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At the very least, this play’s got “ample whimsy,” said Dominic P. Papatola in the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press. A collaboration between Tony-winning actor Mark Rylance and Duluth poet Louis Jenkins, it uses ice fishing as a metaphor for life as two buddies—played by Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl—aim to hook one last big one before the season ends. As the two sit on a frozen lake ruminating on matters big and small, “Jenkins’s poems comprise the bulk of the piece,” at least until the friends are visited by a park ranger and, more surreally, a Norse goddess and her snowmobiling boyfriend. Unfortunately, “floating on a cloud of images and ideas is a levitating act that can take you only so far” before you start to crave a story. There’s simply “not enough narrative” in Nice Fish. It “calls to mind a charming dinner guest who lingers one glass of wine longer than you’d like.”
Certain scenes “scream to be trimmed,” said Graydon Royce in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. And just when you think the play is climaxing, “it drifts aimlessly” into new territory. Yet in a show that examines the messiness of life, “this sprawling mayhem is, in effect, the message.” Nice Fish isn’t for everyone, but it “amazes with its bravery.” Think of it as a late-season snowstorm: “We can either shut ourselves away from it, or run outside for one last winter romp.”
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How are ICE’s recruitment woes complicating Trump’s immigration agenda?TODAY’S BIG QUESTION Lowered training standards and ‘athletically allergic’ hopefuls are getting in the way of the White House plan to turn the Department of Homeland Security into a federal police force
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What is a bubble? Understanding the financial term.the explainer An AI bubble burst could be looming
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France makes first arrests in Louvre jewels heistSpeed Read Two suspects were arrested in connection with the daytime theft of royal jewels from the museum
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.