Year: 2007

Cheating at Canasta is a marvelous, enviable title, and William Trevor is an astonishing, and astonishingly reliable, writer. Along with Alice Munro, he is also one of the living masters of the short story. That sort of thing usually sounds like so much hogwash, but in this instance it’s nothing but the plain truth. Even as he approaches eighty, Trevor continues to produce carefully crafted marvels that often whipsaw between deviance and devotion, or dereliction and disappointment, from one story to the next. His best tales are compact and powerful moral symphonies, and are so full of startling and often catastrophic disruptions and moments of exhausted grace that they seem as utterly believable as life.

Contemporary dance seems an unlikely vehicle for exploring our culture’s obsession with physical perfection, what with all the buff beauties prancing about. But that didn’t stop local choreographer Matthew Janczewski from assembling an impressive cast of collaborators to help realize his heartfelt, movement-based rebuke of superficiality—in fact, it’s his most ambitious project to date. The evening is set to the dissonant sounds of pioneering electronic music composer Morton Subotnick.

Direction is by Peter Rothstein, founder of Theatre Latte Da and director of the Guthrie’s recent production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. The result is a dance in three acts. The first is a baroque, very formal piece about keeping up appearances. The second, a dystopian vision called “Disco Technology,” deals in the false identities created for romantic pursuits (playwright Kira Obolensky lends a bogus online dating profile). And in the deconstructionist third act, the façade comes tumbling down.

Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600.

This is the first time a Sarah Ruhl play has been produced in the Twin Cities since the thirty-something hotshot’s Eurydice became the hit of Off-Broadway this summer. The Clean House is an earlier product of Ruhl’s fantastical imagination, and one with an important distinction from Eurydice: Even though it was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005, it drew divided criticism.

The New York Times raved raved, but The New Yorker’s theater critic smelled a stereotype in the play’s heroine, Matilde, a depressive Brazilian maid who loves wisecracking but doesn’t particularly relish housework. What follows, no matter what your thoughts on the Latina character, is a robust satire on labor relations: Matilde’s employer, a successful American doctor named Lane, goes so far as to feed her servant antidepressants. But Matilde despairs whenever distracted from her quest to form the perfect joke.

Mixed Blood Theater, 1501 S. Fourth St., Minneapolis; 612-338-6131.

The stalwarts at Rain Taxi once again put together this full day of lit love for the seventh annual TCBF, which is now firmly entrenched as an autumn tradition and a welcome respite from the paralyzing onslaught of seasonal affective disorder. Think of the day as a sort of Renaissance Festival for bibliomaniacs. You probably can’t get a turkey drumstick or a unicorn painted on your face, but there will be the usual convergence of writers, publishers, book artists, and used-book peddlers, as well as readings, discussions, and events for kids.

This year’s roster of authors includes novelists Chris Abani and Diane Williams, poets Laura Moriarty and Bin Ramke, and graphic novel writer/editor Andy Helfer.

Minneapolis Community and Technical College, 1501 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis.

The Old Testament’s most difficult book, the Book of Job, planted the seed of this new play. From the “unknowable nature of God” therein, which local playwright Alan Berks described as “one of the scariest things I can think of,” a new ghost story was born. Berks (who wrote the 2006 Fringe Festival hit, How To Cheat) also drew from more contemporary influences, such as the 1999 horror flick The Sixth Sense. But what makes this production doubly interesting is his collaboration with The Burning House Group. This foursome of physical performers is more often seen doing slapstick and nonlinear forms of movement theater. In this instance, both parties vow to combine old-fashioned narrative with clowning and choreography to create, from scratch, a frightful tale of a house with a mysterious, potentially haunted past.

Minneapolis Theater Garage, 711 W. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-623-9396.

Its 2006-07 season was chock full of chestnuts, but now, finally, Theatre de la Jeune Lune opens its new season with an original production. The Deception is an adaptation of Pierre de Marivaux’s La Fausse Suivante, a dark eighteenth-century French comedy in which a young woman disguises herself as a man so that she can better learn about her new love. On discovering his true nature, scheming, lying, and hilarity ensue. Adapted by artistic director Dominique Serrand and longtime collaborator/acting ace Steve Epp, The Deception premiered in California this summer to positive reviews, so count on classic Jeune Lune fare: a bold, stylish adaptation rendered with vigorously physical performances.

Theatre de la Jeune Lune, 105 N. First St., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200.

Before Stanley Kubrick dedicated himself to creating “serious” films that viewed humanity with a cold, clinical eye, he made The Killing (1956), a tense little noir about a racetrack heist. Sterling Hayden stars as the mastermind who sets the pot to boiling, and leads a cast of some of the best character actors ever to crawl out from under Hollywood’s rocks. Elisha Cook Jr. plays a henpecked husband whose mouth is his undoing.

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Horse-faced Timothy Carey and pro wrestler Kola Kwariani are on hand to add some needed color. Pulp novelist Jim Thompson’s dialogue is a model of hardboiled efficiency. And Kubrick’s editing, which fixed the piece into a nonlinear maze, went on to influence a number of filmmakers, most notably Quentin Tarantino.

Parkway Theatre, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030.

Cate Blanchett reprises her role as Elizabeth I, virginal queen of England. As usual there’s all sorts of innuendo about her hunger to get shagged by this or that prince or pirate. This time, England is under threat of Spanish invasion, and who should come to the queen’s aid but Clive Owen’s lusty Sir Walter Raleigh, eager to plunder both the Armada and her highness’s treasure chest (and we’re not talking doubloons here).

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The acting, as in the original Elizabeth, is robust and slightly silly; everyone appears to be on the verge of smirking. With the same strong production and costume design as the first Elizabeth, The Golden Age should be superb entertainment.