What Idea? That our Divorce is on the Rocks!!!!
Emotionally one of the most difficult aspects of divorce must be: How does one deal with the fatal long-term illness of one’s ex-spouse? This is one of the themes of the new play, Ruth and the Sea by Morgan Ludlow, produced by Pacific Play Company, now playing at Annex Theatre. One of the other themes is : What do you do in the last weeks of your life? Play the good patient or let loose and live?
Suffer the Little Children to Come to Me. And I do mean SUFFER!!!!!!
Often at Christmas time, we are bombarded with traditional tales about compassion for the less fortunate. Besides the Biblical tale of the pregnant Mary and Joseph, having to give birth in an unhygienic stable without an epidural, there is also the Christmas Carol about Bob Cratchit’s family, who Alfred Doolittle would describe as the “Deserving Poor”.
However, the true test of “Christian” that is to say Humanitarian values is whether one can feel compassion for the “Undeserving poor.” We all know it is easy to feel compassion for people like Tiny Tim and babies born in stables, but can we feel compassion for the “Undeserving Poor”?. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, now playing on Saturday and Sunday matinees at Seattle Public Theatre addresses just this dilemma.
Post Punk Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II
At this time of year, theatres and cinemas are filled with sentimental fare celebrating Christian values of redemption, generosity and family values. For people who come from fractured families, it is often a time of depression and angst, as individuals who don’t see their families feel lonely and isolated and those who do, often feel worse.
Such is the Plantagent family, the ruling family of the Angevin empire ( that is to say present day Great Britain and most of Western France) at Christmas 1183. The Lion in Winter, produced by 12/48 projects, at Ballard Underground, might perhaps be therapeutic for individuals from fractured families because it provides a rather comic touch to sibling & parental rivalry with witty dialogue and very high stakes.
The Taproot Theatre is offering up a cute little stocking stuffer in its take on A Charlie Brown Christmas. The play recreates the warmth and good cheer Charles Schultz and director Bill Melendez first served up with their award winning 25-minute television special back in 1965.
Charming vignettes in the weird and wacky West. The Annex theatre has so little street presence, you could be forgiven
Ham in Several Courses
Dos Fallopia is back at ACT for this year’s holiday comedy act Ham for the Holidays: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Ham? And ham it up they do: this show is packed with over-the-top comedy, from laugh track over nuns, to inter-act videos of yodeling chicken impersonators, to a finale called “How the Bitch Stole Christmas.”
“I am going to make a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”
Said Jane Austen about Emma, the heroine and namesake, of her last novel to be published in her life-time. Opening this weekend, Book-It Repertory Theatre, produced a narrative theatre version of Emma, whose audience expressed their amusement so vociferously Jane Austen might have thought it vulgar.
America’s Equivalent to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Although there have been adaptations in several media of Frank Capra’s classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, ArtsWest’s seems to be the only solo performance adaptation. One actor played the hero, George Bailey, as well as all the other parts, including the guardian angel who tries to prevent him from committing suicide when his there is a business crisis.
Bedraggled private eye Nick Holiday (John Ulman) stands watching the Christmas shopping rush when Holly Wonderland (Pilar O’Connell) the seductive daughter of the CEO of the E B Wonderland department store empire, enters his office with a possible job. She has photographs she needs check out, but very soon Holiday has a more urgent question—
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
In these dark times, a comedy riff on Shakespeare and Dickens seemed like just the thing to raise my spirits.
