Review - The Cake - TRP - A Slightly Lopsided Confection - 4 stars

The latest new play offering from Theatre in the Round Players, The Cake, by Bekah Brunstetter, is a romantic comedy/drama about four people (plus a baking show host) each in their own way coming to terms with an adorably awkward lesbian wedding.  All of that is to say this production should be right in my wheelhouse.  (And I’m loving all the new and new-ish plays that TRP is bringing to the Twin Cities of late.) So why don’t I like this particular production more than I do?  That’s the question I’ve been puzzling over ever since I saw The Cake.

“See, what you have to do is really, truly follow the directions.”

It’s certainly not a failing on the part of the cast, all five of whom are game for all the laughs as well as the angst in the story.  Natavia  Lewis as Macy, and Via Logan as Jen make for a charming couple of brides to be. Jenny Ramirez as Della the baker, and D’aniel Stock as Tim the plumber make a very convincing middle-aged married couple. And Kjer Whiting is suitably wacky and unhinged as George, the host of the baking competition show that haunts Della’s nightmares.

“She can’t not love, which is really annoying.”

It’s also not the fault of the production team, who go all out to create this world.  Director Jennie Ward, assisted by Intimacy Director H. Ashley, gets great performances from the two couples, who we see a lot of in the bedroom in scenes that are by turns sweet, hot, funny and sometimes uncomfortable. (Butter cream frosting and mashed potatoes will never be the same again.) Ward also doubles as Sound Designer, assembling a pre-show song list with everything from Ethel Merman’s rendition of “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake” to Melanie Martinez’s “I’m Not A Piece of Cake” to get the mood of the evening off to a lively start. 

“We wanted to do it in the fall, while fall is still a thing, which isn’t much longer.”

Set Designer Keven Lock, assisted by Ash Aurig, plus the work of Prop Designer PJ Graber, creates the bright pink world of the bakery Della’s Sweets where nearly all of the non-bedroom action takes place. The bakery display cases turn out to be on wheels so the set ends up being a lot more versatile than you expect on first glance at the start of the evening. There’s also some inventive prop work where instead of actual cooking ingredients, which could leave a mess, the baked goods in process at Della’s bakery are manifested using bolts of colorful and sparkly cloth. It’s a great theatrical flourish. Lighting Designer Todd Reemtsma reinforces the reality (or unreality) of any given location as the story moves from place to place, and gives a lovely romantic look to the oddball wedding procession.

“Because the world is gonna change, but we cannot.”

Costume Designer Emma Shook gets a chance to really go for broke with this script and she takes it. The most over-the-top entries includes bakery show host George’s looks, which get progressively more outlandish as the evening progresses, and the spectacular bridal outfit for Jen, complete with headpiece, LONG train, and so many lights, befitting a woman of whom her partner Macy says, “You get weird in craft stores.”  Kudos to Stage Manager Indigo Cabanela-Leiseth and assistant Taylor Koehler for keeping the whole thing moving so smoothly from location to location, from normal scene to bakery show nightmares.
 
“I don’t respect these people.”
“I’m one of them.”
“No, you’re not.”

The playwright Bekah Brunstetter also has quite a career going in both TV writing and theater. The script for The Cake alone has been produced over 80 times, and she’s currently got commissions to write plays for four major regional theaters around the country.

“Would it even be a wedding if someone wasn’t mad at somebody?”

But the more I think about it, the more I think the fault here is with the play itself, not the production. The Cake has a great set-up. Jen comes to Della’s bakery because Della and Jen’s late mother were best friends. Della and her husband Tim were never able to conceive children, so it feels like Jen was in some ways the daughter Della never had. Jen’s return to the bakery is to ask Della to bake the wedding cake for Jen and Macy’s ceremony. But Della’s conservative Christian values cause her to hesitate. Another complication is this story is set in North Carolina, and Macy is African American. Just for good measure, Della is trying to rekindle the fire in her marriage bed, but Tim’s a bit uneasy with intimacy since he learned his sperm are the reason they can’t have kids of their own. So everyone’s comfort levels are a little off kilter.

“It tasted like the back of my mouth after a good cry.”

The Cake has a lot of great scenes, a lot of funny one-liners, and a big helping of earnest discussions and honest arguments. The uplifting thing is that these four unsettled people do all realize they love one another, and that helps them, to varying degrees, push through their discomfort and reconnect. It just doesn’t get to that end point without taking unexpected shortcuts.  Which is odd, because the run time isn’t short (at a little over two hours) but it still feels like some things are missing. Also, it’s a bit lopsided and I’m not entirely sure why. The first act is listed in the program as being 80 minutes and the second act as 30 minutes. The night I saw it, the first act was more like 90 minutes and the second act more like 20 minutes. And the audience wasn’t sure at first when intermission arrived that the first act was actually over. It just kept going scene after scene and we all thought this might be yet another transition, but no, house lights came up.  So the end of the first act, long as it is, isn’t entirely obvious.  The break could have come a few scenes before that and the flow of the story would still be fine.

