"This is Mark Benninghofen’s stage."

"At the end of a long hallway in the Minneapolis Lumber Exchange building, Benninghofen welcomes a visitor to Shout Creative — his voice-over and advertising business. The whole operation is in an office so small that Benninghofen can’t wheel his big executive chair through the narrow aisle so he can get out from behind his “banker’s desk.”

No, problem. He hoists the chair — one of those big, comfy commander models — and carries it to a patch of open floor next to this reporter. He flashes a big, toothy smile and signals he’s ready — ready to put on the Mark Benninghofen show.

And it is a great show. Over 90 minutes, Benninghofen will drop names like confetti, dish juicy off-the-record gossip, quote chunks of Shakespeare, jump up to mimic the characters that populate his shaggy dog stories about growing up outside Chicago, bombing at his first musical tryout in New York, doing television in L.A., working with Tony Kushner and sitting nervously in the Ritz Theater lobby in Minneapolis waiting to hear how his audition went for the epic title role of 'Sweeney Todd.'"  READ MORE

-Graydon Royce, Star Tribune