BEST ACTRESS - 2010 (City Pages)
Mo Perry
Mo Perry has found an increasing amount of work over the last couple of years on Twin Cities stages, and that is a very welcome thing. She can bring a sense of deep, knowing silliness to her characters, which was in abundance in a pair of roles in Torch Theater's The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Her Georgette was so full of treacle that spontaneous diabetes seemed an imminent danger, and her Rhoda was brassier than a James Brown horn section. She took a more serious turn in Hedda Gabler with Gremlin, providing repressed heat and the genuine sense of danger and unpredictability she generates when biting into substantive parts. In 2009 she seemed to be expanding her range, while also taking advantage of opportunities to be a big silly. Mo' Mo, please.Safe as Houses (Joking Envelope)
"The writing is first rate, but the main reason the play flies is that Poole (who directs as well as writes) displays an impeccable instinct for acting. This stuff is eminently playable and Poole has assembled a first rate cast to do the playing. This is the most substantial role this writer has seen Mo Perry do and she doesn't disappoint, sinuously holding the stage, soft-spoken, with a sweet yet bizarre and knowing smile. She's not, of course, who she says she is but we don't care, we'll follow this woman anywhere. Perry fans – and I know there many of you – should line up to see her play this part. " --John Olive, How Was the Show
"Playing Glenfiddich’s target, Mo Perry brings an intelligent ambiguity to the role of Darla, suggesting a devious mind more than capable of manipulating any character on the stage." --Brad Richason, Twin Cities Examiner
Somebody/Nobody (Mixed Blood Theater)
"Mo Perry, as always, amazes as Galaxy (somewhere some playwright is cooking up the perfect role for Perry; I hope the play finds her soon). " --John Olive, How Was the Show
"Mo Perry is like a cartoon as the agent -- a refugee from Pee-Wee Herman's playhouse." --Rohan Preston, Star Tribune
Dancing at Lughnasa (Torch Theater)
"Set in Tamatha Miller's rudimentary Irish cottage and under Paul Epton's warm lighting, Johnson's staging revolves around the strong performance of Mo Perry. Her Kate Mundy has a Catholic faith superseded only by her devotion to sober duty. That burden, though, has wearied this bulwark against the pulsing rituals of the Irish countryside and her white-knuckle rectitude cracks when she joins her sisters in the chaotic dance that celebrates Lugh, the harvest god." --Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
End of year press, 2009:
Some Girl(s) was named one of the top 10 productions of 2009 by both the Pioneer Press and the Twin Cities Daily Planet. Hedda Gabler was named one of the top 5 dramas of 2009 by the Star Tribune. The Mary Tyler Moore Show got a shout-out for "most awesome stage moment" from MinnPost.com.
Second Annual Metro Magazine Keeper Awards
Mo Perry, 28
Actor
Hails from: Eden Prairie
"Why she’s a Keeper: Mo herself says it best: “I’m really not afraid to look ugly or weird or strange onstage. I think a lot of woman actors—understandably in this business—are preoccupied with looking good. There are a lot of roles specifically written for women who look good. I’ve always been more interested in being interesting than being pretty. So I’ll make that crazy face in a comedy that’s really ridiculous and unsightly but that makes people laugh. I can find that dark, pathetic, vulnerable, ugly place in the drama that’s not going to be attractive, but that’s real.”
Amen, Mo! You go balls-out weird, wild and ugly for every role, and we love that! Hell, that’s why you keep landing all the good parts and knocking ’em out of the yard. Your Hedda Gabler, in Gremlin Theater’s spring 2009 take on Ibsen’s classic, was remarkably nuanced. You stole the show as the spacey, loveable Georgette in Torch Theatre’s recent staging of episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Forgive us for indulging in a bit of dime-store psychology, but we bet that part of the reason you’re willing to be unattractive onstage is that before becoming a professional actor, you spent a couple years living in the real world where, yes, things can get a little ugly. Your decision to take a break from acting after studying theater at the University of Kansas? Brilliant! That allowed you to join the Peace Corps and travel to Africa, to live in a van in California, and to guide international tourists on camping trips throughout the Southwestern United States.
