Classic with a Twist

THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet

Romeo and Juliet — when we hear this we think of a bittersweet tale. We think of doomed love. But we usually think of it against a backdrop of festivity and decadence. Now, 3AM Productions presents a different look at Shakespeare’s great tragedy — perhaps a more realistic one (as if we need more realism). Perhaps a more contemporary one. Definitely a darker one, a dingier one, a dirtier one. Set against the backdrop of a fallen city, the Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet highlights the crippling effects of violence on an entire city — "the destruction that awaits any society that insists on attacking itself." Told through the eyes of the chorus, the play uses a more contemporary, crumbling industrial setting — the Grain Belt Brewery — to show how love can become the one motivating factor to rise above our current blood-thirsty quest for power. (A mighty lesson indeed.)

7:30 p.m.,, Grain Belt Brewery Bottling House, 77 and 79 Thirteenth Ave. NE, Minneapolis; 612-781-3019.

BOOKS & AUTHORS
Poets Exchange: Christina Davis

Join the Loft this evening for the first-ever State-to-State Poets Exchange event. Now, poets from the Big Apple and the Mini Apple can connect to active literary communities outside their home state — which means of course that we get to enjoy a bunch of New York poets (and they ours). Our first visitor will be poet Christina Davis, author of Forth A Raven, and finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Award and the Foreword Book of the Year Award. Davis will give a public reading and on-stage interview on her current work in progress. A reception will follow.

7 p.m., Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis.

FILM
You Can’t Take It With You

Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart — is there a more feel-good combination out there? If you need your heart warmed tonight, then head over to the Parkway for this evening’s screening of You Can’t Take It With You. The 1938 film, which launched Stewart into the public’s embrace, won two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The lovely Jean Arthur plays a member of an extremely whacky and eccentric family who falls in love with Stewart, a stuffy rich boy. Comedy ensues in this final feature of Take-up Productions’ latest series — Sweet Escapism: Screwball Comedies of the Great Depression.

7:30 p.m. Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030.