Waiting For Godot Is Very Funny. Who Knew? At the Guthrie Theater

Jimmy Kieffer, Jim Lichtscheidl, Will Sturdivant and David Strathairn Photo by Dan Norman

I’ve been waiting for Waiting for Godot for decades. I started my college career as a Theater Arts major before transferring to film studies. And you can bet that my first class in that department was History of Theater, in which I read about Samuel Beckett’s influential play. All I knew was that two men wait for a man named Godot, who never comes. It sounds bleak and important and impenetrable, doesn’t it? I knew it was an important piece of theater, and so I’ve always been on the lookout for it, knowing that I must see it at some point if I was ever to earn my wings.

I went into tonight with conflicted feelings, mostly excited to finally see this landmark play, but also with apprehension. What if I don’t get it? How will I write about it? What if it never ends? Seriously, what if the show never ends and three weeks from now we are still trapped in our seats watching two men sitting on stage waiting for someone? How would we be fed? Where would we sleep?

Well, I’m home, and that didn’t happen. And just like that time I ran into a pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them, I now wonder what I was scared of.

ONE OF THE GREATEST PLAYS OF THE 20TH CENTURY!!! is daunting. Seeing Waiting for Godot, however, was a joy. Writing about Waiting for Godot could be daunting, or it could be fun. I choose fun.

The plot: two men, Didi and Gogo, meet up, as they always do, to wait for a man named Godot. They talk of this and that, despair, suicide, and try to find ways to pass the time. Along the road comes a man named Pozzo, who is accompanied by his servant Lucky, whom he keeps tethered to a rope and occasionally uses a whip to incentivize. They all interact, then Pozzo and Lucky leave. A boy comes and tells Didi and Gogo that Godot cannot come today, but he will come tomorrow. The men decide to leave. They do not. End of Act One. Act Two: a variation on Act One.

The play isn’t about the actions of these men; it is about their inaction. What makes the play so enjoyable is what they are saying to each other and how they are saying it. Of course, there is a meaning in all of this, commentary on life and what it all means, or doesn’t mean. But you know what? I just saw it an hour ago. This will take some processing, and it’s also the sort of play where different people are going to come to different conclusions about it.

I want you to see it with your own eyes and let it find its meaning in how you see it. The one thing I can do to help you is to let you know that it is two hours and twenty minutes spent in the company of performers who never let you lose interest for a moment. The show is funny, at times absurd, but also oddly sweet.

Jimmy Kieffer and David Strathairn play Gogo and Didi, and it’s hard not to see the influence of comedic geniuses of the silver screen such as Laurel and Hardy or Chaplin. And before you say I’m projecting my love of cinema onto the play, remember that Beckett’s sole screenplay is for the short film Film, starring Buster Keaton.

It’s fun to have an Academy Award nominee like Strathairn at the Guthrie, but it is anything but stunt casting. He is absolutely perfect for the role, making nonsense sound organic, adding touches of melancholy strategically, and bringing a sense of genuine love for his old friend Gogo. Kieffer, who replaced John Carroll Lynch shortly after rehearsals began, for undisclosed reasons, brings the perfect balance to the pairing. His character is more unsteady; he swings from moody and complaining to smiles and sunshine mid-sentence. It’s great comic timing.

Will Sturdivant gives what is probably my favorite performance of his I’ve ever seen, and faithful readers know that I’m a fan of his work, so that is saying something. He makes Pozzo’s extreme demands both grossly demeaning and hysterically funny. Wait until you see him engage Gogo in helping him sit down.

As his nearly completely silent servant Lucky, can you ask for anyone better in that type of role than Jim Lichtscheidl? Twin Cities theatergoers have had many opportunities to see what he is capable of doing with a stage and no dialogue. I only wish there was more for him to do in this show.

Everything is top-notch, from the bleak set design by Marion Williams to the muted color schemes and worn-down look of the costumes by Trevor Bowen, which fit perfectly with the landscape. Part of the wonder of the play is how funny it is despite the gloominess of the environment. This world is bleak, the lives of these characters are bleak, so why is it so damn funny?

I had an idea as I left the theater for a Minnesota Fringe show, and I encourage anyone to take the idea and run with it: a version of the play with SpongeBob SquarePants as Didi and Patrick Star as Gogo, Mr. Krabs as Pozzo, and Squidward as Lucky. You just do a shortened version of the play with those characters in the roles, minimal changes, a few changes to keep the themes in line but use the SpongeBob universe’s tropes.

