Author: rakemag

The Guthrie’s annual spot of Dickens, as always, remains a recommended option for your holiday theatergoing this year, but it’s always possible that four dead people scaring the hell out of an old man isn’t Christmassy enough for you. In that case, why not try a story about a kid whose parents are dead, or at least missing (perhaps they’re off frightening the miser in the other play), who winds up living in the gutters with a street gang, belting out cheerful songs about pickpocketing, love and food! Glorious food! Kidding aside, this national touring production of the Oliver Twist-based musical is well worth your time if you’re a fan of musicals. This is the slightly darker and more sinister Oliver! as revised by producer Cameron Macintosh, which debuted in London in 1994. Despite a successful run, it’s only now getting a stateside debut, and we’re fortunate enough to get the opening slot. Just don’t go picking any pockets to raise the price of a ticket, OK?
Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul,
(651) 224-4222, ordway.org

David Sedaris’s wry and reliably funny tale of his soul-flattening job as a Macy’s Christmas elf has become a holiday tradition in its own right, taking its place in a sardonic sub-pantheon of Santa tales that includes A Charlie Brown Christmas and Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. After gaining fame in monologue form on NPR in the mid-nineties, Sedaris’ story has taken small theaters by storm, and with each new December gets staged by what seems like eighty dozen companies. Locally, that happy duty falls to Theater Limina, who last we saw this October doing Harold Pinter’s backwards bit of breakup bathos, Betrayal. Santaland shares the BLB stage this month with the equally irreverent holiday show from local thesps Craig Johnson, David Mann, Joseph Scrimshaw, and Sarah Gioia, whose Fringe Festival comedy The Worst Show in the Fringe was comical and snarky and smart and totally failed to live up to its name. (And you’ll forgive us if we give a small holler about Rake columnist Colleen Kruse’s Christmas Overeasy, Thursdays this month at BLB.)
BLB, 810 W. Lake St.,
(612) 825-3737, blb.ciceron.com

The ordinary menu and strikingly brief wine list could make Marcus Samuelsson run screaming from this place, but perhaps there is a lesson of survival in the forty-seven years of steadfast service Al and Alma’s has offered Lake Minnetonkans. Overlooking Cook’s Bay in Mound, this once-seasonal hangout for boaters now remains open nearly year-round, closing only for part of January and February. It’s not the kind of place you find by accident, even if you come by water. The reward for your voyage will be a comfortable, kid-friendly setting, a nice view and a truly Minnesotan selection of steaks, ribs, and fish. Regulars tell us everything there is dependable, but we recommend the filet mignon perched atop a grilled portabello mushroom cap in a puddle of creamy blue cheese sauce with garlic mashed potatoes crisped and cut into pie-like wedges. If you like to aid digestion with something stronger than wine, bring your own bottle and buy a set-up.

No, they’re not giants yet. But they loom pretty large. Brooklynites John Flansburgh and John Linnell, aka They Might Be Giants, now wield the awesome power that comes with winning a Grammy for writing a sitcom theme. But they’re still very much the same lovably eccentric cult rockers, singing about James K. Polk, purple toupees, and nightlights that daydream of being lighthouses. We spoke recently with Linnell—the lanky one with the accordion—about the duo’s current projects, including the pleasingly quirky documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. TMBG also just finished its second kids’ project, an illustrated book and CD called Bed Bed Bed. They’ll play a short, free set and sign books December 8 at Wild Rumpus bookstore.

THE RAKE: Was making Bed Bed Bed different than No!, your first kids’ record, now that you’ve got your son?

LINNELL: That’s a good question. Obviously I had a lot of experience with getting my son to go to bed by that time. But part of it was, we just wanted to do this thing that was cool. We often think, for instance, how cool it would be to have a picture book with a CD stuck inside, this bizarre thing. We don’t always think in strictly practical terms about how the thing gets used. With Bed, we discovered pretty quickly that you can’t flip the pages that fast and really take in the illustrations. So really what the experience is about, I think, is the picture book is for bedtime, and it’s enhanced by these songs that the kid may already know, or can hear later.

THE RAKE: Even before you made those records, your music was already pretty well attuned to children’s sensibilities. How did you change your songwriting to make it “officially” children’s music?

LINNELL: We didn’t define it very fully when we started working on No! In some ways we were being a lot freer than usual. We felt no obligation to write the college-radio single. Normally we’d throw in a bunch of those. And we sometimes have stuff on our grownup records that’s a little too death-obsessed or in some other way dark for children.

THE RAKE: How do kids like the live shows?

LINNELL: They’re really engaging with it a lot of times. But they’re not ashamed to turn their backs if they’re bored, or run around. That’s tough. It’s a hard crowd to play for. We don’t want to do just anything to get their attention. We want to feel like we have some pride left at the end of the show.

THE RAKE: Last time you played First Avenue, I recall, the crowd filled the entire bar. How can you fit in these comparatively tiny bookstores?

