Author: rakemag

Stereolab’s fondness for Moog synths and vintage Vox and Farfisa organs blur the band’s lineage. This could be fifties post-jazz or nineties post-rock; the only thing that’s clear is that they are French. They are also hazy, moody, sexy, offhandedly cool, and dislocated from pop culture, which is to say that Stereolab’s music is more about atmosphere than message. Core members Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier have entertained a revolving cast of musicians, each of whom have dropped a little something-something into the Stereolab sound, but we still mourn Mary Hansen, the singer whose voice wove itself so silkily around Sadier’s on the band’s 1996 album Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Hansen was killed in a bicycling accident in 2002. The band is finally starting to sound like it’s finding its way without her. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

Our favorite self-loathing performer/writer from the Minnesota Fringe Festival is back for another helping of self-humiliation. Amy Salloway may be riddled with insecurity, but her writing is loaded with so much skill and good humor that her pain winds up being our pleasure. So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz! harks back to the days when she and Gertz–the two un-coolest kids in all of Camp L’Chaim–hooked-up. 1635 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-486-5757; www.mnartists.org/Amy_Salloway

Jeune Lune has gotten so good at opera that almost everything it does in the genre deserves mention. The company’s strategy involves stripping away layers of orchestration from the score, because it can neither afford a full orchestra nor fit one into its space. The result has been opera productions that are short, punchy, and intimate, with a cast of singers who also happen to have great acting skills. This time, artistic director Dominique Serrand and singers Bradley Greenwald, Christina Baldwin, and Jennifer Baldwin Peden heat up Mefistofele, a little-known Italian opera that’s based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s telling of Faust. 105 N. First St., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org

It’s heartening to note that this annual event has added themes in recent years–perhaps it means that so many women are now making films that the focus has been narrowed. In its thirteenth year, the Women with Vision festival showcases filmmakers from Chile, Iran, Kenya, Cameroon–as well as Europe and the U.S.–who have faced political obstacles in creating their work. Classic 1950s noir by artists blacklisted as communists; glimpses into the lives of young women in Iran; and an exploration of spousal abuse in Cameroon are highlights in a wide-ranging program of several dozen films. But Deepa Mehta’s India trilogy deserves its own mention. For the last film in the series, about a child bride trying to make her way in the world after her husband dies, Mehta encountered enough violent protest from her fellow citizens that she was forced to finish the film in Sri Lanka. 612-375-7622, www.walkerart.org

Fiery, doomed love isn’t just for gay cowboys; prairie girls can get it real bad, too. In this play by local writer Melanie Marnich, a young, small-town wife succumbs to a crush on a handsome neighbor, and becomes entangled in a dangerous constellation of personalities and tempers. Based loosely on the 1622 play The Changeling, this brutal romance covers the heady intoxication of new love and the bloody and terrifying repercussions of infidelity in a deceptively wholesome Midwestern setting. 820 18th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-605-8497; www.emigranttheater.org

There really is only one thing that can melt through our puritanical will to stay home and hunker down through the cold months: barbeque. Now that we have a Baker’s Ribs in Eden Prairie, we’ll brave any weather to bask in the inner heat that only good sausage can kindle. The smoky barbecue links at Baker’s are made with a spiced beef-and-pork mixture that nearly bursts through the skin of each plump package. This Texas-based chain offers a variety of meats, slow cooked over oak and accompanied by a bracing sauce that burns past the competition’s. 8019 Glen Lane, Eden Prairie; 952-942-5337

The proof that Minnesota has soul lies in Jackie Williams’ sweet potato pie. Or perhaps it’s in her rib tips, smothered pork chops, or fried green tomatoes, which warm your belly and your disposition. Williams has been a chef-around-town for years, and she’s occasionally even catered for stopover celebrities before opening Abundant Bistro, her own soul food restaurant. On Sunday afternoons, she treats her diners to gospel music while they work on a big plate of fried catfish and a hunk of cornbread the size of your heart. 609 University Ave. W., St. Paul; 651-209-1707

For years, photographer Greta Pratt considered herself a New Yorker. As a Pulitzer-nominated documentary photographer whose works hang in museums including the Smithsonian and the National Museum of American Art, she was thoroughly enmeshed in the East Coast art world. And then she went to a hog-showing competition in Nebraska. “I looked around me and realized that I looked just like everyone else there,” she said. “I was clearly a Midwesterner. No one on the East Coast truly understands what that means.”

