Last night I took my mom to see the live stage production of It’s A Wonderful Life at the Saint Paul Hotel. My friend Phil Callen plays George Bailey in a cast that also includes Wild and Twins regular Jim Cunningham, Adena Brumer, Jennifer Edward-Hughes, Christopher Whiting and Ross Young. This is the fourth year of this production, but my first time seeing it.

The performances are held in the Promenade Ballroom on the main level of the hotel, with tables of eight people set up around the room. For the dinner performances, Executive Chef Lance Kapps created the following menu this year:

• First Course: Sliced Roasted Beets with Feta Cheese and Haricot Verts with Baby Greens served with Horseradish Vinaigrette
• Second Course: Chicken Breast filled with Spinach Mousse with Roasted Shallot Demi-Glace, Parmesan Risotto Cranberry Glazed Baby Carrots
• Third Course: Chocolate Dipped Ginger, Snap Mini Cranberry Trifle Martini, Candy Cane Chocolate-Raspberry Roulade

The food was excellent and the servers were swift and unobtrusive during the performance. An open bar was available in the foyer for drinks before the show and during the two short intermissions.

The performance itself was split into two parts: Christmas carols at the beginning, followed by the entire It’s A Wonderful Life play. The fictional radio station WBFR serves as the backdrop to the entire night and was reminiscent of watching A Prairie Home Companion – right down to the live sound effects performed by the very talented and funny Mr. Whiting and the radio notes from the audience read on stage after the second intermission.

The cast mingled with the audience during breaks and after the show, which was refreshing. Phil’s wife was there with her mother and I got to talk to Mr. Cunningham about the show I saw him in at Dudley Riggs a long, long time ago. He even remembered the name of the show, once I mentioned it had a lot of songs by Bread. Sex, Lies and Videogames was one funny show and was his first with that theater group.

It’s A Wonderful Life, A Live Radio Play runs through December 23. There are only a few tickets left for selected performances, so check out the schedule and call 651-228-3860 if you want to see the 2009 edition of this new St. Paul tradition. The afternoon tea performances are $55 and the dinner shows are $70.

7MM It’s A Wonderful Life Photo Gallery

Originally scheduled to make the U.S. premiere in St. Paul, Kooza is finally re-scheduled to come back. Shows start July 3rd and are currently on sale to Cirque Club members for various dates through July 26th (no shows on Mondays or on Tuesday the 21st).

Pricing for this show is sort of complicated (see this page), but basically ranges from $60 to $215 for adults and from $42 to $150.50 for kids age 2-12. Discounts are also available for students and seniors on non-peak performances. Children under 2 years old are free, but must sit on a parent’s lap.

I believe the big top (or “Grand Chapiteau”) will be in the parking lot off of Kellogg in Lowertown overlooking the river. Capacity for each performance is 2,600 and the show is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, including a 30-minute intermission.

Even though Cirque is one of my fetishes (and I had purchased four tickets for the last time this show was supposed to be here), I’m not sure if we will be going to this one. I definitely can’t afford to take the whole family, but maybe Colleen and I can sneak away for two cheap seats.

The family attended a Sunday afternoon performance of Oklahoma! this weekend that was produced by the Eagan Summer Community Theatre. Colleen couldn’t wait to finally hear the real Surrey with the Fringe on Top after all of those When Harry Met Sally references.

The production quality of this show was quite high and we enjoyed the lead actors: Ashley Lemaire as Laurey and Jared Oxborough as Curley. Douglas Castle was also great as Ali Hakim and the kids liked Honey Ribar as Ado Annie the most.

The worst part of the show by far was the audience – why can’t people shut up for two hours? Aside from that, it was nice to finally see the play that every Okie is duty-bound to watch at some point in their life. Ok-la-hom-a, OK!

A few weeks ago, we went with our friends to see The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde at the Guthrie’s Proscenium Stage. That was the only stage at the new Guthrie that I hadn’t been in, and it was very nice: red everywhere, comfortable seats, good sight lines and strong acoustics.

We got there about an hour early to get rush tickets, which worked perfectly – four seats together for $20 a seat. The theater got some of that money back in concessions, but I was disappointed that none of the restaurants (both in the theater and those nearby) were open after the performance.

The show itself was entertaining. You really can’t go wrong with anything at the Guthrie, but I didn’t know much about this play beyond what I had read about Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia.

Very interesting character, which led to an interesting play that jumps around in time. The on-stage musicians and four puppeteers helped tie transitions together and the three primary actors were all enjoyable to watch.

The Thomas Kilroy play runs through July 11th (ticket information here).

This was a busy family activity weekend – wedding on Saturday in Plainview, Minnesota, and a community theater presentation of Cats on Sunday in Maplewood.

Congratulations to Justin and Mindy Tentis on their marriage. How often to you get to see a bride and groom drive away in something like that? It probably cost more than I paid for my house too…

The Heritage Theater Company production of Cats at the Maplewood Community Center included two Smiths – my uncle Jeff playing Bustopher Jones and my cousin Peter playing Mungojerrie. They both had solos and were awesome. The three hours worth of makeup was impressive too. The show runs through May 18 if you want to catch some good community theater (40+ people in the cast and orchestra).

Colleen and I went to see Warm Beer Cold Women at the Guthrie’s Dowling Theater this weekend. The theater was set up the exact reverse way from when we saw Phil Callen in Pen this fall, which threw me off at first.

I’ve liked Tom Waits for a long time, but realized I’m not much of a Waits expert. This show had lots of songs I’d never heard before, but we still had a good time. Katy Hays was our favorite performer, but Dennis Curley had his moments and Robert Berdahl (who also wrote, directed and produced) did an admirable job with his torn Achilles and crutches.

The musicians were very strong and we really liked Dan Chouinard on keyboards and Mark Stillman on accordion (his entrance at the beginning of Rain Dogs was a highlight of the evening).

Complete list of songs from the program after the jump. (more…)