Year: 2007

The kora looks a bit like a prize-winning pumpkin speared by a tree branch, but this twenty-one-string gourd sings like a harp or a lute, depending on how it’s coaxed, and its romantic trill underpins the urgent rhythms of traditional Malian music. There’s only one kora player as good as Toumani Diabaté, and that’s his dad, Sidiki Diabaté. (The family’s musical lineage stretches back an awe-inspiring seventy-one generations.) But it’s the younger Toumani who has taken this uniquely African sound to the rest of the world, collaborating with an array of folks, including Blur’s Damon Albarn, the flamenco group Ketama, blues master Taj Mahal, and the late Ali Farka Touré, with whom he won a 2005 Grammy. With his band, the Symmetric Orchestra, the Dakota’s room temperature should climb at least twenty degrees. 1010 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; www.dakotacooks.com

Find out for yourself whether this play, which piqued the ire of Strib columnist Katherine Kersten and conservative bloggers all around town, is worth the fuss. The Pope and the Witch tells the story of a fictional pontiff who, under extenuating circumstances, starts running with a witch doctor who dabbles in abortion and drugs. But beyond the inflammatory synopsis is an acclaimed political satire by Dario Fo, the Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright who raided the arsenals of commedia dell’arte, puppetry, and clowning in imagining this absurdist softening of the papal dogma. Robert Rosen—Theatre de la Jeune Lune co-founder, French-educated clown, and master of physical theater—directs. University Department of Theater Arts & Dance at Rarig Center, 330 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-624-2345; www.theater.umn.edu www.theater.umn.edu

Though Jeune Lune dubbed its current season “Mozart and Molière,” this reprise is the only one drawing from both artists. By marrying Molière’s Don Juan to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, both of which were inspired by the legendary Spanish character, this show imagines a pair of lady-killers driving cross-country in a 1950 Plymouth coupe. Dominique Serrand, the troupe’s unmistakably Gallic artistic director, gets behind the wheel of the Molière character while baritone-about-town Bradley Greenwald hugs the corners of Mozart’s famous arias—not to mention a pair of gorgeous sopranos who spend the production draped across the hot rod’s hood. It all adds up to the sexiest close-up opera since Jeune Lune’s 2004 production of Carmen. 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org www.jeunelune.org

For its next trick, Ballet of the Dolls pairs some hot and sweaty stage antics with Cajun and early Zydeco music. The he-Dolls will dress down for this occasion, donning muscle shirts and cut-off jean shorts, while the ballerinas are set to prance about in satin slips. But just as country music evolved into a more commercially packaged and manicured art form, so too does this spectacle. As the evening proceeds, the tone shifts to match the glamorous key of Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton—a canny move that allows the Dolls to get out their boas—and, eventually, contemporary country hits from Toby Keith to Shania Twain and Brooks & Dunn. 345 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 651-209-6689; www.ticketworks.com/ritz

Minnesota Opera’s production of The Grapes of Wrath last month invited comparisons to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, as does this new production by another, smaller local company. Is a trend afoot? Lost in the Stars is a jazzy American opus calling for a largely black cast, though its composer is Kurt Weill, better known for his collaborations with poet and epic dramatist Bertolt Brecht; its lyrics were penned by the comparatively earnest Maxwell Anderson. Adapted from the angry 1948 study of South African apartheid Cry, the Beloved Country, Anderson’s thin libretto has drawn plenty of criticism since the opera’s 1949 premiere. The opera as a whole has stood the test of time, thanks to Weill’s mournful score rooted in African American music. 345 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 651-209-6689; www.ticketworks.com/ritz

Pop culture has always played a huge role in Jonathan Lethem’s invented—and wildly inventive—world. He’s sort of the house DJ for a stable of like-minded contemporary writers, offering deft literary mash-ups of science fiction, hard-boiled detective stories, magical realism, and comic-book mythology. Lethem’s first novel since 2003’s Fortress of Solitude is a bit of a departure, at least from a geographical standpoint; set in Los Angeles rather than the author’s usual Brooklyn stomping grounds, You Don’t Love Me Yet is a comic novel steeped in the world of alternative rock, hipster drones, and the culture of complaint. While early reviews have called it slight, at least by Lethem standards, we’re betting it’s still a whole lot more readable than most of the other stuff clogging the new-arrivals section at Barnes & Noble.

Some of our best storytellers served childhood apprenticeships sitting at the feet of master raconteurs. Rick Bragg’s familial memoirs—1997’s All Over but the Shoutin’ and 2001’s Ava’s Man—are nothing if not evidence of one such early initiation to the oral tradition. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his “elegantly written” New York Times features, Bragg’s résumé is impressive, though not without scandal: In 2003 he resigned from the Times after controversy arose concerning his use of unacknowledged stringers. Regarding his ability to spin a yarn, however, there is no question regarding his sources. Raised in the foothills of the Appalachians, Bragg says of his family, “They taught me, on a thousand front porch nights, as a million jugs passed from hand to hand, how to tell a story.” A million jugs? Apparently one thing Bragg learned from his forebears was the value of hyperbole. 1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins; 651-209-6799; www.hclib.com www.hclib.com

We’ve long suspected that Kurt Andersen is a fictional character, or rather, a consortium of writers and raconteurs doing business as Zeitgeist, Inc. How else to explain this purported Kurt Andersen’s cutting-edge sensibilities and sheer ubiquity? Surely no one man could juggle so many chain saws. According to the bio that accompanies Heyday, his latest doorstop of a novel, Andersen was the co-founder of Spy magazine, currently hosts a Peabody Award-winning public radio program (Studio 360), writes a column for New York magazine, and previously did stints as a columnist for both the New Yorker and Time. Somehow he occasionally finds the time to write novels like Heyday, a broad historical tale of “America’s coming of age” in the mid-nineteenth century. Did we mention that said novels are long? They are. Very long.

Joe Boyd had his fingers in all sorts of music-history pies. While still in his early twenties and freshly graduated from Harvard, he served as Muddy Waters’ tour manager. Then, when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, it was a young Boyd who performed the fateful (and, some would claim, sacrilegious) task of plugging in the guitar. He later went on to produce records for, among others, Nick Drake, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, REM, 10,000 Maniacs, and Billy Bragg. He even produced soundtracks for films—most notably, for A Clockwork Orange. But it was the 1960s folk scene that left the deepest impression on Boyd’s character. In his recently released autobiography, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, Boyd not only captures his own experiences, but also paints portraits of many of the other key players of the era and ponders the consequences of white folks’ appropriation of black people’s music. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

In what many will call a “searing drama,” a dentist rekindles his friendship with a college classmate who lost his wife and child in the September 11th attacks. Don Cheadle plays Alan, a stable fellow who, like his suffering pal Charlie, has lost something of himself on the road to success. The two men play guitars, go to bars, and enjoy a variety of touching moments with one another. All sounds good—but wait … Is that Adam Sandler as the tragic Charlie? Indeed! And yet another manic comedian (predecessors include Jerry Lewis, Robin Williams, and Jim Carrey) tries to bribe tears and understanding from his followers. An almost-guaranteed craptacular.