It would be hard to find a more pleasant way to spend a late spring evening than coming to Green Lake to watch Lanford Wilson’s romantic one act, Talley’s Folly. The set is gorgeous and the acting top-notched. The two-person piece successfully works its quiet magic.
The Seattle Shakespeare Company has moved into the Cornish Playhouse (nee The Intiman) to wrap up their 24th season with a stirring Othello. The big doings of the play work well in this larger venue. Energy sizzles here from the opening curtain and director John Langs is able to keep this most tightly knit of all Shakespeare’s tragedies building and building toward its devastating climax.
The performing area is dominated by a tousled bed. What happens and more importantly doesn’t happen there will be the focus of the next three hours of ACT’s stirring revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The sixty-year old classic features the turmoil of Brick and Maggie’s unhappy marriage, wonderfully brought to life by Broadway stars Brandon O’Neill and Laura Griffith. While Brick’s struggle with his homosexuality may seem dated and merely quaint today, the couples’ fight to find a survivable path through their lives is as captivating as it must have been when ACT featured the play in its inaugural year.
Justin Huertas throws one crazy coming out party with his raw, exciting premiere of Lizard Boy. He wrote the book, composed the tunes and portrays the title character. Sitting in on its spirited opening night, I thought of Bob Dylan’s line, “Something is happening and you don’t know what it is…” The 90-minute one-act is a cockeyed blend of social commentary, high-tech romance, comic book super-hero clashes and a rock and roll show case. Some of it works well, some of it doesn’t, but it is all entertaining and remarkably original.
When considering the OSF seasonal offerings one must finally answer the question: Are they worth the schlep to southern Oregon, nearly California? Is there a reward to be found at the end of that long commuting rainbow? The 80 year old Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s opening weekend ensured all that there is indeed gold in them Ashland hills. I was able to catch three of the four plays now showing. Each offered a solid and rewarding theatrical experience. OSF continues to provide top of the line productions, featuring outstanding staging and stellar jobs of acting. Here are the great shows I caught on premiere weekend.
August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Piano Lesson features the playwright working at full throttle; it is a self-assured work filled with a banquet of theatrical treats. The play is part of Wilson’s ten-piece Century Cycle that explores the lives of African Americans living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here we meet the Charles family struggling to establish a toehold in the harsh climate of a post Depression America. A top-notch cast and the Seattle Rep’s outstanding production values help make this a rewarding night of theater.
Robert Schenkkan’s The Great Society does not merely bring history alive. The play grabs the audience around the throat and flings them onto a hair-raising three-hour thrill ride. The play covers Johnson’s one term presidency and proves to be even more powerful than its companion piece, All The Way. Jack Willis tackles the Herculean role of LBJ and commands the evening from the opening curtain. It may be one of the most spell binding performances this city has ever seen.
Deep in the bowels of the ACT Theatre Building lies the Eulalie Scandiuzzie Space. Herein, the Central Heating Lab and Sound Theater Company are presenting five short one acts by Samuel Beckett as part of the Seattle Beckett Festival. The quality of the pieces varies wildly from focused takes on Beckett’s grim and incomprehensible world to some meandering drama with shaky acting. Fans of Beckett, opening night had nearly a full house, should find the trip worth it.
With Vanya, and Sonia and Masha and Spike we find Christopher Durang an assured, wonderfully entertaining playwright, running at full throttle. In this 2013 Tony Award Winner he has blended Chekhovian deep characters with his trademark whimsical absurd humor and startlingly fresh insights about today’s America. Director Kurt Beattie has assembled a fantastic cast to bring this all alive.
Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Slip /Shot premiered in Philadelphia just weeks after Travon Martin was shot in Sanford, Florida in 2012. Though Goldfinger sets her action in the rural South, circa 1962, the story sharply resonates with our current sad headlines coming out of Ferguson, Missouri. The play revolves around a young black man being accidently shot by a befuddled young white security guard.