LINNELL: There’s something about a bookstore that makes people behave themselves. But the young kids, there’s this chaos factor generated just by that. That’s been our main security problem, tiny hands grabbing electrical equipment. But the shows have been really fun. They’re not really just kids’ shows. Adults should come even if they don’t have kids. And maybe we can trick them into buying this book.

THE RAKE: Although you’ve been doing a lot of soundtrack work lately, it must have been pretty strange for guys who aren’t all that interested in going mainstream to win a Grammy.

LINNELL: The Grammy was totally weird. It meant a lot for us professionally because it legitimized the work that we do for hire. We’re much more of an institution now, in a weird way, even though we feel like that’s a ridiculous idea. A lot of people that liked us a long time ago when they were in college are now in jobs in places like Disney, and NPR, and Cartoon Network, so we get to do all kinds of things. But we still feel it’s a very personal project, that we just goof around and come up with stuff.

THE RAKE: Which is why you still devote so much energy to offbeat things like your CD soundtrack for McSweeney’s sixth issue.

LINNELL: The stuff that we get most excited by is what’s not trying to be huge. The only real problem for us is cooking up those ideas. That’s the challenge, to think of something interesting that isn’t just what everybody else already thinks of for you to do.

Wild Rumpus, 2720 W. 43rd St., (612) 920-5005, www.wildrumpusbooks.com

I don’t know what the exact clinical classification would be of my particular personality defect, I’m a person who regrets nothing and yet dreads everything. Maybe there isn’t even a name for it, and one day I could have this dysfunction named after me. “Yep, we finally had our aunt committed due to her lifelong struggle with Manic Lucia.”
My close friends know me well enough not to take offense when I cancel last-minute plans. I’ve even gotten so comfortable that I no longer feel the need to make up fake excuses. To be my friend, you have to understand that when I say that, while, yes, I did excitedly RSVP months ago to attend your daughter’s first birthday party, now that the actual date is here, I’d rather open-mouth kiss David Gest, and then jump through a flaming hoop of dog crap, nothing personal though. And I should explain that it doesn’t matter how appealing the plans are. I could have a date to get free highlights with Steven Tyler, eat lobster, and have hundred dollar bills shoved into my pockets. Yet somehow when it comes time to actually jump into the toxic twin’s limo, I’d really rather stay home, troll around on Ebay for hours looking for red lampshades, then turn the ringer off and curl up with Psychopharmacology for Idiots or some other light reading.
To add to the twistedness of this, when I do follow through with plans, I usually have a fine time. Hence the “no regrets” aspect of my Manic Lucia. I’m not proud of the fact that some people have nicknamed me “Anne Frank” due to my infrequent social outings. On the rare occasion I do make it out to a show, I know I have to be prepared to answer the question, “Do you still live in town?”—and that’s coming from my own sister.
Listen, I’m not an entirely undesirable pal. Say you want the kind of friend who, when you call, you know you’ll always get the machine. A friend who will never actually see the inside of your apartment. If you’re looking for someone who you can easily bail out of dinner plans with at the last minute, I’m your man. You can take comfort in knowing that we won’t hook up next week, and I won’t call you later.

Send birthday party invitations and/or flaming hoops of dog crap to Mary Lucia at popularcreeps@yahoo.com.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that fabulousness can’t be found in the first-tier suburbs. Since her cabaret debut in 1996, the former beauty queen and current post-office switchboard operator known as Miss Richfield 1981 has been wowing audiences with her combination of civic boosterism and flamboyant fashion sense. (Sometimes she answers to the name Russ King, who really did graduate from Richfield High in 1981.) Besides her frequent local shows, Minnesota’s answer to Dame Edna has branched out nationally over the past couple of years, including a regular gig on the Atlantis cruise line, where she calls bingo and helps promote the Richfield-area business community to tourists visiting Cancún. She’ll regale us with tales of her travels at her annual holiday show, playing through December 20 at the Illusion Theater. Fall on Your Knees’ fifth outing will be a familiar mix of old and new comedy bits, hilariously mangled carols, and plenty of good-natured teasing of the audience, accompanied by pianist Todd Price and dancers Megan McClellan and Brian Sostek, whose show Trick Boxing has been a hit on the national fringe-festival circuit. Knowing she’s had some recent experience on boats, we asked the divine Miss R. to play our monthly what-if game and tell us what five items she’d take along if she wound up stranded somewhere far off the cruise ship’s trajectory. We’re not entirely sure that she quite understood what “marooned” meant—though unfailingly cheerful, she does tend to live in a world of her own—but she answered with the aplomb you’d expect of a pageant finalist.

1. Stamps, so I can send postcards back home. [But you know there aren’t any mailmen where you’d be, right? –Ed.] Yes, but I have faith in the U.S. Postal Service to deliver anywhere, even deserted islands.

2. My Miss Richfield 1981 sash, crown, and tiara, just in case there are any formal occasions or parades.

3. Hot rollers—even though we’re going to be alone, we still look our best at all times!

4. A mirror, so I’ll have someone to talk to.

5. My purse, with all the usual items I carry in it: lipstick, nylons, Pamprin, Sanka, lighter fluid, a signal flare, a shortwave radio, and duct tape.