Dinner Theaters can get lost in the world of so so food and so so productions. In many communities I think they have gone the way of drive-in theaters. In Minneapolis we have a dinner theater that goes back a long ways. It was one of the venues were I got my taste of love of theater. It is a good training ground for someone to learn live story telling but not at the expense of Shakespeare.
Our Chanhassen Theater is doing a run of "Footloose." I went to the play being dragged. It sounded like a musical that might send my blood sugar soaring. I never saw the movie, but knew it was about a bad boy who wins over the hearts of a small town and the pastor's daughter. This production directed by Michael Brindisi was a pleasant surprise for me. It did have the spirited songs, but more than that it had a story line with some meat to it. We see that we as humans can lose but we can become different people in the end. There is lots of dancing, some of it very good. The pit band is good and keeps the musical moving along. The three songs I remember from the radio and heard again that night were "Footloose", "Almost Paradise" and Let's Hear it for the Boys." Us girls went to the parking lot arm in arm singing "Let's Hear it for the Boys."
I strongly feel there is a place in our lives for "lite" theater. In Minneapolis we have the Guthrie Theater if we need real culture, and it is nice to have the Chanhassen Theater for the girls' night out.
Comments(0)