Author name: Alan Sydney

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Oregon Shakespeare Festival Offers a Sparkling Array of Shows

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We’ve been visiting Ashland and its Oregon Shakespeare Festival for over twenty-five years now and are consistently impressed with both its quality and desire to continually improve its product. The workmanship, focus and sheer pizzazz of its current productions are remarkable. Yes, it is a long drive from the Puget Sound, but if you enjoy live theatre and have the time and resources, we urge you to head south for this year’s offerings from OSF. Here are a few of the shows we were able to catch on our visit.

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Love’s Labour’s Lost Hits the Parks Jogging

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A joyous Love’s Labour’s Lost debuted last Sunday evening under a mottled sky and half moon in the Volunteer Park Amphitheatre. The acting troop needed to compete with the usual open park distractions and an unceasing parade of overhead jets, yet they assembled an enjoyable evening for all

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The Mystery of Love & Sex Dances into the ACT

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Playwright Bathsheba Doran is on a roll; she’s been collecting awards while writing scripts for TV’s Masters of Sex, Smash and Boardwalk Empire as well as a set of successful Broadway shows. The Mystery of Love & Sex opened at the Lincoln Center last year in New York and now has landed with a marvelous staging here at Seattle’s ACT. The show features a playwright in total command of her work, hitting on all cylinders.

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The Brothers K (Part Two) at Book-It

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Book-It is offering a unique experience by presenting their theatrical adaptation of David James Duncan’s The Brothers K in two separate evenings. The novel contains a big story covering nearly two decades of the Chance family growing up in southern Washington State during the crazy years surrounding the Viet Nam War. Spending six acts with Hugh and Laurie and their six children as they navigate their lives, together or apart, proves to be wonderfully rewarding. Yes, committing to two nights of theater is daunting, but the two shows seen consecutively constantly gather momentum and deliver a solid home run by the end of their productions.

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The Brothers K (Part One) at Book-It

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Book-It is going for a homerun with their closing production of the season. Using the world of minor league baseball as a background, The Brothers K is a sprawling novel that spans the middle decades of the 20th century. A scoreboard that hangs over the stage indicates the passing dates as the story progresses. Part One begins in the late fifties and takes us up to the turbulent late 60’s. Myra Platt took on the monumental task of putting this work on stage; she has adapted the novel for Book-It and directs the show. The production requires the troupe to divide the undertaking into two separate evenings and uses 26 actors playing 83 roles.

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Sherlock Holmes and The American Problem—The Game’s Afoot at the Seattle Rep

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The Seattle Rep’s closing piece for this season was actually born from the overwhelming success of its 2013 production of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Apparently the cast, crew and audiences had such a great time with that show it was a no-brainer to bring back the famous British sleuth for another go. Rather than returning to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon, the Rep has turned to local actor and playwright R. Hamilton Wright to create an original Holmes story that has the detective immersed in a wild tale featuring some of his most famous antagonists as well as matching wits and skills with America’s very own Annie Oakley. The imaginative blend makes for a fun spring evening at the theater.

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SPT Goes to “The Other Place”

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Very little is what it seems to be when we first meet the fascinating Juliana Smithton, the protagonist in Sharr White’s “The Other Place”. She appears to be a successful, fifty-two year old scientist, pitching a new drug that may successfully halt dementia. Juliana presents a crisply moving Power Point at a pharmaceutical convention in Saint Thomas. The narrative line quickly pulls the rug out from underneath the audience as we begin to shift to multiple times and places all involving the woman’s increasingly fragmented life. Mysteries pop up with increasing frequency, providing an intriguing maze of a plot line, but the real focus of the evening is the powerhouse performance by Amy Thone, assuming the scientist’s role for the Seattle Public Theatre.

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Explosive Assassins Hits ACT Stage

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I’ve always had mixed feelings about the works of Stephen Sondheim. I loved Into the Woods and admired Sweeny Todd and pretty much accepted most of his other shows as fine pieces of musical theater, though maybe not my cup of tea. Where I drew a line was with Assassins, a play I have avoided seeing. Perhaps because I am old enough to remember the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy and Dr. King, I wanted nothing to do with an entertainment that focused on the killers and would-be killers of presidents. This is what I learned on opening night of Assassins at the ACT: It is a fantastically entertaining play; and it is as timely and important now as any show could possibly be for the American theater.

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Theatre22 Presents Annapurna

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Theatre 22 mounts a sensitive and touching production of the one-act play Annapurna featuring two local talents: John Q. Smith and Teri Lazzara. Sharr White’s work debuted in LA in 2014 and has already had a Broadway run starring Ned Offerman and Megan Mullally. White writes of a long separated couple coming to terms with their individual pasts and each other. Hard truths are faced, old disputes are replayed, new fears arise and yet a grudging love and respect somehow emerge by the final blackout. The two-person piece is skillfully performed and deftly directed by Julie Beckman.

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A Charlie Brown Christmas at Taproot Theatre

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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.

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