I’m so glad I finally got to see Waiting for Godot. I was surprised by how accessible it was, how funny, and just plain entertaining. I also know that there is more under the surface than I’ve covered here, partly because I need to process it but also because I want you to go in without preconceived ideas and see what meaning you take from it. One thing is for sure: you will be entertained.

Waiting for Godot runs through October 11th at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://www.guthrietheater.org/whats-on/waiting-for-godot/

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.

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Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle Will Only Be Bouncing Around Artistry’s Black Box Theater Thru 9/20

Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle celebrates its 10th anniversary with a short run at Artistry in Bloomington. Max Wojtanowicz, who wrote and performs the show, began performing it in 2016. The show is about Max’s battle with testicular cancer. Wojtanowicz is a favorite of, well, probably everyone who has ever seen him perform or worked with him. He’s a walking encyclopedia of musical theater, a gifted actor and vocalist, and if anyone could make a show about testicular cancer shine, it’s him. But it does more than shine. It encourages the audience to internalize it and, in a way, allows it to become a cathartic outlet for their own story.

The show deals with the specifics, which allow it to become universal. One detail here and another detail there will ring true to different audience members. By the end of the show, we have all found something to relate to.

Originally a show at the 2016 Minnesota Fringe Festival, Wojtanowicz gives us a few winks and a couple of saucy signals, but keeps it at a PG-13 level. Which is good, because it means you don’t need to feel any hesitation about bringing your teenage sons to the show. Because the point is to help others either discover they need treatment or show them how you can get through it, you just have to make a start.

And Wojtanowicz knows exactly how to make that message land. He’ll make you laugh, think, feel, then laugh again. It’s ultimately a genuinely uplifting experience, but not in the sweet and sugary way. It gets there through humor and honesty. And song, one of it’s biggest selling points is surely not just the chance to listen to Max sing, but to sing about his testicles.

This is a very special show with a very short run. Only five performances remain, so don’t miss this remount of Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle. It’s a show about cancer, loss, survival, and finding your way forward, and somehow, it’s also a hell of a good time.

Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle runs through September 20th at Artistry in Bloomington. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://artistrymn.org/ball

The Great Gatsby Launched TRP’s 75th Anniversary MN Themed Season

Cast of the Great Gatsby Photo by Tom Taintor

The Great Gatsby kicks off the 75th season of Theatre in the Round, a season they have devoted to telling stories with Minnesota connections. Gatsby, of course, is written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a native of St. Paul. One of the greatest American novels ever written, it’s a solid choice for TRP to open this landmark season. I encourage everyone to be a part of this historic season of what is the longest-running community theater in Minnesota.

It was interesting to see this smaller-scale play version after seeing the lavish touring Broadway musical earlier in the year. They both have their advantages. This version is a much less glamorous affair, but the intimacy of the venue also allows for the story to take center stage.

Set in 1922 on Long Island, the story is told by Nick Carraway, a young war veteran who rents a small cottage next to the estate of Jay Gatsby. After receiving an invitation to a party, Nick meets Gatsby, who asks for his help in reuniting with the girl he fell in love with before going off to the war, Daisy. Daisy is Nick’s cousin, who is now married with a child, though not happily. Her husband, Tom, carries on affairs, which everyone, especially Daisy, is aware of. Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker is also on hand as a possible love interest for Nick. The other major characters are George and Myrtle Wilson. George runs a gas station while his wife is having an affair with Tom.

The novel deals with the themes of the American Dream, class, and how the two collide. Much as it is becoming more and more the case today, the dreams of the lower class are decimated by the excesses and disregard of the wealthy. This stripped-down version is less concerned with those larger issues and focuses on the love story and interpersonal relationships between the characters.

The acting overall is done in a slightly mannered fashion. It’s off-putting at first because it’s not what we expect, but I came to enjoy the put-on, old-timey cadences. Gatsby, played by Jake Leif, is scripted to say the phrase “Old Sport” 87 times in his dialogue. There is no way to make that feel organic. The choice is to stylize the entire performance, which works. Likewise, Tom Buchanan, played by John Blocher, affects a unique delivery for all of his dialogue, which works equally as well. It is heightened and a little removed from humanity, which is a perfect representation of the character. Nick, the narrator, played by Gavin Webb, is much more naturalistic in his delivery, which reflects his character’s more genuine nature.

