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Sometimes There’s Wine” was a comedy show that was put together by Theater Du Misissipi by Kara Eggers. The show was held at the Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts with a humble stage to perform on. As the lights dimmed, the stage lit up with tables and the sounds of smooth jazz music. The audience watches a woman as walks from stage right. She greets the audience and attempts to open her everyday life to us before a sudden interruption by a cafe patron who demands a service that could not possibly be provided. What follows is a series of comical events that emphasize the amount of annoyances a server can expect when working with a series of nightmarish customers.
As the lights dim, the stage is set for the rest of the performance. Instead of a single narrative, “Sometimes There’s Wine” is a collection of four micro stories with single scene narratives intertwined. The micro narratives are as follows: “7 Tables,” about the overworked server as she deals with a hurricane of customers demanding services she cannot provide, “Ian’s Wedding,” a story about two sisters attending their brothers wedding with one being an unruly attendee and the other attempting to minimize the damages of the unruly sisters actions, “Book Club,” a story about a mother trying to start a book club with other mothers at her child’s school and “Kid’s Table,” a story about a Christmas party and the struggles among the family members. These small narratives are brought to the audience in small episodes with constant references to each other creating a unique way of storytelling.
Most of the humor within these narratives are a combination of absurd statements made by the characters combined with relatable or equally absurd situations mostly around wine. It does good to listen to each show as there are several references between each narrative constructing an entire world through the respective narratives.
The story within the play is minimal with there not being much time to really understand or get to know the characters. Each character seems to be solely there to push the story along to a lackluster resolution. Out of the four micro stories portrayed, “Ian’s Wedding” had the most in the way of a narrative with character development although with an ending that leaves the audience wondering if there really was any resolution. Though this may seem negative, it adds to the overall humor of the play. To expect a coherent narrative is just as absurd as the situations within the stories. This reflects the goal of Theatre Du Mississippi to present stories that have meaning to the community.
This lighthearted play reflects the nature of Winona as a calm, easy going town where the joys in life can come from the simplest of situations. The actors on stage clearly gave their best performances. Each character was portrayed with enough life that the audience could mistake the performance forreality. The light hearted nature combined with these fantastic performances and immersive sound design make “Sometimes There’s Wine” a great experience for a fewhours of simplistic enjoyment.
