." The magnificent mounting of the play, spearheaded by Bain Behlke and starring Michelle Barber, Stephen Yoakum, Sean Michael Dooley (filling in for Sean Neely, who was sidelined due to a medical emergency), and Jane Froiland, was sickening, and also one of the BEST I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.
The play, written by Albee in 1962, takes place between 2 a.m. and dawn at the home of George (Yoakam) and Martha (Barber), a middle-aged married couple who have invited young newcomers Nick (Dooley) and Honey (Froiland) over for a drink after a faculty mixer put on by Martha's father, the president of the university the men teach at. Over the next few hours, George and Martha succeed in plunging to new lows in their own volatile relationship while pulling Honey and Nick down with them. This is not to say that the rift created between Honey and Nick is solely because of the older couple's actions: in the production, Behlke succeeds in showing the audience that although Nick and Honey seem naive, happy, and fresh-faced when they walk in George and Martha's door, there is almost as much bubbling under the surface of their relationship as there is with the other pair - who spend half the production verbally abusing one another.
The play is scathingly funny, and despite the relationship bloodbath that is in progress, the talented actors managed to draw a laugh out of the audience whenever Albee's intelligent dialogue called for it. Speaking of the talent of the play's cast, it would be wholly unfair not to recognize what REALLY had me on the edge of my seat for three hours: Stephen Yoakam and Michelle Barber. I have never had the pleasure of seeing either of these Twin Cities mainstays in action before, and after seeing their work in Virginia Woolf, I feel I have been cheating myself from the best of what our fair cities have to offer. Barber was both frail and vulnerable and a legitimate ball-crusher at many times throughout the play. Where many actors would have failed at their attempt to exude Martha's scathing wit and callousness, Barber was able to use her physical presence and vocal authority to bring each and every verbal bitch-slap to life. She was as believable as they come - which she was able to do in no small part because of the believability that Albee infused into the play's intense and never-ending dialogue. The characters speak as if they were having a real conversation - something that may seem obvious, but that few scripts or screenplays are able to actually accomplish.
As George, Stephen Yoakam was able to transition perfectly and timely through each and every phase his character visits throughout the night. It is difficult to play one character, much less several throughout a play - and although George remained George, Yoakam was sure to keep his portrayal of the washed-up historian in exactly the spot he needed to be at exactly the right time. If ever someone had a perfect voice for the stage, it is Yoakam. If at any point in the show I became distracted, it was because I was concentrating too hard on how Yoakam delivered his lines - to someone with a musical affinity like mine, it was a joy to listen to.
Not to call out the two lead actors specifically, because Sean Dooley and Jane Froiland did a fantastic job in their own right. Dooley played Nick as the curious youngster - attracted to Martha, nay, anything with breasts, while both physically shunning his own wife and being hyper-aware of anything that came out of her mouth at the same time. Dooley shone in the part, and his natural affinity with Albee's lines and their directed delivery (lines he had less than one week to learn, mind you) was impressive. Although Froiland occasionally became cartoonish in her portrayal of Honey, she succeeded beautifully in following Honey through the many stages her character visits after she has a few glasses of brandy and the ugly side of her relationship with Nick. Although Albee only hints at it in his dialogue, Froiland also succeeds in bringing attention to a dimension of Honey that many Virginia Woolf audiences never get to see - her probable history of sexual abuse, when, wide-eyed and fear-stricken, Honey drunkenly believes she is somewhere else, in a memory where she screams "I don't want to anymore, get away."
The Jungle's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is theater at its best, and the entire cast, crew, and the production staff deserve the credit they clearly worked very hard for. I encourage everyone to go see it for themselves - and to leave some time after the play for decompression and thought about this pivotal work in American theater, done, I believe, how Edward Albee would have wished.
For more information, and tickets, go to The Jungle's website.
-K
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Single Greatest Succession of Photos Ever
Many of you already know that even before she came back into the America's consciousness after her 2010 Super Bowl Snickers commercial, I have always loved Betty White. She's spunky, graceful, and incredibly hilarious - from Golden Girls to appearances as senile elderly ladies on my all-time favorite show Scrubs, she's fabulous. Not only is she hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th, but she's back stronger than ever in paparazzi-land as well, proving that showing her face can bring some serious publicity to wherever she happens to be.
This week, she showed up for the opening of a new hot dog joint in Universal City and chowed down on her namesake dog, the no-fixins "Naked" Betty White hotdog. What follows is possibly the greatest work of photojournalism I have ever seen. EVER. Happy Monday, all.
This week, she showed up for the opening of a new hot dog joint in Universal City and chowed down on her namesake dog, the no-fixins "Naked" Betty White hotdog. What follows is possibly the greatest work of photojournalism I have ever seen. EVER. Happy Monday, all.
-K
Sunday, April 11, 2010
When Local Music Made Love: GAYNGS
Ear-Candy Cocktail
This year is certainly turning out to be a bright one musically. The most recent addition to this spring's music goodness is a new project by, well, a s#*t ton of local and regional artists (and some out-staters), called GAYNGS. The project, which will be releasing their first album, Relayted, on May 11, includes members of Bon Iver, Megafaun, Lookbook, and Solid Gold, as well as P.O.S., Dessa, Michael Lewis (Andrew Bird's sax player), and many more. The hype alone could sell their record, but as happenstance would have it, the music always brings it home, and no matter how many pretty faces have shown up to be a part of Gayngs, the sound coming out of their first two released tracks, "The Gaudy Side of Town," and "Faded High," is what will have me lining up at the record store in a few weeks.Additionally, they will be playing two shows at (surprise surprise) First Avenue on May 14, one at 5pm and one at 10.
