MN Shortlist, Feb. 20-26: Comedy lifers, lethal manners and borrowed time
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Late February has a way of stretching in Minnesota — winter not quite finished, spring not yet convincing — and the arts calendar leans into that suspended moment with wit, reckoning and a streak of defiance.
This week’s lineup moves from Tony-winning musicals to international cinema, from Ramadan-centered poetry to a Fire Horse fanfare, anchored by artists who understand that timing isn’t just a craft concern, but a way of reading the room.
‘Kimberly Akimbo’ at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul — Feb. 24–March 1
The 2023 Tony winner for best musical comes to the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts with a premise that reads like an allegory but plays as something far more intimate: a teenage girl aging at four times the normal rate, determined to carve out whatever scraps of ordinary adolescence she can.
Based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s play, with a score by Jeanine Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire, “Kimberly Akimbo” blends offbeat humor and pointed social satire with a quietly bruising meditation on time, mortality and the small acts of defiance that make a life feel lived. It’s a show whose emotional punch feels especially sharp in a culture that too often confuses cynicism with insight.
Turn Up Your Support
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.
Italian Film Festival at The Main Cinema in Minneapolis — Feb. 26–March 1
The 17th annual Italian Film Festival returns to The Main Cinema, balancing new work and historical reckoning, a reminder of how cinema can function at once as passport and self-examination. Presented by the Italian Cultural Center of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the MSP Film Society, the lineup includes U.S. premieres like the 2025 comedy “La Vita Va Così (Life Is Life),” alongside an “Honoring the Twin Cities” sidebar featuring “Roma città aperta” and “La Donna Nella Resistenza.”
Artistic director Tommaso Cammarano frames the pairing as an invitation to dialogue in a city still negotiating what repair looks like, on screen and off.
Mizna Lit Series at Baba’s Cafe in Minneapolis — Feb. 26
An evening of poetry and conversation unfolds at the meeting point of art and observance as Mizna brings its quarterly writing collective to Baba’s Cafe in Minneapolis. The free reading features Minneapolis-based Somali American poet Muna Abdulahi, Cairo-born writer and artist Nader Helmy and Lebanese genderqueer poet and archivist Nikki Luna, with an iftar special at 6 p.m. in recognition of Ramadan followed by the program at 7 p.m.
It’s a reminder of how SWANA writers continue to shape the region’s literary life through gatherings that foreground community as much as craft.
‘Lunar New Year Concert’ at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis — Feb. 26
The Year of the Fire Horse gets a symphonic greeting as the Minnesota Orchestra marks Lunar New Year with a program that moves fluidly between tradition and contemporary expression. At Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, conductor Chia-Hsuan Lin leads a lineup that includes the “Flying Horse” movement from Bright Sheng’s concerto “Zodiac Tale,” with guest artists such as suona virtuoso Yazhi Guo, while principal bassoonist Fei Xie serves as artistic consultant.
The result is less a themed night than a conversation on stage, one that reflects how the orchestra is continuing to expand its sense of repertoire, collaboration and cultural center.
‘Steve Martin and Martin Short: The Dukes of Funnytown’ at Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis — Feb. 28
An afternoon and evening with two comedy lifers plays less like a tour stop than a living seminar in timing, stamina and taste. At the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, Steve Martin and Martin Short turn their decades-long friendship into the show’s loose organizing principle, swapping dry absurdism for elastic character work, weaving stand-up, sketch banter and just enough banjo to signal that this isn’t a scripted musical but a variety show powered by rapport.
Fresh off their Emmy-winning run on “Only Murders in the Building,” they needle show business, aging and, most enthusiastically, each other — a two-hander that makes the case that longevity in comedy has less to do with chasing relevance than with remaining precise.
Update: The Feb. 28 performance has been postponed following the sudden death of Martin Short’s daughter.
‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’ at Rochester Civic Theatre in Rochester — Through March 1
The 2014 Tony winner for best musical arrives in Rochester wielding impeccable manners and a blade kept conspicuously close at hand. At Rochester Civic Theatre, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” tracks Monty Navarro as he learns he’s improbably in line for an earldom and decides to hasten the process by eliminating the seven aristocratic obstacles ahead of him, all embodied by a single performer darting through accents, costumes and social pretensions.
Part drawing-room satire, part door-slamming farce, the show leans into its own wickedness, offering a brisk reminder that musical theater has long found its sharpest laughs in fantasies of puncturing inherited power.
Whether you’re drawn to satire with a body count, a banjo-laced comedy summit or films that insist history remains present tense, this week offers more than distraction. It offers perspective — and a few well-placed reminders that culture, at its sharpest, functions both as mirror and as meeting place.