The set design by Michael Haas is limited by the venue, but he utilizes the upper portions of the theater, with each point of a triangle used for a vital piece of the design. In one corner, we have the Saxman, Maje Adams, who plays some tone-setting music. For the most part, it’s an interesting choice, but I was worried at the opening when the sax was threatening to overpower Nick’s opening narration. They should work on lowering the strength of the sax if they can. In the other two corners, we have the iconic billboard with the spectacles and eyes that light up, and the third is the green light that Gatsby can see from his property that marks where Daisy’s house is. I thought all of these design elements were very well done.

The Great Gatsby runs through October 4 at Theatre in the Round. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://www.theatreintheround.org/greatgatsby/

I’m So Glad I Came From Away to See Come From Away at The Phipps in Hudson WI.

There is something about Come From Away. No matter the cast or the venue, there is a feeling that comes over you in the audience where you think, “And here we are. Where the world has come together.” Because more than any other show, there is a feeling of being in the moment with these characters, probably because, for many of us, we were. We were not in Gander or New York, but it was a moment, possibly the only one in my lifetime so far, where it felt like the whole world had come together.

The power of art is to make us feel that we are not alone, and in a world where we are becoming the joke of the world, there is something so necessary about this show that allows us, for 110 minutes, to recall a time when the world had our back and was on our side. It also reminds us of all the qualities lacking in our country’s leaders: empathy, decency, putting others first, the ability and the desire to comfort and care for each other.

This show is truly a moving and uplifting experience. This is my sixth time seeing it, and I’m already excited to see it again next spring when Lakeshore Players puts it on. Some shows, when they come around for the third or fourth time, I’ll give them a miss to see something new. I think this is like RENT, where I’m always going to say yes. I cannot ever imagine regretting attending a performance of this show. This production at The Phipps Center for the Arts has all the power and joy that every other production I’ve seen has.

Come From Away is the musical written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, based on the true events of September 11, 2001, and the days following. After two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and another crashed into the Pentagon, all air travel was grounded and the airspace above the U.S. was closed. All airplanes inbound were diverted to the nearest airfield outside the U.S. Thus, 38 airplanes carrying about 7,000 passengers found themselves stranded in the small town of Gander on the island of Newfoundland. This small town and its neighboring towns took in these 7,000 passengers from all over the world, fed them, gave them shelter, clothed them, and made them honorary Newfoundlanders.

The show does what must always be done with stories about something as large as 9/11: It focuses on a specific aspect and a smaller group of people. This approach allows us to comprehend the incomprehensible by taking a huge event and bringing it down to a personal level. We get to know key members of the community, passengers, and the pilot of one of the planes, and through them we see this moment in history from a new perspective. The overall focus of the play is on the community coming together and caring for these stranded people, these strangers. Relying heavily on humor that seems very Newfoundlandish but also very Minnesotan.

Come From Away is an important work of art, but it doesn’t feel like it should be. A lighter, more energetic musical would be hard to find. The show moves with the pace and humor of a broad comedy. While the play doesn’t dwell on the tragedy of 9/11 and the negative reactions that came from it, it also doesn’t ignore them. There will be tears, but the kind that come from well-earned moments of genuine empathy, and any moments of sadness are met with feelings of joy at the capacity of the characters to support each other.

Still, while the show barrels ahead from one witty lyric to the next, with all the joy we are feeling, we are also constantly aware of 9/11. In some ways, it reopens a wound that I felt had long ago healed over. But in doing so, it also begins to heal that wound again at the same time. This is a tightrope walk I can’t really wrap my head around. It’s at once life-affirming, joyous, funny, and moving, while also reminding us of a tragedy that changed our world, that shocked and saddened us to our very cores. Yet these disparate elements are not at war with each other; they live organically intertwined, as if the one wouldn’t work without the other.

I imagine if I ever see a production of Come From Away that I don’t like, it will have to do with the cast, because the music and book are perfection. This cast is a great match for the material. There are certain characters that are favorites, like Nick and Diane, fellow travelers from different countries who fall for each other. Here they are played by real-life husband and wife Ben Thietje and Amanda White, who are just darling in the roles. Or the Kevins, the gay couple played here by a Stages of MN favorite, Ryan Lee, and Jeremy Johnson. Again, just ideal in these roles. Then there are characters that stand out in certain productions. Here, the character of Bob, played by Erebi Nyenkan, always gets some laughs, but there was something extra that drew me to the character this time and made her performance one of my favorites.

