Day: October 24, 2026

Twin Cities Horror Festival XV Reviews 3 The New Batch: There’s Room For One Thousand More and Evidence: Silence Experiments

It was the best of times is was the worst of times. Hello faithful readers, I’m back with reviews of two more shows running at this years Twin Cities Horror Festival. One is undoubtably one of the best of the festival, the other the worst. The festival runs through Oct 31st and it’s the perfect way to celebrate Monster Month. Here is a link to the festival website so you can get all the details: https://www.tchorrorfestival.com/

There’s Room for One Thousand is one of the most elaborate shows I’ve ever seen at the TCHF. Set in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, the show begins the minute you are ushered into the theater, where you suddenly become a guest about to take the ride. Just like the actual ride, everyone is ushered into the center of the stage, surrounded by the portraits from the Haunted Mansion. Then we hear the voice of Paul Frees, who is heard throughout, narrating the ride. The portraits stretch as they do in the ride, and after the intro, we are told to make our way to the ride cars, our seats.

We meet three employees who have earned the reward of getting to stay overnight in the Haunted Mansion, but you can be sure there is more to this than a reward for being such good employees. The characters move through the rooms of the mansion, where moments from the ride are reproduced with astonishing accuracy, especially considering that a TCHF production requires everything in the show to be loaded in and out in 10 minutes.

Writer Tim Wicks’ affection for the ride shines through, as does his creativity. This is such a beautiful blend of design and script. Every element, from the wallpaper on the mansion’s walls to the employees’ costumes, feels authentic. The realizations of characters from the ride, like Madame Leota, the head in the crystal ball in the séance room, and the puppet of the Hat Box Ghost, which is twice the size of the human cast and looks like it was Imagineered at Disney, are astonishing.

This is now the show most likely to be the best of the festival. There is one performance left that is not quite sold out, on Halloween at 6:00 p.m. I urge anyone who has ever been on the Haunted Mansion ride to get to that last performance. I hope this will not be creator Tim Wicks’ final show, he is dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis, but if it is, he is going out on a high note, one he should be immensely proud of.

The description for Evidence: Silence Experiments says there is a suicide cult and that 11 people disappeared. Five bodies were found; six never were. That sounds interesting. I have no idea what that has to do with what I just saw.

This is one of the most aggressively inaccessible shows I’ve seen at TCHF. Essentially, it’s a music show with visual elements that are utterly pointless. There are three performers in the show, including Roberto Kerry, who plays music and sings. The other two alternate between speak-singing while music is being played and using a digital camera and projector to display washed-out images of photos and drawings and written words on a screen that cannot be seen well enough to discern what is on it..

There are moments when some of the music is enjoyable, but as you’re listening to it, you’re watching one of the other performers put images in front of the camera that cannot be seen and writing that cannot be read. They also, at times, use a marker to doodle on the paper or photos and, for good measure, drag electronic cords in front of the camera.

One of the final lines of the show was “Please stop,” and my only thought was, they read my mind.

This is a touring show. Someone mentioned that it was from North Dakota, where I grew up. The performers are young, and I imagine they get a certain thrill from alienating the audience or being misunderstood by the aged white CIS man in the audience.

The best way to enjoy the show is to close your eyes, ignore any and all visual elements, and let the music wash over you. But be careful. You definitely run the risk of falling asleep, there is a hypnotic aspect to the music.

If you avoid only one show at this horror fest, this should probably be it. I think Kerry has real musical talent; I just wish it had been in the service of something understandable.

Don’t forget to keep an eye on the new website  79 Seconds on Stage a free and full guide to local theatre in the Twin Cities.

Don’t rely on Facebook or Instagram algorithms to keep you in the loop about great shows. Subscribe and have every post from The Stages of MN delivered straight to your inbox. It’s the best way to make sure you never miss out on the theater action. To subscribe on a computer, enter your email address on the home page (right-hand side) and click subscribe. On mobile, scroll to the bottom of the page to find the same option. You can also follow me on Facebook @thestagesofmn and on Instagram thestagesofmn.

The Stages of MN YouTube channel is home to the Stages of MN Show. You can watch it by clicking here. Be sure to check out the latest episodes and subscribe so you’ll always know when a new one drops. Not sure you agree with one of my takes? I’m also part of the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers (TCTB), where you can find review roundups from my colleagues and me. Follow us on Facebook at @TwinCitiesTheaterBloggers.

