The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Like all of Samuel Beckett's plays, Endgame, now being produced by the Ten Thousand Things company, is an odd piece. The author tended to write claustrophobic plays in which a few people bother each other over and over again; the most famous of these is, of course, Waiting for Godot, in which two bored men spend the entire play waiting for the titular character, who (spoiler alert!) never arrives.

According to actor and storyteller Kevin Kling, Michael Sommers of the Open Eye Figure Theatre always wanted to be the devil.

Kling, looking gnomish in a green winter coat that seems military surplus, a salt-and-pepper beard, and a fur cap, is talking about The Holiday Pageant, the Open eye's annual Christmas show, in which Sommer's actually plays the devil.

I don't think anyone is ever going to mistake My Name is Bruce for a good film, but that's rather beside the point. Bruce Campbell, the film's director and star (with the help of screenwriter Mark Verheiden), has made a film celebrating bad films. More than that, he has made an affectionate ode to fans of schlocky, straight-to-video sci-fi and horror genre films. And, to a very large extent, he has made a love letter to his own fans.

Somehow, in 40 years, 12 of them spent as an arts critic, I have managed not to see the Guthrie's production of A Christmas Carol, which is an extraordinary and embarrassing feat. It's sort of like being a New Yorker and never seeing the Yankees play, or being from Los Angeles and never using cocaine. But A Christmas Carol is a tricky subject for an arts critic to write about, for a few reasons.