You told us that you don’t bring a lot of your own “stuff” to your characters, but when you returned to the Twin Cities, and to acting, in 2004, you attacked each role—Carol in Theater Limina’s Oleanna, for example—like someone who’d been doing some serious l-i-v-i-n’. Or maybe we’re totally off base and you’re just one of those young performers with an old soul who can do anything. Either way, your versatility continues to blow our theater-lovin’ minds. What we’re trying to say here is please don’t move to New York or Los Angeles, Mo. Local stages need your crazy, badass chops."
Some Girl(s) (Walking Shadow)
"Mo Perry's vulnerability and buried rage as the erstwhile high school sweetheart rings with wistful truth." --Dominic Papatola, Pioneer Press
"I was especially taken with Mo Perry's raw and lanky Sam." --John Olive, How Was The Show
"Mo Perry appears first, as the man's teenage love who is forced to admit that she's always harbored a fantasy of the two reuniting. "Every time I've reviewed Mo Perry in a production," wrote Matthew A. Everett earlier this year, "she's been one of the best things in it. Often she's surrounded by equally talented actors, but I never find myself saying, 'Hmmm. Mo could have been better.'" Nor do I." --Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet
Fall's fresh faces
Five up-and-coming performers under 35
MO PERRY, ACTOR
Perry, 28, has been on our radar for a few years as an actor who does her homework and brings to the stage a detailed piece of work. Last winter, though, she demanded greater attention with her extraordinary portrait of "Hedda Gabler" at Gremlin Theatre. Perry has an innate understanding of character and that rare ability to submerge her ego and forget that the audience exists -- in short, an instinctive actor who builds from the inside out.
What's next: Perry is playing Rhoda and Georgette in Torch Theater's current production of three episodes of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show." She also plays Bianca in Park Square Theatre's "Othello" in October.
Her dream: "Lots of acting, writing -- exciting, challenging projects -- and not a lot of cubicles. I like my vegetable garden too much to move to New York, and I like eating too much to make it in Hollywood."
--Graydon Royce, Star Tribune, September 2009 (photo credit: Tom Wallace, Star Tribune)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Torch Theater)
"It's Edwin Strout and Mo Perry who come close to stealing the show. They're given the opportunity to play some of the TV show's larger-than-life characters, and they seize the chance and sprint.
Perry is quite good as Rhoda Morgenstern — Mary's mouthy
upstairs neighbor — in the first episode of the evening. But when she
dons a blonde wig and breathy voice to play the dim-bulb Georgette, she
offers a priceless, impeccably timed and altogether delicious tribute
to the character created by Georgia Engel." --Dominic Papatola, Pioneer Press
"Mo Perry shows the greatest range, first as the hard-driving New Yorker Rhoda Morgenstern and then as the doe-eyed Georgette, Ted Baxter's girlfriend. Simply put, she makes me laugh." --Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick
"800 Words' cast [is] over the moon... They meet the challenge of bringing the surrealistic meanderings of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's mind to life... A stellar cast doesn't hurt either... Mo Perry, playing the last of Dick's five wives, offers up a nicely honed stoicism." --Lisa Brock, Star Tribune
"This is largely a play without handles, and it won't be to the taste of people who like their storytelling neat and linear, but director/set designer Jeremy Wilhelm gives the work a staging that honors its eccentric stylistics but still feels accessible. He sets the writing desk in Dick's apartment on a platform that rotates, so that when he's visited by the spirit of his dead twin sister (Maggie Chestovich, in one of several well-played ethereal-female roles) or arguing with the last of his ex-wives (Mo Perry, deadly calm), it's possible to imagine the cyclings of his mind. " --Dominic Papatola, Pioneer Press
"Mo Perry has some moving scenes with Dick as his ex-wife Tessa that show us yet another dimension of Dick's troubled life." --David DeYoung, How Was The Show
A 'Hedda' worthy of theater heavyweights
Mo Perry delivers a wonderfully transparent performance as Ibsen's enigmatic heroine.