“This cake is full of angel saliva and good deeds.”

As it was, we left the first act after a pretty major fight between Jen and Macy that could well have led to the marriage being called off, plus Della and Tim had a very awkward non-sexual encounter that seemed equally hard to bounce back from. Then in the second act, if my notes aren’t failing me, there are just four scenes. Jen and Della have a scene, Della and Tim have a scene, Jen and Macy unexpectedly get married anyway, in a pantomime set to music, no dialogue (so I guess that huge argument at the end of act one wasn’t such a big deal after all?), and then Macy swings by to have a chat with Della, in which she tells her among other things that she and Jen made up because Jen told Macy about that top of act two conversation with Della and… that solved everything? offstage? unseen? and they had a lot of other issues that couldn’t be solved by a simple Jen/Della conversation.  But hey, the play needs to be over and fast, so the lesbians don’t get a heart to heart reconciliation scene, but the straight couple does?  That feels… like a weird choice for a super short second act.

“It’s not natural.”
“Neither is confectioner’s sugar.”

Also, though the baking show nightmare scenes are certainly theatrical, they don’t seem necessary to the plot, or even Della’s character development.  They happen a lot throughout act one and then they just… stop.  They don’t lead anywhere.  They also have a pretty harsh, misogynistic tone to them.  Now, you can say, oh it’s just Della putting herself down, but the way it’s staged, it feels like the author putting Della down. Again, Kjer Whiting is fabulous in executing the role. I’m just not sure what the character is doing for the story.

“Could you please put your clothes back on?  I’ve had a long day.”

But again, over 80 productions of The Cake and counting, one of them off-Broadway, so what do I know?  Your mileage may vary.

“Us, walking toward each other.”

My own qualms aside, it’s still a great cast and great production team delivering a production with a lot of heart, and forgiveness, and growth, as human beings find a way to connect beyond their differences - and we could definitely use a big dose of that right about now.

“Guess I thought I was gonna do something great with my life.”

If you’re looking for a play with a positive vibe that doesn’t talk down to any of its characters or dismiss their worldview but instead tries to understand all sides in an effort to bring them together, then TRP has your ticket with The Cake. (No, I will not be making any “cut yourself off a slice” jokes.)

The Cake runs at Theatre in the Round Players (245 Cedar Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 554554) through March 15, 2026.  Tickets are available through their website.

4 Stars - Highly Recommended

 

Review - Red - Gremlin Theatre - Just All-Around Great Theater - 5 stars

It’s hard to know how best to praise Gremlin Theatre’s production of John Logan’s play RED, because it’s a winner from all angles. I could start by saying go for the performances from the two actors, Pearce Bunting and Ben Shaw, because they’re great. I could start by saying go for the direction by Ellen Fenster-Gharib, because she handles a tricky balancing act brilliantly. I could start by saying go for the script by Logan, which won the Tony Award for Best Play back in 2010, and I can totally see why (even though it had some really stiff competition that year, all of which I’ve seen productions of before, so RED’s been taking a while to catch up with me - my pick probably would have been Sarah Ruhl’s “In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)” but Donald Marguiles’ “Time Stands Still” is an equally impressive option, and though Geoffrey Nauffts’ “Next Fall” drives me crazy, even I have to admit it has its moments).

“I am here to stop your heart.”

RED is John Logan’s fictionalized version of the story behind artist Mark Rothko (Pearce Bunting)’s commission to create a series of murals to decorate the famed Four Seasons restaurant in the new Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York back in the late 1950s. Logan creates an eager new assistant for Rothko, named Ken (Ben Shaw), who is partly an audience surrogate bringing us into the world of Rothko’s painting studio, giving Rothko a handy excuse (and captive audience of one) to expound on his process and the world in general. Since plays tend to revolve around conflict, you won’t be surprised to hear that the execution of the sprawling art project doesn’t exactly go as planned, or that Ken’s patience as an awestruck apprentice does eventually reach its limit.

“Do you think they’ll ever forgive me?”
“They’re just paintings.”

RED is that rare bird, a two-person play that’s actually good. Logan nimbly avoids the downfall of many a two-person play, where the hand of the author is all too evident, trying desperately to keep all other potential characters in the world off stage in a way that doesn’t quite make sense, and so all the seams are showing. Here, in RED, you understand why these are the only two people that exist in this room. The play, and this production, also do a great job of creating the sense of an outside world we never see.  There is life beyond that offstage door we hear slam shut, announcing someone’s arrival. We sense people on the other end of the phone calls made on the art studio’s yellow, paint-spattered (rotary) phone mounted on a pole by the hot plate where Rothko and Ken stir up pigment and eggs to create just the right shades of color. Rothko conjures a society full of artists, old and new, some of whom he respects or pities, some of whom he has no patience for. Even if this wasn’t based on a real person and things that actually happened, I’d still believe the storytellers because of how well the world is realized.

