Author: rakemag

Minnesota’s own Frances Gumm practically wrote the book on a particular strain of tragic Hollywood irony, living (and dying) unhappily in private, but bringing joy and inspiration to millions as Judy Garland. One of those she changed forever was iconoclastic local choreographer Danny Buraczeski of Jazzdance, whose 2003 debut of this Garland celebration produced some great and powerful aaahs. This month, he brings Happy back in an expanded form, and you can be sure that this labor of love won’t lack for brains, heart, or courage. 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 340-1725; southerntheater.org

A night of wide-ranging new choreography and structured improv from one of our state’s most venerable dance troupes. Artistic director Heidi Hauser Jasmin loves to mix things up, and the kinetic pyrotechnics on display will be as varied in mood as the accompanying music. The movement piece “Tongues” jerks with the wild swagger of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, while modernist composer George Crumb provides a chilly aural backdrop for the solo “Framed.” Jasmin also memorializes her late friend Charlie Byrd, the great jazz guitarist, with a work set to three of his silky-smooth songs. 1940 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 871-9077

In France, Mary Beach has a place in the pantheon of major living Surrealists, and frequently collaborated with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. However, she’s not so well known here, in the land of her birth; in fact, Speedboat’s putting on her first-ever Twin Cities show. Her fascinating life includes a stint in a Nazi prison camp, a glass-ceiling breakthrough in the 1950s art world, and later still, prime spots in the beatnik scenes surrounding City Lights and the Chelsea Hotel. Paris Working collects sixty-four of her latest collages—at eighty-five, she’s still producing vibrant work. 566 N. Snelling Ave., St. Paul; (651) 641-0538; www.thespeedboatgallery.com

Remember when you could snuggle up with the newspaper rather than read it online? When you could get your information from the phone book rather than from Google? Those were the days. A group of 50 photographers and one installation artist remind us of our love for the tangible as they turn their camera lenses on the printed word. Whether using the book as a medium for their art, capturing its simple beauty, or documenting the reader’s relationship with it, these photographers keep our attention cover to cover. 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 870-3131; www.artsmia.org

Photographer Justin Newhall takes on the myths of the American West, tracing their subtle but inescapable residue in contemporary junkscapes of parking lots, stores, parks, monuments, and suburban tracts. He picks out the sculptural abstractions in a lakeside picnic area in South Dakota, and documents a shaggy heap of invasive Russian olive trees sprawling dumbly along an Oregon highway. The results are poignant, pungent, and absurd, sometimes all at once. An image of a display window in Idaho, where family shoes commingle with plastic eggs, could be an oblique allusion to countless westward marches by folks who followed Lewis and Clark in search of something better. Fans of Robert Adams, Joel Sternfeld, and William Eggleston will recognize a keen affinity here. 711 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; (612) 824-5500; www.mncp.org

A simple but powerfully chilling idea ripe with dramatic possibility: What would you do if you were sentenced to die for a crime you didn’t commit? Husband-and-wife writing team Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (a 1988 Apple Valley High School grad) interviewed forty wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners and boiled their stories down to six. Exonerated’s pared-down approach—a script, a music stand, an actor wearing reading glasses—has netted enthusiastic praise in New York theater circles. This touring production, directed by Gosford Park actor Bob Balaban, includes Lynn Redgrave and Brian Dennehy, the latter of whom, perhaps ironically, is pro-death penalty. But then the point of the play isn’t to convince you of a point so much as simply to make you think. 805 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 339-7007; www.hennepintheatredistrict.com

You’ve seen him hobnobbing with Bill Clinton, partying (and attending IMF meetings) with Bono, and doing other cool and prestigious things that world-class playwrights-cum-presidents do. But have you actually seen a play by Vaclav Havel? (We won’t ask about the political essays.) Now’s your chance. Known as Havel’s most “successful” (read: accessible) work, the three autobiographical one-acts comprising The Vanek Trilogy were written in the late ’60s after the Soviet clampdown in Czechoslovakia. Don’t let the idea of Eastern European absurdism put you off: The Ministry of Cultural Warfare likes serious drama, but that doesn’t mean they take it—or themselves—too seriously.
810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; (612) 825-3737; blb.ciceron.com

Will Durst, to paraphrase the old country radio music billboard, was doing political satire before it was hip, and he’s still going strong. Part of the San Francisco contingent of comics who didn’t sell out to Hollywood for sitcoms and potato chip commercials, Durst displays the thoughtfulness of Mort Sahl without Sahl’s patina of Ward Cleaver weeniedom; he also summons the righteous anger of Lenny Bruce before he was driven cuckoo. If you don’t attribute when you rip off his insights, quoting Durst will make you sound very smart around the water cooler the next day.
708 N. 1st St., Minneapolis; (612) 338-6393; www.acmecomedycompany.com

Here’s a bistro that’s just what it should be, though we would have liked bigger crab cakes for eleven bucks. The spanking new Amsterdam, with its brick-and-wood interior, tin ceiling and little corner-shaped bar looking out onto the Third Street terminus, seems destined to become a favorite jumping-off spot for a night on the town. One could finish up here, too, given the good sized wine selection and great entrees like maple-bourbon glazed salmon, not to mention the best French onion soup around. The homemade gelato merits a separate blessing.