BO-NITA- FROM THE PAGE TO THE REP STAGE AND BACK AGAIN
Seattle-based writer Elizabeth Heffron knows how to wield a metaphor. In the Seattle Rep’s premiere of her fluid and largely […]
October 2013
Animal Cruelty
If John Waters did shadow puppetry… with a sentimental wink. Animal Cruelty is a noir adventure told in the lamentably
Flame in the Mirror
Five Star Production in the Hood
Perhaps the best show I have reviewed this whole season, Flame in the Mirror, opened this weekend, at Eclectic Theatre Company in the Pike/Pine corridor, written by a Capitol Hill homeboy, playwright, John Ruoff.
CARRIE the musical
Think Spring Awakening set in the digital age, with a tinge of High School Musical ensemble pop, and with the ending of a horror story.
Co-presented by Balagan Theater and Seattle Theater Group and directed by Louis Hobson, CARRIE the Musical is not the starkly eroticized thriller of its literary and cinematic namesakes, but it is tons of fun. With ensemble numbers like “The World According to Chris,” about how important it is in adolescence to hurt others before they hurt you, CARRIE makes impeccable use of teenage-angst to tell a lively—if a little hokey—story of tragic almost-happiness.
Alan Ayckbourn Brings Sugar Daddies to The ACT
Alan Ayckbourn has come to Seattle to direct the U.S. première of his ten-year-old play Sugar Daddies and has delivered a wonderful night of theater. This dark comedy features Ayckbourn at full strength: self -assured, imaginative and highly entertaining.
5th of July
Jus’ got home from Illinois. Got to Sit Down and Take a Rest on the Porch
The inaugural production of Theater 22, THE 5TH OF JULY by Lanford Wilson, opened at West of Lenin October 4th. Taking place in 1977, that is to say, after the end of the Vietnam War, but before the Reagan years brought prosperity to the baby-boomers, 5TH OF JULY deals with the baby-boomer’s adjustment to adult life, marking the symbolically definitive end of the 60’s. The focus of the adjustment was letting go of the effects of Vietnam, both for the wounded soldiers and those who protested the war.
The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh
How Irish is my Father.
The Walworth Farce, by contemporary Irish playwright Enda Walsh, produced by New Century Theatre Company, opened at New City Theatre and was directed by the former’s artistic director, John Kazanjian. Like many Irish plays, it deals with fractured family relationships, exile from the old country, poverty, greed, violence and alcoholism, all played out in one bed-sit ( more or less a studio apartment) in the South London immigrant neighborhood of Elephant and Castle.
The Taming
Supposed comic activism needs more active comedy.
On the second day of the Federal government shut-down, Artswest opened a Co-world premiere, The Taming, by Lauren Gunderson a comedy about the current polarization of American politics.