Frigid temperatures this weekend prompt cold weather advisories

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support


Warning: If you start reading online about the Beach Boys' 1966 album 

 you may be at it for hours. Considered among the first great concept albums in rock 'n' roll, "Pet Sounds" gets credit for inspiring the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper." So it's an 

, which is featuring "Pet Sounds" in its "Covers" concerts. The nine-member vocal ensemble is unfailingly precise in its harmonies and smart about its arrangements, so this adaptation of a historic album should be fun, fun, fun. (And no, that song does not appear on "Pet Sounds.") June 3 through June 11 at the Cowles Center in Minneapolis. 

 Wouldn't It Be Nice? (And yes, that one does appear.) 


You might think, judging from the title, that 

is a play by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. But it's not. It's a play by George F. Walker, and Vonnegut — in the form of a "mental apparition" — is a character. (Readers of "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut's signature, sort-of autobiographical novel, will recognize the "So it goes" phrase as the refrain that greeted every death.)  The piece is being staged June 2 through June 25 by Dark & Stormy Productions at the Grain Belt Warehouse in northeast Minneapolis. 

 that is. This excellent production by Walking Shadow Theatre finishes its run at Mixed Blood on June 11. Walking Shadow puts the flexible space of Mixed Blood to good use, transforming the theater into a megachurch where the talented cast enacts a spirited theological debate that turns into an existential crisis. Like many other really good plays, this one makes the audience uncomfortable. And some of the performances may bring you to tears. 

If you need proof that something deeply wrong may be lurking in America's justice system, watch the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer." If this is how the system works when the whole world is watching, what goes on the rest of the time? Two of the voices that were so compelling in that series, attorneys 

, are at Northrop Thursday evening to talk about the system and whether it works as well as it should. (Spoiler alert: It doesn't.) 

Arts picks: Criminal justice and the Beach Boys

Go Deeper.

Like this?