But the one that pulled the most out of me emotionally was DeZhané Antoinette as Hannah, the mother of a NYC firefighter who cannot get word of her son. It’s a role that is written to pull at your heartstrings, but no one has quite made all of the fear, worry, and uncertainty so palpable as Antoinette. Every line spoken, every note sung, is underlined with a sense that her heart may break at any moment. I cry a lot at this show. She earned by far the most tears of anyone in the cast.

In terms of differences besides the cast, the set design by Taylor English adds a substantial raised walkway that is well used, particularly in Nick and Diane’s sweet song, “Stop the World.” The one minor disappointment is the lack of live musicians. It doesn’t really affect our enjoyment of the show, but it’s always fun at the end or in the bar scene when you get to experience the band playing in front of you and getting to take a bow.

If you’ve never seen Come From Away, I urge you not to miss this opportunity. This is a wonderful production of one of my all-time favorites. This is definitely Top 10, probably Top 5 for me. Subject matter turning you off? Just trust me. It will be a powerful, inspiring, and ultimately uplifting experience.

Come From Away runs through September 27 at The Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, WI. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://thephipps.org/26-27/come-from-away

Pinocchio is Great Fun for the Whole Family, Ignore the 5 to 10 Year Olds suggestion, It’s for Everyone at Children’s Theatre Company

Antonisia (Nisi) Collins, Reed Sigmund, and Dean Holt Photographed by Glen Stubbe

The Children’s Theatre Company’s production of Pinocchio, according to the website, is geared toward ages 5 to 10. I hope that won’t dissuade people from bringing their older children as well, because it worked for me, so I’m sure it will work for them as well. This production is adapted and directed by Greg Banks, whose scripts for Robin Hood and The Hobbit we’ve seen produced over the last two years at Zephyr Theatre and Theatre in the Round. I’m getting a sense of Banks’ style at this point: he takes a classic story and retells it in a non-traditional way. Banks likes to acknowledge that we are sharing a story and shares openly the importance of the audience’s role in bringing their imagination into the theater.

Pinocchio opens not in Italy but in a theater. Company member Dean Holt comes on stage in his painter clothes, ready to get to work painting the set for the upcoming production of Pinocchio. He’s surprised to see us all there and tells us we’ll have to leave. When he discovers we all have tickets for Pinocchio, he convinces the other four members of the painting crew that they should tell us the story since we are there.

They then proceed to perform a seemingly makeshift telling of Pinocchio, using the ladders and scaffolding, paint cans and drop cloths, and even the head of a mop to take the place of props and costumes. This open communication with the audience allows the cast to engage directly at times with the audience, helping to keep the little ones engaged throughout. There was also a nice peppering of clowning throughout. There is nothing like a little good clowning to get an audience laughing together.

The cast is filled with the theater’s core company: Holt, Autumn Ness, Reed Sigmund, and the newest member and 2025 Twin Cities Theater Bloggers Favorite New Artist Award winner Antonisia Collins as Pinocchio. Also joining in, mostly providing instrumental accompaniment, is Victor Zupanc.

Zupanc, as with the style of telling this story, provides young audience members a chance to think about where the sounds they hear in entertainment come from. To see how creatively certain instruments can be used to conjure more than just music.

Holt and Sigmund playing schoolhouse bullies was brilliantly realized, the timing and the facial expressions priceless. Ness gets to pull at our heartstrings, first because the only role they’ll give her is the neighbor, who’s sleeping, later as she tries to deviate from the story to help Pinocchio.

And Nisi Collins… man, did we pick that one right. Pinocchio has a lot in common with the role she played last year in Once on This Island. There is a naivete and a trusting nature to both roles, but there is zero overlap in her performances. She plays the same traits but in a completely new way. I cannot wait to see what she does next.

Pinocchio is perfect for 5- to 10-year-olds, so bring them. But trust me, don’t leave the tweens or teens, or Grandma and Grandpa, at home. This is a very fun show. What I love most about it is the way in which it engages with the audience, not only telling them a story but sharing how we tell a story in theater. It’s the kind of show that could get some young mind thinking about more than just acting, but directing as well.

