The Handmaid’s Tale

also: Margaret Atwood on MPR’s Talking Volumes
Fitzgerald Theater, May 8

You most likely know Margaret Atwood from her chilling 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the book that made her modern literature’s prophetess of feminist and ecological doom. It was made into a rather dull film in 1990, but the story’s lately found new life in a surprising new medium—opera. Adapted by Danish composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley, the all-singing Handmaid’s Tale gets its North American premiere here this month in a staging by the Minnesota Opera. This is a major new work with a chorus of international acclaim and sellout crowds behind it, and we’re privileged to have it debut in our town. (If that’s not enough reason to see it, know that there’s a scene where the heroine and villain play a game of Scrabble. Sheer drama!) May 6 will also see the publication of Atwood’s 11th novel, Oryx and Crake. It’s a highly readable, often disturbing vision of humanity engineering its own destruction; it follows a pathetic figure named Snowman, maybe the last human on Earth, who fights to survive among gene-spliced mutants in the post-apocalyptic wastelands and broods over his role in the disasters that befell mankind. Atwood talks with MPR’s Katherine Lanpher about the opera and her own work in a live radio broadcast at the Fitzgerald May 8. Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, (651) 224-4222, ordway.org

Theater: Perfect Crime
Jungle Theater, through June 15
At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could be retitled Dial I For Incomprehensible. But as the man said, 50,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Perfect Crime’s perfect attendance happens for a reason—namely, its terrifically watchable and funny villain, the casually domineering femme fatale Margaret Thorne Brent. It’s a juicy role, and the Jungle’s Jodee Theleen sinks her teeth into it, playing Margaret as a self-absorbed empress for whom contempt is so second-nature that she can’t stop launching her brutally dry barbs of sarcasm even when she’s seducing their target. If you want a good reason to commit to Crime, her performance is it. Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., (612) 822-7063, www.jungletheater.com

Theater: The Sound of Music
Chanhassen Dinner Theater, opens May 30
This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices of probability density functions?” And instead of cute kids singing about does and deers and stuff, a dozen pale grouchy mathematicians hunched silently at their desks, scribbling furiously to solve the problem before the others and thus gain tenure at M.I.T. There was no singing, and the only line of dialogue was “quit hogging the pencil sharpener.” And would you believe they were forced to rewrite this to make it more commercial? At any rate, Chanhassen will be staging the much better-known “real” version, with the singing and the Von Trapps and the Edelweiss and everything. CDT, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen, (952) 934-1525, www.chanhassentheatres.com

Restaurants: Red Fish Blue
1681 Grand Ave., St. Paul
(651) 699-6595
Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to nail up kitschy lobster traps and plastic octopi everywhere. The presentation is also very impressive—your meal will look beautiful, though the food itself may not be anything particularly revelatory. Our recent lunch visit consisted of the generously meaty and flavorful crab cakes and the zingy open-faced rib sandwich topped with sesame-orange slaw. Neither was a world-changing culinary event, but we’d definitely return and order them again with pleasure.


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