Here's a first listen of the two released tracks on Myspace.
-K
Friday, April 9, 2010
Head's Up!: Basilica Block Party
Summer is almost here! Well, sort of- it is certainly in sight, anyways. With summer comes a wealth of opportunity and, if you're lucky enough to live here in the Twin Cities, it means it is outdoor concert season.
Aside from The Current's Rock the Garden show (lineup not announced yet, sorry folks!), there are countless other gigs happening this summer that have been announced already, including the amazing Basilica Block Party over at the Basilica of St. Mary in Loring neighborhood.
The Block Party is heading into its 16th year, and they are doing it with a little help from some very talented friends, including Spoon, Weezer, The Avett Brothers, and Ingrid Michaelson, to name a few. I find it incredibly amusing that I rave about Spoon's show last weekend as First Ave and recommend that everyone try and see them if they get the chance because, well, here's your chance! The lineup isn't even finalized yet, but those are the headliners, with more band slots to be filled soon. I had a feeling Spoon would come back soon - we gave them a damn good showing last Friday and Saturday at First Ave, and they gave us some damn good concerts in return.
The block party spans over two days, July 9 and 10, and tickets go on sale this Saturday at 10am at Electric Fetus or on Ticketmaster. For more info, click this link.
Hope to see you there!
-K
Aside from The Current's Rock the Garden show (lineup not announced yet, sorry folks!), there are countless other gigs happening this summer that have been announced already, including the amazing Basilica Block Party over at the Basilica of St. Mary in Loring neighborhood.
The Block Party is heading into its 16th year, and they are doing it with a little help from some very talented friends, including Spoon, Weezer, The Avett Brothers, and Ingrid Michaelson, to name a few. I find it incredibly amusing that I rave about Spoon's show last weekend as First Ave and recommend that everyone try and see them if they get the chance because, well, here's your chance! The lineup isn't even finalized yet, but those are the headliners, with more band slots to be filled soon. I had a feeling Spoon would come back soon - we gave them a damn good showing last Friday and Saturday at First Ave, and they gave us some damn good concerts in return.
The block party spans over two days, July 9 and 10, and tickets go on sale this Saturday at 10am at Electric Fetus or on Ticketmaster. For more info, click this link.
Hope to see you there!
-K
Saturday, April 3, 2010
A Love Rekindled: Spoon Plays MPLS at First Ave
Minneapolis is special. I've always known this deep down in my heart-of-hearts, but when the band that was literally once named "top overall artist of the decade" decides to play two back-to-back shows in our dear city, one on the 40th anniversary of First Avenue, we've really got something to smile about. Best yet, I was lucky enough to have snagged a pair of tickets to see Spoon in their 21+ performance at First Ave last night (tonight's gig is 18+, also sold out, sorry folks!).
All I can say is "WOW." Spoon is a truly fantastic group. I've had an ongoing love affair with their music for many years, but there is really nothing to rekindle your devotion to a band's sound like seeing them live, hoping they play the songs you love, and screaming for them to come back for more once they have finally left the stage. I had to laugh because the girl standing near me at the show kept saying, dumbfounded over the music, "I can't believe it, they sound just like their recordings!" I wanted to tell her that unless a band sounds just as good as their album or better, they really aren't worth seeing, but I decided against it, figuring by her look of sheer delight, she already knew that she'd spent her money well, and so had I.
Despite running into the abysmal traffic situation that was the downtown area on the first night the Twins played at the new Target Field (cue me cursing loudly when we turned onto 1st Ave and right into traffic cops and road blockades), we managed to get to First Ave early enough to get a good spot in line. In another fortuitous turn of events, I also managed to snag a spot right up against the stage due to the people in front of me in line's inability to prioritize (standing spot first, then hit the bar) and I got to ogle Britt Daniel from two feet away and catch a glimpse of the set list at his feet (a set list that I later got to take home!)
It was an incredibly fulfilling show - the way concerts should be. The band's energy was high, the audience was involved but not invasive to the music, and between the show and the two encores of three songs each the band ended up playing (yeah, I screamed long and hard for those, even as others were giving up, damn straight) all of my favorite Spoon songs, even some of the more obscure, were played at peak performance. The sound was great, whoever did their lighting design was a genius, and Spoon held true to their tradition of creating a wholistic album by creating a nicely-planned concert in songs they chose to play, which spanned their entire career but seemed to all fit together perfectly. My personal favorite performance was "The Ghost of You Lingers" which had an almost eighties-esque Annie Lennox vibe that never would have come across on a recording, and it sounded great.
If any of you were at the show, give me a shout out, and for those of you who weren't, watch for another chance to see Spoon live, I promise it'll be worth it.
Britt, after it got too hot to wear leather anymore
More Britt, as I was right in front of him, it was
hard to get a good shot of many of the other band members!
The setlist, main show on the left,
with encore options upside-down on the right.
-K
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