Pinocchio runs through October 18 at Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to https://childrenstheatre.org/whats-on/pinocchio/

MN Fringe Festival Day 8! M, The Choose Your Own Adventures of Turtle Boy (The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award Winner), Therapist Zero, Chum!

It is day eight of the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and I’m back again with four more reviews. To help you plan the final push on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, here is a rundown of all The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winners so far:

Watership Down
Be Not Afraid
Empty Nest
The Importance of Living
A Confluence of Arseholes
The Choose Your Own Adventures of Turtle Boy

Go to the Minnesota Fringe website here: https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026 to get the scoop on all of this year’s shows. As I do every year, I’ll be posting short reviews of every show I see as fast as I can, including my daily naming of The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award winner.

I can’t see everything, at least not without my glasses. So I encourage you to also follow my colleagues at http://www.cherryandspoon.com/ and https://letteredintheatre.wordpress.com/. You can also access all of the shows on the fabulous new theater website of the Twin Cities, 79 Seconds on Stage, at https://79seconds.org/. That site has links to all of the Fringe shows, as well as any reviews that might be out there for them from print and digital review sources. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you really should.

M is based on the 1931 German film directed by Fritz Lang and adapted and directed by Emma Kessler. This was an interesting experiment, taking a very stylized film and adapting it to the stage. Kessler makes some fun artistic choices, such as the use of shadow puppet techniques in certain scenes to capture locales, windows, even the silhouettes of people at times. It adds a touch of expressionist style that informed many classic German films of the silent era, which led to the bold, dynamic techniques that Lang employed when making M in the early sound era. There are several nice touches, such as having a child’s red ball roll across the stage to signify its owner no longer needs it. The story involves the hunt by the police and the underworld for a child killer. Fans of the film will really enjoy this transfer to the stage. I know I did.

https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/m

The Choose Your Own Adventures of Turtle Boy is the winner of The Stages of MN Fringe of the Day Award! The amazing thing is, this was a last-minute change. I had planned to see another show simply because it was in the same venue when, for the second time in two days, someone told me they were contemplating seeing this show for a second time. For die-hard Fringe fans who try and see as much stuff as we can, a statement like that means something. It was a sign from not really above, but more next to me and slightly to my left.

First off, Turtle Boy just melts your heart. From the moment he hides behind his puppeteer’s leg because he’s shy, an act that people in most audiences, maybe not a Fringe one, will instantly identify with. Turtle Boy is a puppet, of the marionette persuasion, controlled by traveling artist Emmanuel Elpenord. Throughout the stories Turtle Boy tells, he reaches a point where he has to choose between two choices, which the audience votes on by applause.

I was a big reader of the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid. The first ones I ever got were through the book order forms we got at school, they were called Twistaplot. I believe Twistaplot lost a format war with Choose Your Own Adventure, as they only produced 18 books to the latter’s 184. There was also a version by another publisher called Find Your Fate that featured James Bond and Indiana Jones. But maybe I made the wrong choice going down this path, because the review seems to have been lost. I’m going to go back to the previous decision and continue on in another direction.

Turtle Boy is so charming, you just root for him. The other great thing about this is it’s a show the whole family can enjoy, which is not something you can count on for a lot of Fringe shows, so it’s nice to have those options.

https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/the-choose-your-own-adventures-of-turtle-boy

Therapist Zero is a solo show from Brian Leonard that is very polished, almost to the point where you might call it slick. Leonard is obviously very well rehearsed and comfortable in front of an audience. It felt a little like an HBO comedy special by one of those comedians who also tells you moments of truth, though not as funny. That’s intentional; he sprinkles the show with humor, but it isn’t meant to be a stand-up routine. He’s storytelling or life-lesson sharing.

The stories he tells are all interesting, and they are connected thematically, but it’s hard not to feel that somewhere along the way we lost the central premise. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a cut-down version of a longer show; it just feels like we are missing a chunk of information surrounding his daughter. I wanted to know more about those teenage years, how she is now, not just what she is doing. This is a solid show. If you have nothing else that catches your eye during this slot, this is a solid choice that will not leave you wishing you had the time slot back.

https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/therapist-zero

Chum! is the second Jaws parody show of the Fringe Festival; this one is a musical. If you see only one Jaws parody show this Fringe, I’d have to say see the other one, Muskie. That one tells its own story set in MN and is very humorous.

