Author: rakemag

At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could be retitled Dial I For Incomprehensible. But as the man said, 50,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Perfect Crime’s perfect attendance happens for a reason—namely, its terrifically watchable and funny villain, the casually domineering femme fatale Margaret Thorne Brent. It’s a juicy role, and the Jungle’s Jodee Theleen sinks her teeth into it, playing Margaret as a self-absorbed empress for whom contempt is so second-nature that she can’t stop launching her brutally dry barbs of sarcasm even when she’s seducing their target. If you want a good reason to commit to Crime, her performance is it. Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., (612) 822-7063, www.jungletheater.com

This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices of probability density functions?” And instead of cute kids singing about does and deers and stuff, a dozen pale grouchy mathematicians hunched silently at their desks, scribbling furiously to solve the problem before the others and thus gain tenure at M.I.T. There was no singing, and the only line of dialogue was “quit hogging the pencil sharpener.” And would you believe they were forced to rewrite this to make it more commercial? At any rate, Chanhassen will be staging the much better-known “real” version, with the singing and the Von Trapps and the Edelweiss and everything. CDT, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen, (952) 934-1525, www.chanhassentheatres.com

Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to nail up kitschy lobster traps and plastic octopi everywhere. The presentation is also very impressive—your meal will look beautiful, though the food itself may not be anything particularly revelatory. Our recent lunch visit consisted of the generously meaty and flavorful crab cakes and the zingy open-faced rib sandwich topped with sesame-orange slaw. Neither was a world-changing culinary event, but we’d definitely return and order them again with pleasure.

We’re sports fans around here, no matter what our other pretensions. One of our favorite diversions is watching the tournaments that clog the calendar in this season. This year, though, we’re oddly sensitized to the fact that most sports coverage is heavily dependent on military metaphors. To judge from our local sports journalists and commentators, it’s virtually impossible to call a game without resorting to some battlefield turn of phrase. It’s cool, though. We live in confrontational times. Now that the DFL and progressive politics are a thing of the past, we can expect other quaint Minnesota traditions like non-confrontation to go away too. If you can’t beat ’em—well, you know the rest.

The battles all started a few weeks ago, with the high schools. We’re convinced the one Minnesota tradition really worth defending is the state high school hockey tournament—what used to be the only pure (single-class) thing left to us. Who could have foreseen the perfect symmetry of the Warroad Warriors humiliating Simley for the Class A championship? In the less prestigious Class AA tier (the moneyed suburban schools), Anoka took no prisoners against Roseville Area. (Sorry, Area? Now there’s a moniker that smacks of a military lack of imagination.)

There’s been a lot of flak over the failures of Gopher men’s basketball late in their campaign to get into the NCAA tournament. A show of force in the NIT is, of course, a little like a show of force at the Y on Sunday afternoon, but there’s some consolation in being the best among the losers. Personally, we think it’s a crime against humanity that sports fans and journalists aren’t getting more excited about a couple other contests: The Gopher women are poised to crack the top five in basketball this year, and there’s a fair chance the women will repeat as national champions in hockey.

There’s also an exciting story blowing up in the WCHA: Mankato State and St. Cloud State both survived into the final five, just months after making the big jump from Division III to Division I hockey. (The Gophers, the Fighting Sioux, and the Bulldogs have kept hostilities limited to JV scrimmages through the years—many of which resulted in serious embarrassment that could be blown off as easily as an NIT result. Now they’re wishing they hadn’t been so diplomatic in expanding the conference.) Mankato State has been the most exciting story in college hockey this year—but why should we be surprised? They’d been policing Division II for decades, playing in three national championships (and winning one) going back to the 80s.

It’s tough to compete with a war, of course. The other day, CBS television announced that they’d asked ESPN to cover day games in the NCAA tournament—because the network has responsibly decided to cover the war in Iraq. The only question that remains is how many viewers will go AWOL and switch to buckets or hockey.

You can keep your J.Lo; we’ll take the Jayhawks. Rainy Day Music, their seventh disc, pulls back from the slickness of 2000’s Smile for a sound anchored more deeply in the acoustic. It’s an evolution that sprung in part from continued lineup shifts and the impossibility of touring with a full band in the wake of 9/11’s chaotic effect on air travel, but the effect is positive nonetheless. We liked Smile quite a bit, but it’s a real pleasure to hear Gary Louris and company pushing toward a rootsier sound; that’s always helped make the joy and humanity in their music more manifest. And there’s no shortage of the Byrdsesque singable tunefulness that has always been our favorite part of the Jayhawks sound. The bright pop tunes “Save It For a Rainy Day” and “Tailspin” are the most obvious earworms, but for pure, unadulterated harmonic splendor, we’ll go with “Madman,” so reminiscent of Crosby Stills & Nash that all it’s missing is for Neil Young to refuse to go on a reunion tour with them.

Let’s all do our part to make sure the state can afford its single most important obligation to the people: building new highways and adding lanes out to Eagan, beloved constituency of our Governor and State Auditor. Sacrifices must be made, of course, and we’re ready. In these troubling times, Minnesota families must assume a bigger share of the state’s highway work. It’s not just picking up empty beer cans, abandoned shoes, and ditch-porn anymore! Those Adopt-a-Highway folks have practically been getting away with murder—all that free publicity for a monthly stroll down the median with a trash-stabber. No! We wholly support Gov. Pawlenty’s proposed Foster-Highway program, to ensure that regular Minnesotans are now responsible for paving, plowing, and striping existing roads. We know not every family can live in Eagan, or afford to buy heavy machinery, snow plows, and hot-topping equipment. Foster-Highway has a heart, after all. Participants in the program (mandated by Patriot Act II, by the way) will be assigned a manageable half-mile section of road (half the usual Adopt-a-Highway segment!) as near to their home as an indifferent bureaucrat cares to make it. Non-participants will be jailed and charged with terrorism. Thank you, and God Bless America.