A Note from the Editor

After 14 years and 1,200 DITH review (with 658 written by me), I have decided to retire, to tend my garden, take up knitting and other age appropriate activities. It has been both an honor and a pleasure to review and promote so many small emerging companies. When Scott Taylor and I started in 2010, our mission was to review the shows “in our ‘hood,'” that is to say, the small, fringe companies in Capitol Hill, which were not being reviewed. Originally, DITH was an online feature attached to the Capitol Hill Times, but when it was sold, we went independent. Now there are other website reviewers, so I trust the community will be well served. The other websites are NW Review, Show’s I’ve Seen, Broadway World and Sound on Stage

I especially want to thank my trusted assistants, Alan Sydney and Mark Douglass along with all the interns and other writers over the years, who have made DITH such a success and especially Vera Chan-Pool, former Editor of the Capitol Hill Times, who agreed to our original proposal, as well as the Pacific Publishing Company, the owners of Capitol Hill Times and so many other neighborhood newspapers.

The DITH site will be closed down, but all the articles will be archived, so anyone can access them.

Thanks again for this great opportunity and good luck!

Marie Bonfils

On May 7, 1964, Seattle Opera staged its first production: Tosca. Almost exactly 60 years later, the  company threw itself

Seattle Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville at McCaw Hall, capitalizes on the pure silliness of the opera’s plot. From Count Almaviva’s dawn serenade to Rosina to the wedding celebration in the evening, the one-day progress of True Love is beset by Rosina’s guardian’s clumsy attempts to keep her all to himself, “by force or by love.”