Small theater companies need a reason to exist, and for some of us that reason needs to be more profound than one more staging of "Uncle Vanya" or "The Crucible" or "The Glass Menagerie." Bigger theaters do those classics with better actors and bigger budgets.
Oh, you smug and silly critic. Weren't you sitting in that 60-seat hothouse the night Stacia Rice blew us away in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?" Bruce Hyde's Willy Loman for Starting Gate Productions in 2003 was absolutely revelatory. And do you recall squinting at the program when that big, electric newcomer danced on stage in Starting Gate's "Raisin in the Sun?" Ah, yes, Christiana Clark won an Ivey for that performance.
Now comes Mo Perry sweeping across the Gremlin Theatre stage as "Hedda Gabler," an imperious china doll who illuminates every tick and gesture of Ibsen's enigmatic heroine. Perry's performance under Craig Johnson's direction conjures visions of the actor sleeping with the script tucked under her pillow for years, hoping the playwright's ghost will visit her dreams.
Actors -- good actors -- often settle for an obvious Hedda, exuding bitter hauteur that tidily points to her purpose. Perry is so intelligent, thoughtful and careful that we are constantly surprised. Her Hedda glides about the drawing room, cat-like and aloof from her squareheaded husband, drolly condescending in conversation with a bumbling aunt and cowed maid. She is a bored prima donna coming to terms with the limitations she has accepted in her life. The ennui gnawing within shows itself with sardonic cynicism.
This is not to discount Johnson's sharp eye. As a director (he also adapted the script), his sense of relationships and physical space seem uncanny in their understanding of Ibsen's intentions. This is a play about power and manipulation -- those little things that add up to avarice. John Middleton's Judge Brack slyly inserts himself between Hedda and her unsuspecting husband, played as a cheerfully dim bulb by Ryan Parker Knox. If Brack uses suave intellect to intrigue Hedda, Wade Vaughn's Eilert Lovborg relies on his lusty, artistic sensuality to rock her psyche in the best and worst ways possible.
Gremlin offers no deconstructions or wild concepts with this "Hedda," only a solid production by a director who inherently trusts Ibsen's power. Oh, and a sublime performance from a very fine actor who -- if not for small theater -- might never have had this opportunity. Is crow best served cold?
"Mo Perry actually achieved this twice in two minor roles in Shakespeare’s Macbeth from Torch Theatre. As Hecate, Queen of Hades, she could have opted for pure wickedness and pulled it off splendidly. Instead, she showed us a Hecate, who though Queen of the Underworld, has her limits and her scruples. We got a clear sense she is rightly perturbed at the Weird Sisters who have cast a spell on the gullible Thane of Cawdor.
Later on Perry astounded as Lady Macduff who sees her son and herself meet a gruesome fate at the hands of the Macbeth gang. This scene is alway disturbing even in a bad production. But in Torch’s superb production, directed by David Mann, it was set up to not only harrowing effect but heartbreaking effect as well. It’s one of those times where you just had to have been there, but the way Perry explains to the boy that his father is dead, the sense of abandonment, and the subtext of how violence rules this orb, was astonishing. It’s as if she encapsulated the Oversoul of all life in its outrage against man’s cruelty. In our time of ‘endless war’, it was especially riveting." --John Townsend, Lavender Magazine
"Mo Perry as Hecate, the goddess of witches, and again as Lady Macduff continues to impress us with her fierce commitment and energy.... Torch enters a different realm with this staging, something between a "small theater" and the next level -- whatever that is. In production values, acting talent and directorial concept, "Macbeth" sets the bar high for future productions." --Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
"Mo Perry is delightfully, cheerfully clueless as a helpful neighbor.... Perry's wave to the audience à la beauty queen as she is wheeled off on her set piece, or the slack posture of three cops who discover Blanche at play's end, demonstrate the value of Rothstein's camp approach." --Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
