Category: So Little Time

To celebrate the publication of his labor of love/ oral history, The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting, longtime Twin Cities music critic and columnist Jim Walsh will be undertaking his own blitzkrieg, book-tour version of the Mats’ legendary ’85 five-night stand at the Entry. In the course of one week you’ll have a bunch of chances to share the love and relive the glory and ignominy of one of the greatest bands ever to tear up local stages.

Magers and Quinn, November 24; Barnes & Noble, Galleria, November 27; Electric Fetus/7th St. Entry (two separate events), November 28; get more information.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, displaced Big Easy journalist Tisserand, the former editor of the estimable Gambit Weekly, has produced a truly inspiring and moving testament to the power of perseverance in the face of unimaginable exile. Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember is an account of teacher Paul Reynaud’s heroic efforts to turn an abandoned New Iberia office into a one-room schoolhouse for a group of evacuee children. Tisserand will be joined by local traditional-jazz purveyors, the Southside Aces.

Magers and Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611.

This ’71 film could simply be described as an homage to guys behind the wheel. James Taylor plays the Driver. The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson is the Mechanic. Laurie Bird is the Girl. Together, they motor along Route 66 in their ’55 Chevy. Along the way they meet Warren Oates’s GTO and begin to race—with virtually no dialogue, no crazy editing to speed up the proceedings, and no danger or derring-do. Just driving, man. But Two-Lane Blacktop (and its makers) ran into a world of trouble. Although it was a critical favorite—Esquire even promoted it on the cover as its movie of the year—the film was a box-office bomb. Taylor and Wilson would never star in another movie. Bird defenestrated herself eight years later. And director Monte Hellman never made anything worth seeing again (e.g. Silent Night, Deadly Night 3).

Director Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to his magnificent The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding looks to be yet another biting examination of family. Here, the acid-tongued title character (Nicole Kidman, whose legacy desperately needs shoring up) visits her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh—she also could stand a modest hit), who is about to be married to a fellow played by … Jack Black. Like Squid, the plot involves the emotional entanglement of a family in utter disarray, and the dialogue is undoubtedly witty and emotionally charged. But Squid didn’t have a star in the bunch; will Kidman’s celebrity—and Black’s buffoonery—undermine the delicate chemistry of the film?

Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; 612-825-6006.

“This was something that a human hadn’t yet attempted to do … there was considerable doubt if a human could take it.” “This” was the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, when the British newspaper dared any single person to circumnavigate the globe in a yacht. The five-thousand pound purse lured eight professional sailors and one “mystery man,” Donald Crowhurst, an electrician and weekend sailor who desperately needed the prize money. “If he went forward,” notes one observer, “he was committing suicide. If he came back, he was ruined … ” Crowhurst’s story is culled from his cryptic log, in movies he shot while failing to sail around the world, and in interviews with the family and friends who discovered that they never really knew the man.

Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th St., Edina; 651-649-4416.

After buying the rights in 2005, Sony Pictures apparently didn’t know what to do with this blue-collar musical, and left the film to rot on its shelves for the last two years. Two years later, director John Turturro wrestled back the rights from the studio and is distributing it on his own dime. Romance and Cigarettes is the story of a construction worker whose years of casual infidelity finally come to a head when he falls for a vixen, inflaming the wrath of his wife. Described by Turturro as a “savage musical,” the film evokes the work of the great British screenwriter Dennis Potter, whose flawed heroes would stop what they’re doing to lip-sync sunny melodies and dance away their troubles. Romance looks funny and exciting, as well as depressing and utterly original.

Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th St., Edina; 651-649-4416.

After World War II, when most U.S. businesses emphasized hiring male war veterans, Hormel Foods hatched an unusual plan to employ women. Of course, these women tended to be less needy than attractive—not to mention talented. In fact, from 1947–53, a troupe of sixty female employees from the Austin-based company, known simply as the “Hormel Girls,” served both as door-to-door sales force and drum-and-bugle corps. The Girls are credited with doubling sales of their employer’s packaged foods, especially Spam, with such tactics as traveling stage shows, parades, and a weekly CBS Radio show in which product names were liberally dropped. The “Hormel Girls” make for fascinating history; but they’re likely to make even better musical theater.

History Theatre, 30 E. Tenth St., St. Paul; 651-292-4323.

It’s a big month for Zenon Dance Company. For one, they hop aboard the holiday treadmill with their premiere of The Nutcracker According to Mother Goose on December 15. But the company’s signature aesthetic—athleticism and precision, not to mention sophisticated musical tastes—will be better displayed a couple of weeks earlier, at its twenty-fifth anniversary program. Five works by Zenon’s favorite choreographers, including Danny Buraczeski, Doug Varone, and Wynn Fricke, are set to music by Marianne Faithfull, Steve Reich, and Jelly Roll Morton, to name but a few. The highlight is likely to be a reprise from Zenon’s Spring 2007 program: “Catching Her Tears (44°N, 93°W)” is a stark, abstracted meditation on loss from New York choreographer Colleen Thomas, who was inspired in part by the plight of a local friend (the title includes the coordinates of Minneapolis).

Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224.

For the arts patron in search of a new holiday production: Consider the world premiere of All is Calm. Peripatetic director Peter Rothstein and his resident company, Theater Latté Da, have teamed up with the acclaimed men’s vocal group Cantus to stage this radio drama (which will be broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio). All is Calm tells the true story of a truce instigated by World War I soldiers on Christmas in 1914. Several years in the making, it consists almost entirely of found text from the veterans’ journals, letters, and official war documents, and incorporates an eclectic range of music, from World War I-era songs to traditional Christmas carols.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, December 21; Mount Calvary Lutheran
Church, December 22; St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, December 23; 651-209-6689.

“The American theater’s in a shitload of trouble.” So reads the opening line in the latest offering from the small St. Paul-based troupe Starting Gate Productions. As both poison-pen letter and love note to the theater, this play is directed by a woman with no small opinions on the matter: Leah Cooper, former executive director of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Anton depicts the chaos behind the scenes of a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. An all-female cast depicts everyone involved, from producers and actors to critics. Embedded within Jane Martin’s drama are countless meta-theater references; characters range from an Our Town-esque stage manager to audience members who just won’t shut up.

Mounds Theatre, 1029 Hudson Rd., St. Paul; 651-645-3503.