Pratt grew up in Minneapolis and, along with her husband, Mark Peterson, shot photographs for City Pages and the United Press International during the early eighties. After moving to New York in 1986, she returned for extended trips across the Midwest, haunting small-town festivals and county fairs for her first photo book, In Search of the Corn Queen. Pratt was so dazzled by the experience that two more book projects were born, Using History, and her latest, Nineteen Lincolns. Both explore the cultural icons–flags, cowboys, statues of livestock–that make life in America unique (and sometimes bizarre). “I became interested in how history, real or otherwise, becomes part of group identity,” Pratt said.

Group identity is tough to come by on a deserted island, but we think Pratt will do quite well when she gets stranded on The Rake’s favorite pile of sand. She’s got that Midwestern-practicality thing going for her, after all. Looking at this more as a jolly solo camping trip than an imposed exile, here’s what she’d bring:

1. A hearty supply of s’mores fixings. And, of course, matches to light the fire that will melt the marshmallows.
2. A case of oak-y, buttery, full-bodied Chardonnay. It’ll go well with fish.
3. The collected works of Jean Baudrillard. Contemplating simulacra and simulation should keep me busy for a while.
4. My new digital camera and solar-powered laptop with satellite Internet connection, so I can email photos of my new digs and blog my thoughts about simulation.
5. The lyrics for “Kumbaya”… in case I forget the last verse.

Greta Pratt presents a slide show discussion about her work at the Minnesota Center for Photography on March 14, in conjunction with her exhibition, Using History, at Gallery 13, on view March 14 – April 7. Pratt will sign books at a reception at the gallery on March 18, 6:30-10:00 p.m. 302 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 651-592-5503

Enough already with the fat, bearded, balding guys playing Hamlet! The Prince of Denmark is twenty or so years old. While we certainly understand that anyone cast in the role–perhaps the most storied in all of English-language theater–should have something of a track record, Hamlet just doesn’t work when its titular character is middle-aged and sporting a pronounced paunch. Enter Santino Fontana, the twenty-three-year-old who’s been cast in the role for the Guthrie’s book-ending production at its Vineland Place theater. Not only is Fontana young enough to meet whatever romanticized notions we have about the role, but he’s also got actor-ly cred. Just two years out of college (he’s a graduate of the Guthrie Theater/University of Minnesota B.F.A. program), Fontana already has appeared in Guthrie productions of Six Degrees of Separation, Death of a Salesman, and As You Like It. Of course, Hamlet will expose and test him in an entirely different way. We caught up with Fontana to gauge his thoughts and fears about the role.

hat was your first encounter with this play?
I hadn’t read it, really, until my first year of college, which is sad. It was the year 2000, and Simon Russell Beale’s tour came through. [Beale arrived by way of London’s Royal National Theater’s touring production.] We studied the play in preparation for the show.

In that production, Beale seemed far too old to pull off Prince Hamlet. Where do you put Hamlet’s age?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I think it depends upon which text you’re reading. We know that the actor who originally played him was well into his thirties. In most modern editions, there’s a line in the play that makes it sound like he’s thirty years old. But the word “youth” or “young” is used so much in the play. And when Shakespeare wrote this, if this man was a prince and thirty and unmarried and still in college, something was terribly wrong. What we’re going with is that he’s twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one. He’s a kid off at school. He heard about his dad dying and had to come home.

Who is the oldest guy you’ve ever seen play Hamlet?
He [Beale] was it, to be honest. John Gielgud played it, what, three times, four times? The last time he played it he was in his forties, and I think he even said he was too old.

So how terrified are you?
Um, well, I mean… There was a guy in London who was twenty-three. And at the time, that was two or three years ago, he was believed to be the youngest to professionally play Hamlet. So I’m not alone. But, of course, it’s frightening. It’s frightening! It’s frightening! It’s frightening! And I’ve got to get this one right! I don’t want to disappoint this director, this audience, this theater community that’s been so good to me. I’m finding a lot of inspiration in the character. I mean, being told by a ghost you need to avenge your father’s death? He’s not there yet. He’s not ready. [Director Joe Dowling] has talked several times about having wanted to pick someone who could capture the insecurities of youth. He couldn’t have picked a more insecure youth.

What about that giant etching on the side of the new Guthrie of George Grizzard, the actor who played Hamlet in the Guthrie’s first-ever production?
How ominous is that? I was touring the new Guthrie and the woman leading the tour pointed up and said, “There’s George Grizzard.” It’s thirty feet high, huge! She just pointed and said, “You’ve got some huge shoes to fill.” And I’m just stuck asking: Me? Are you sure?