Chum! is…well, I don’t know what it is. It uses recognizable characters from Jaws, but then kind of tells a different story that’s also kind of the same. It’s funny at times. The songs are not bad; they aren’t particularly memorable, but they have some clever bits to them. It just seems a little, I wouldn’t say safe exactly, but maybe risk-averse.

They wrote a lot of songs, and the cast is quite good vocally as well as performance-wise. It just fails to really tickle the viewer the way Muskie does. This one may be suffering from being a show I wanted so much to be great, and it was just good. One curious similarity was the way the watery terrors in both shows are sort of dispatched in the same way.

https://minnesotafringe.org/shows/2026/chum-

The Butler Did It Satisfies the Mystery Lover With a Brand New Sleuth I’m Dying to See More of at Park Square Theatre

Allison Vincent and Steve Hendrickson Photo by Dan Norman

The Butler Did It, the new play by arguably the finest mystery playwright working today, Jeffrey Hatcher, is sure to please any fan of the genre. Done in the subgenre of the inverted mystery, where we witness the killer commit the crime and then watch the cat-and-mouse game unfold between criminal and law enforcement. The format is most famously associated with the TV detective Columbo, for which Hatcher wrote one of the final installments. While this play certainly has shades of Columbo, Hatcher also brings his unique talent for surprising the audience with unexpected twists.

The thing about mystery plays is that there isn’t much you can say without accidentally spoiling the fun. In fact, during the talkback I attended after the show, I realized that even discussing one of the lead characters, and the actor who portrays them, could be considered a spoiler. Even that might be enough for the especially deductive among you to piece things together. Therefore, a play I feel I could write a double-length review about is instead going to get one of my shortest.

The play is set at a school for gentlemen’s gentlemen in 1975 San Francisco. A murder takes place that appears to be a suicide, but we, the audience, know otherwise. Assigned to the case, her first in fact, is the newly appointed Inspector Denise. And that’s about all I dare say of the plot. What I can add is that, for a mystery where you already know the killer, the fun comes from how cleverly Hatcher subverts expectations, how sharp the dialogue is, and how well the cast executes it. The Butler Did It does all three in spades.

Speaking of the cast, there’s exactly one person I feel safe discussing without being hauled away by the spoiler police: Allison Vincent as Inspector Denise. Luckily, I could write about Vincent all day. Hatcher may have modeled aspects of the play after Columbo, but he has created a completely original hero in Inspector Denise. It’s a role that feels tailor made for Vincent, who is one of the most distinctive theater artists in the Twin Cities. Not just a performer, but also a writer and director, Vincent has never once failed to impress. Here, she goes nowhere near Columbo as a character, instead bringing a style and energy entirely her own. Her humor feels like a perfect match for Hatcher’s writing.

After seeing her as Inspector Denise, I’m ready for a full series of plays, a Netflix show, starring Vincent in the role, written by Hatcher of course. Hatcher did mention that of the four future mysteries he’s been commissioned by Park Square Theatre to write, Inspector Denise is a character he’d like to revisit in one of them. Personally, I hope he doesn’t limit it to just one, I’m ready to tag along with Inspector Denise on many more investigations.

I hesitate to discuss the rest of the cast, but they are absolutely perfect. The production is filled with names faithful readers and Twin Cities theatergoers will recognize: Anna Beth Baker, Neal Beckman, Pearce Bunting, Peter Christian Hansen, Steve Hendrickson, and Nora Long. With that lineup and Hatcher’s script, audiences can be confident they’re in for something exciting.

What else can I say without hampering your enjoyment? Director David Ira Goldstein expertly guides the audience through the plot’s twists and turns. Scenic designer Benjamin Olsen has created a wonderful set, which we’re told will be reconfigured and adapted for each of Hatcher’s future mystery/thrillers. Karin Olson’s lighting design features some highly effective cues, from a small gunshot to a large explosion, both convincingly realized. Frederick Kennedy’s sound design includes a delightfully ’70s TV-style motif that brought a smile to my face every time it popped up.

The Butler Did It is exactly what mystery lovers crave, a new play that feels like a classic of the genre. The production runs at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul through August 16. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.parksquaretheatre.org/the-butler-did-it.