"Mo Perry lends a sunny note as a next-door neighbor too star-struck to take proper notice of the utter lunacy on her block. " --Quinton Skinner, City Pages
"Mo Perry
"Mo Perry recounts the ruins of her past life as an above-it-all sophisticate, culminating in a baby-shit story that any parent will find hilarious because, well, we all have a really good baby-shit story. Or 12. Perry appears in the second act as a frazzled mom at the local swimming pool, eventually streaking across the stage bare-assed chasing after her invisible moppet.... This particular hombre (and father) found the show to be an almost unrelenting pleasure, spiked with an abundance of laughs and insights." --Quinton Skinner, City Pages
"As a gender warrior ahead of her time, you could say grandmother Ruth gets a lot of the play’s best material, but that would be giving short shrift to a play chock full of good material. Mo Perry, however, makes it tempting to make such pronouncements. Each time she takes the stage as Ruth, Perry acts not only as connective tissue between scenes, but as a solid foundation for the other characters and themes of the play to build upon. Her performance of Ruth’s ode to the various people she has loved in her travels around the globe throughout her life is a beautiful evocation of the idea that love often doesn’t care what the person looks like." --Matthew Everett
"Perry provides the poetic center as the mysterious grandmother who pleads with us to consider love not on the terms of anatomy, but on spirit." --Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
"Foremost among the latter is Mo Perry, who shows discipline and a ton of range playing the quietly libidinous artistic director, an aw-shucks country singer of a leading man and - in a turn that approaches grand theft acting - an en fuego but savvy costume designer." --Dominic Papatola, Pioneer Press
"Mo Perry pulls off a real tour de force, playing in turn a lesbian producer, a male country singer and a flamboyant gay costumer." --William Randall Beard, Star Tribune
Anton in Show Business was ranked among the top 10 Twin Cities productions of 2007 by both Lavender Magazine and the Pioneer Press.
"The key reason Vanya has to get up in the morning is his niece, Sonya. Hence, the title. Here again, as she did in TRP’s recent production of “Twelfth Night,” Mo Perry delivers the goods. Perry’s turn as Sonya is the strong, quiet beating heart at the center of this play. She’s the only one who doesn’t allow the sudden appearance of her father the retired professor of arts (David Rinzema), and her young beautiful stepmother Elena (Caitlin Hammel) to turn their world completely upside down. Sonya works to keep the estate running despite the disruption of routine and the debilitating effect that the visitors seem to be having on everyone else around her.
But even Sonya is not immune to the tremors of the heart. Here is where Perry shines the brightest. Sonya’s attraction to Dr. Astrov (John Adler), even though it seems doomed to be unrequited, is a sad but beautiful thing. Even as she pushes to get a definite answer one way or another, Sonya ponders whether living in limbo, and hope, would be better. In “Twelfth Night,” Mo Perry stood out in an ensemble which was often uneven. Here, she remains a leader in a cast of equals. The closing speech of the script, which could be depressing, or an admission of defeat, in Perry’s hands is the uplifting moment it needs to be in order to get “Uncle Vanya” right. " --Matthew Everett, Fringe blogger and reviewer
I really enjoyed two performances above all... those of Mo Perry (seen in 2005 Fringe on stage with a snake in "Talking With..." by In The Basement Productions), and Leigha Horton (Voice of the Fringe!!!). Perry's Olivia was believable and solid. She was by far the best developed character on the stage. Her changes in mood and thought were well motivated, and entirely convincing. She worked with the language to make it seem completely natural, not recited. Beautiful. --Chris Kidder, Fringe blogger and reviewer
Audience reviews:
"Mo Perry was probably the highlight of the show for me as a frightening Lady Macbeth"
"Lady MacBeth was our favorite character."
"For all that I came for so many people, I ended up enjoying Mo Perry's Lady Macbeth above all. From the moment she walked on she exuded, for want of a better term, psycho-hose-beastiness from every pore. She's absolutely spectacular."
"Mo Perry as Lady Macbeth is truly a highlight."
