Email Author Quinton Skinner

2008 Stories by Quinton Skinner

• Best in shows: Top plays from Minneapolis theater in '08 (Act II)

  published December 31, 2008

  And so we warm ourselves in the embers of 2008, with the optimistic hope that the year to come will offer up yet new experiences and... More >>

• Grease

  published December 31, 2008

  This new production of Grease, descending from Broadway to the Orpheum, was nominated for a 2008 Tony and named Best Musical of the Year in... More >>

• The Year's Best Set Designs

  published December 24, 2008

  We come away from a satisfying night at the theater positively nourished in head and heart, but let's not forget the eyes. A finely designed... More >>

• Best in Shows: Top plays from Minneapolis theater in '08

  published December 24, 2008

  Things felt as though they were shifting this year, in the theater and, to be sure, in the world at large. The biggest seismic shock was the... More >>

• Gremlin Theatre

  published December 24, 2008

  As someone said to me recently, theater people would be putting on shows regardless of the material rewards—it's just a fortunate... More >>

• Martini & Olive's Silent Night Fever

  published December 24, 2008

  It is a rare sensation indeed to find yourself laughing while shaking your head over how appallingly wrong and off-kilter the spectacle before you... More >>

• Irving Berlin's White Christmas

  published December 24, 2008

  Perhaps the most enduring sensation of the holidays is the feeling of time finally stopping; everyone around us agrees to pull back the throttle,... More >>

• Theater Spotlight: La Natividad

  published December 17, 2008

  The first thing that strikes you about La Natividad is its logistical efficiency: Somehow you and more than a hundred other folks move... More >>

• Bedlam's The Turducken serves up satisfying dinner theater

  published December 17, 2008

  The idea of Bedlam staging seasonal dinner theater seems mildly preposterous, mitigated only by the assurance that the product onstage will be... More >>

• Fat Man Crying

  published December 17, 2008

  Joseph Scrimshaw describes Fat Man Crying as "neither dark and cynical nor saccharine sweet." That's about the best way to take on the... More >>

• Theater Spotlight: Sindibad: Artist and Outlaw

  published December 10, 2008

  Sindibad O'Dell collaborates with six co-creators and 46 actors to illustrate both the culturally universal and the odd and distinctive aspects... More >>

• Sam Shepard's Fool for Love defines "dysfunctional relationship"

  published December 10, 2008

  Stories of forbidden love make up at least a vertebra or two in the spine of works for the stage, for the obvious reason that raging, unbridled... More >>

• The Holiday Pageant

  published December 10, 2008

  As anyone who's ever waded through the scorched thicket of Paradise Lost knows all too well, the Devil always gets the best lines. And so... More >>

• Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol is masterful one-man show

  published December 3, 2008

  Dickens's story of geriatric, malignant crotchetiness transformed via supernatural shock therapy into last-second sunshine and benevolence... More >>

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

  published December 3, 2008

  It's no easy thing being a child, with pressure and uncertainty lurking beneath the surface of even the most placid day, not to mention the... More >>

• Black Nativity

  published December 3, 2008

  The holidays hit some of us like a ton of bricks because, like all anniversaries, they are signposts on life's road and often reminders of what... More >>

• Torture Gets Personal

  published November 26, 2008

  Putting aside for the moment the ethical (and spiritual) hangover rattling our national skull from the debate over the efficacy and definition... More >>

• All I Want for Christmas Is 700 Billion Dollars: Our 50th Noel

  published November 26, 2008

  While I can't speak for the entirety of humanity, in my experience a lot of things (daylight savings, income tax time, mortality) have a... More >>

• Theater Spotlight: Souvenir

  published November 19, 2008

  Florence Foster Jenkins did not allow trifling details, such as her utter lack of talent, to derail her singing career.... More >>

• Pillsbury's Blackbird confronts sexual abuse issues

  published November 19, 2008

  What seems like a great idea in the middle of the night can notoriously swerve in the other direction come the cold light of day. In David... More >>

• How I Learned to Drive

  published November 19, 2008

  Paula Vogel garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998 for How I Learned to Drive, staged here by the oft-incisive Theatre Unbound. The... More >>

• Theater Spotlight: Wicked

  published November 12, 2008

  "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know," said Harry Truman in a notably gnomic moment. We can... More >>

• Southern Theater's Animal Farm presents a barnyard of lessons

  published November 12, 2008

  George Orwell's Animal Farm, like The Great Gatsby, tends to be prescribed to high school students for worthy reasons: Both go... More >>

• Absolute Pulp

  published November 12, 2008

  When you think of a theater company devoting its energy to literary adaptations, the dusty whiff of reverent takes on canonical classics springs... More >>

• Forgetting, Tyrone and Ralph are intense rides

  published November 5, 2008

  "This is how I forget," says a woman named Ash (Annie Enneking) in the first line of Trista Baldwin's new play, and in the hour-plus that... More >>