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Hitting the scary notes at the Overlook Hotel


You might think that, as unlikely and possibly unappealing operas go, "The Shining" would be on a par with "Nixon in China." Well, as Jack Torrance says in the movie version: You've got a big surprise coming to you. The Minnesota Opera has sold out its entire premiere run of "The Shining," and 

now is getting $28 a head for standing room

Paul Moravec, composer, and Mark Campbell, librettist, adapted Stephen King's scary story of a dysfunctional family spending the winter in a vacant but haunted hotel. The two leads are played by Brian Mulligan and Kelly Kaduce.

"I do crazy people a lot," Mulligan told Euan Kerr. "I do lunatics. It's my specialty. I'm not typecast or anything; it's just how it works out. I tell people I'm doing Jack Torrance, they just roll their eyes, like 'Well 

Kaduce added, "The comment I get the most is, 'The Shining?' That's 

"The Shining" opens Saturday at the Ordway in St. Paul and runs through May 15. 

: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.


If standing through two hours-plus of "The Shining" doesn't appeal to you, another piece of musical theater with good prospects is premiering at the Illusion Theater that same evening: 

 by the all-star writing team of Jeffrey Hatcher ("Mr. Holmes"), Bill Corbett (Mystery Science Theater) and Chan Poling (the New Standards, the Suburbs, "Glensheen," etc., etc.).


In a chat Tuesday with MPR's The Current, Poling said the show "is basically like stepping into a bright teeny-bopper cartoon. It's fantastic ... it's just goofy." 


Poling said the premise has to do with a girl who can't get a date to the prom at her high school, where the faculty are drawn from among the gods of Olympus. At the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis, with previews Thursday and Friday; opens Saturday and runs through June 4. 


Imagine this: There you are, rehearsing your new play about the Minneapolis music scene in the 1980s, with opening night coming up in a week or so. And then you hear the news that Prince is dead. The coincidence is either perfect or awful, or maybe just perfectly awful. 


That's the context in which the History Theatre opened 

 an "alternative theater experience" that promises to reveal "how a cold Midwestern metropolis gave birth to so many geniuses of punk and funk." 


Whatever else you might think about the "experience," you've got to give it points for timing. At the History Theatre in downtown St. Paul, through May 29. 

: The pointedly funny Josh Carson ("A Very Die Hard Christmas") is in it.

Walker show puts ordinary pictures to extraordinary use


Should stock images qualify as art? Yes, sometimes. 

 a show featuring generic images created for advertising and other purposes, is on display at the Walker Art Center.


"A video montage loops silently on one wall," wrote Euan Kerr after he'd previewed the exhibit. "It shows a series of attractive people each working on a project. One is painting a picture, another glazing a pot. After a few moments each person looks up at the viewer. It's engaging. You get the sense they are selling something — but what?" 


Kerr explained that the artist had strung the images together from the web, after having searched for "artist looking at camera." 


The Walker show includes the work of 45 artists, and you can get a look at no charge on Saturday as part of the Walker's Free First Saturday program. The day includes family-friendly activities, as well as showings of the classic 1956 Albert Lamorisse film, "The Red Balloon." The show itself runs through Oct. 9 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. 

: These images are ubiquitous, so you should learn to recognize them. Forewarned is forearmed. 

 a smart and engaging play about a love story drifting through parallel universes, runs until the end of May at the Jungle in Minneapolis — though in another reality, it may have closed already. ... 

 doesn't exactly break new ground for the American theater, but the Guthrie's production is solid, funny and touching. It closes May 15. ... This weekend is your last chance to see Penumbra Theatre's 

 about a family struggling over the course of three decades with the consequences of a revolution betrayed. It's a powerful, painful story. ... 

 continues at Children's Theatre in Minneapolis through June 12.

Arts and Culture

Eric Ringham

Author

Stephen King's "The Shining" gets operatic in a new production premiering in Minneapolis. Not into tales of haunted hotels? You have plenty of arts options this weekend.

'The Shining' and other arts events not to Overlook this weekend

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