“This moment right now, and a little bit tomorrow.”

Pearce Bunting was a key part of the ensemble of the best play I saw last year (and the best play that’s been on the Guthrie Theater stage in ages), "Primary Trust," so I wasn’t at all surprised by how great he is in the role of the artist Mark Rothko.  Rothko can often be an insufferable son of a bitch, and he’s a terrible employer (pity poor Ken), but Bunting always manages to give him just enough of a sliver of humanity and vulnerability to keep us from declaring him a complete monster.  Rothko never pretends to be any nicer than he is, so it’s not as if he didn’t warn Ken, and the audience, from the moment the play starts that he’s going to be difficult to like. Art about artists is hard to pull off, but here the playwright and the actor make the notion of art specific to this man’s personality. Rothko’s artistic mission and sense of self are inseparable. So his art having meaning and value and staying power is vitally important to him as a person. That’s why he’s so intense and unforgiving - because he knows the art world is even more unforgiving, and he’s struggling to stay one step ahead of becoming irrelevant.

“When the blood dried, it got darker on the carpet.”

Since I still vividly remember the experience of watching Theatre Coup d’Etat’s "The Rogue Prince" back in 2019 and Orchard Theater Collective’s "Saint Joan" in 2020 (right before the pandemic shut everything down), I came to RED already clued in to Ben Shaw’s skills as both an actor (Prince) and director (Joan). The idea of Shaw in a two-person show with Bunting promised to be delightful, and Shaw’s take on Ken did not disappoint. Ken brings the outside world (and the changing times) into Rothko’s sanctuary, which is one of the reasons Rothko can get a bit prickly around his assistant. Ken also has artistic ambitions (and secrets) of his own, of course, but this is no tired “the student becomes the master” plotline. The play, the actors, and the director are all a lot subtler and cleverer than that. Sarah Bauer’s costumes for Ken help us to track the passage of time through his evolution and level of comfort in the studio and what clothes he chooses to work in.

“Sending a blind child into a room full of razor blades.”

Bauer’s additional work on props - from that rotary phone to Rothko’s phonograph and vinyl record collection and all those painting supplies - gives RED its grounding in a previous century and helps flesh out the details of Carl Schoenborn’s wonderfully cluttered and lived-in art studio set.  (And because apparently she doesn’t have enough to do on this production, Bauer is also the stage manager - phew!) Schoenborn also works his magic on the lights (I should expect this of his work by now, of course). There are uses of light and shadow both everyday (in the discussion of finding the right light in which to view a painting) and otherworldly (the play’s highly saturated and colorful final moments). Given how important music is to Rothko’s artistic process, Aaron Newman’s work on sound design is just as integral to this production.

“I was totally saturated.  It swallowed me.”

Ellen Fenster-Gharib’s work as director is key to making this whole evening cohere together.  All these talents need someone to look at the bigger picture and guide them and Fenster-Gharib serves this role perfectly. As my theatergoing companion pointed out, the director isn’t afraid to let the actors just be still or exist in moments of silence, or trust that even with their back to one side of the three-sided thrust house, an actor will be conveying what’s going on in the scene.  Fenster-Gharib knows she’s cast two actors who can act just as (or even more) effectively when turned away from an audience than a great many actors do when you can see their full faces. Just like the paintings Rothko seeks to create, Bunting and Shaw are in motion (and full of e-motion) the more you watch them, even when they’re standing or sitting still. 

“Most of painting is thinking.  10 percent is putting paint on canvas.  The rest is waiting.”

And there’s just something really thrilling about the theatricality built into this production of RED, where the two actors staring out through the invisible fourth wall at each side of the audience are looking intently at paintings we never see. Yet in the faces of these two actors, we can sense what those paintings are doing to the viewer. Also, the details of the work of creating art - sanding down the frame for an enormous canvas, stapling down the corners and sides of yet another large canvas, then hanging it up on a rolling wall and watching the two artists paint a base coat of red on that canvas, all in time to a piece of classical music that becomes by turns a competition and a dance. It’s the kind of experience only a live performance can offer. RED offers these kind of moments in scene after scene throughout the evening.

If you’re looking for a solid, well-executed piece of theater from top to bottom, RED at Gremlin is your ticket.

Gremlin Theatre’s production of John Logan’s play RED runs through Sunday, March 1, 2026 in their space at 550 Vandalia Street, Suite 177, St. Paul, MN 55114. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are available through their website.

5 stars - Very Highly Recommended

(Photo (l to r): Pearce Bunting as Rothko and Ben Shaw as Ken in RED; photography by Allysa Kristine Photography)