Twelve Angry Men at Lyric Arts is Guilty of Being Terrific Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Photo by Molly Jay

I first encountered 12 Angry Men in the seventh grade. We watched the film version in English class. I’m not sure why, but as a kid who grew up on black-and-white movies, I took to it immediately. It’s one of those films I go back to every five or six years for another screening, one I’ve probably purchased in every format I’ve collected over the years: VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. This is the second stage adaptation I’ve seen, following the musical version from Theatre Latté Da a few years back. Watching Twelve Angry Men today reinforced my feelings that this is a story that doesn’t lend itself well to the musical form. As with the film, this is a fast-paced, no-frills, emotionally raw, and tense drama. Coming in at a lean 85 minutes with no intermission, the play speeds by, with the drama steadily ticking upward like the mercury in the thermometer measuring the increasing heat of the unairconditioned jury room. Lyric Arts’ production hits the mark with an exceptional cast who quickly and believably deliver twelve distinct personalities.

Twelve Angry Men is set in a Chicago city courthouse on a particularly hot day, in the 1950s, I assume, based on the set design and costuming. The play opens with a voice-over of a judge giving the jury their instructions, reminding them that if there is reasonable doubt in their minds that the defendant committed the crime he is being tried for, they must vote not guilty. With no air conditioning, nerves are already raw as the twelve jurors file into the room to deliberate on a murder trial in which a nineteen-year-old Black man is accused of murdering his father. Based on the conversations as they take their places around a long rectangular table, it seems like they are all of the opinion that it is an open-and-shut case and that the boy is guilty. They take a vote immediately and discover that there is one vote for not guilty. The next 80 minutes or so have the characters debating the case, with Juror 8, the holdout, slowly convincing others that there is reasonable doubt.

The case is intriguing, and the debate about the details of the crime and the questioning of the evidence are great, entertaining stuff. And to be sure, the play works as a tense, thriller-esque drama, but it is really about something larger: it is a microcosm of our society. Sometimes we think we have evolved and become more enlightened than previous generations, or at least we used to. The last decade has revealed that we are closer to the world these twelve jurors inhabit than we once thought. For those interested in looking beyond the entertaining story, there are themes of institutional racism, racism, ageism, and the ways in which our own personal pasts inform how we project onto others.

The cast is solid, with several standouts. As the two ends of the guilty/not guilty spectrum, David Denninger as Juror 3, who is convinced the boy is guilty because of his anger at his own son, and Davin Grindstaff as Juror 8, who feels that before you pass judgment on a man’s life, you should at least discuss it for a little bit, are great sparring partners. Dominic Delong-Rodgers is exceptional as the logical Juror 4, never losing his buttoned-up, emotionless cool while broadcasting intelligence and a sense of fair play. He holds out until close to the very end, but not out of prejudice or personal baggage. Instead, he is weighing all the facts, and one can almost see the scales of justice in his mind and know that if the evidence shifts enough and the scales tip toward reasonable doubt, he will vote accordingly. Abdoul Kondo, as Juror 11, an immigrant, is our reminder of the ideals on which our country is supposed to be founded. This role could easily become a caricature, but Kondo refuses to be just a mouthpiece for ideas. He internalizes the dialogue and makes it organic and character-driven.

Cory Skold’s set design is spot-on, giving us a sense of the ordinary so that we feel like we are in this place at this time without ever distracting us from the people inhabiting the space. Director Julie K. Phillips does an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension as the play goes on. There is a creative choice to black out the set at moments when emotions boil over. At first, I thought it was a lighting cue error, but after it happened a couple more times, I realized what was going on. Despite my initial reaction to the choice, I actually think it’s a brilliant decision. It gives us a moment to breathe and emphasizes those moments so that the points being made, whether it’s a declaration of “I’ll kill you!” or something else, are not lost in the momentum of the play.

My verdict on Lyric Arts’ Twelve Angry Men? GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS! Guilty of delivering a riveting production of a classic that holds a mirror up to our strengths and weaknesses as humans and as a society. Guilty of ratcheting up the tension until the final moments. And guilty of being first-rate entertainment. No reasonable doubt about it!

Twelve Angry Men runs through November first at Lyric Arts in Anoka. For more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.lyricarts.org/twelve-angry-men

I want to alert you faithful readers to a new Website that has just started up in the Twin Cities. It’s called 79 Seconds on Stage and it is a free and full guide to local theatre in the Twin Cities.

Don’t rely on Facebook or Instagram algorithms to keep you in the loop about great shows. Subscribe and have every post from The Stages of MN delivered straight to your inbox. It’s the best way to make sure you never miss out on the theater action. To subscribe on a computer, enter your email address on the home page (right-hand side) and click subscribe. On mobile, scroll to the bottom of the page to find the same option. You can also follow me on Facebook @thestagesofmn and on Instagram thestagesofmn.

The Stages of MN YouTube channel is home to the Stages of MN Show. You can watch it by clicking here. Be sure to check out the latest episodes and subscribe so you’ll always know when a new one drops. Not sure you agree with one of my takes? I’m also part of the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers (TCTB), where you can find review roundups from my colleagues and me. Follow us on Facebook at @TwinCitiesTheaterBloggers.