Small theater gems

I've been on a small theater jag the last week, catching up with shows that friends had recommended, and there are three shows worth your effort. This is not a new thought but I'll repeat it: the work in Twin Cities small theaters has gotten to be so sharp that these 100-seat venues have come to define what's great about this community.

Yellow Tree Theatre, up in Osseo, has a nice production of "The Glass Menagerie" with Katherine Ferrand as Amanda and Jason Peterson as Tom. Peterson finds that mournful center that is so essential to Tom, Tennessee Williams' guilty self. His voice fills the air with regret and his eyes are always looking into the distance — the great world into which Williams escaped. Ferrand's Amanda is a brittle, damaged queen living in a hovel. Director Jon Cranney's production hits all the right notes. And get this. Yellow Tree uses mesh lawn chairs as theater seats. They are largish, amazingly comfortable, with arm rests. Seriously, I would have fallen asleep if the play wasn't so good.

Last Monday, I ran over to Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul for "Sea Marks," a play by Gardner McKay. Ellen Fenster's production reunites Peter Christian Hansen and Stacia Rice, two actors who clearly share wonderful stage chemistry. What a sweet small play, and what superb work by two actors who clearly fell in love with McKay's story about an Irish fisherman who becomes the literary crush of a Liverpool working girl. Hansen imbues his character with native intelligence, and bluff confidence laid over his insecurity. Rice seems to have meticulously broken apart every line in search of meaning and gesture. It is easy to see where McKay's scenario is headed but that matters less than the honest love at this play's center. I confess that I arrived at the theater in a foul mood but left absolutely charmed.

Finally, do everything you can to catch Raye Birk's performance in "The Last Word," which closes this weekend at Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company in St. Paul. Playwright Oren Safdie has given us not much more than an extended scene (85 minutes), but in that period he delivers a complex look at the process of playwriting. Birk plays Henry Grunwald, a retired advertising executive who fancies himself a great writer. Skyler Nowinski, a young actor who is worth keeping an eye on, plays the old man's foil. Any student, fan, teacher, critic, actor, person on the street who wants a clinic on great acting needs to see Birk in this role. His Henry is twitchy, politically incorrect, self-important but wounded. Director Hayley Finn gets credit for being the person who looked at this piece in rehearsal and said, "Fabulous, Raye."

None of these theaters has more than 120 seats. To get a chance to see Birk no more than 30 feet away, or Hansen and Rice even closer at Gremlin, is a real treat. And to find Yellow Tree alive and bustling in an Osseo strip mall revives my belief that serious theater patrons are not confined by the Minneapolis and St. Paul city borders.

To call this "small theater" is perhaps a misnomer. This is major theater, in small venues.