Author name: Marie Bonfils

Past

Preview White Rabbit Red Rabbit

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PREVIEW White Rabbit Red Rabbit

18th and Union and Radial Theatre will present the Northwest premiere of White Rabbit Red Rabbit, a play for a single actor w ho’s never read the script. Each night a different actor steps onto the stage and is handed a script in a plain manila envelope. The resulting performance changes from night to night, but has been described around the world as an extraordinary theatrical experience for performer and audience alike. Slyly humorous, and a little bit disturbing, White Rabbit Red Rabbit explores serious issues through a deft and quirky theatrical lens.

Past

Preview-The Shadow Knows Sandbox Radio

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More Fun than Trick or Treating in the Rain

Sandbox Radio, Seattle’s competitor with Minneapolis’s Prairie Home Companion will present a special Halloween episode, from the locally grown radio variety show that combines killer music, sound effects, engaging storytelling, the city’s best performers and an ultra cool sparkly host… all recorded live for podcast in front of you, their “studio” audience.

Past

Miss Fortune has Green Eyes

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Families-Who would do Without Them

Although Brown Soul Production’s mission statement is to develop and produce new works by female writers of color, Miss Fortune Has Green Eyes, by Alma Davenport, which opened at Theatre 4, in Seattle Center, this past weekend, has universal appeal, as it deals with the family dysfunction caused by substance abuse.

Past

Woyzeck

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Extremely important play, with a highly flawed structure.

Georg Büchner the author of the plays Woyzeck, Danton’s Death, Leonce & Lena and the novella Lenz, is one of the most influential authors of German Literature, but perhaps the least prolific, due to his untimely death at the age of 23. Unfortunately the play, Woyzeck, which made his international reputation, was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1837. When it was produced in 1913, it burst onto the world stage and ushered in German Expressionism. Stage One Theatre at North Seattle College has just opened an interesting production of this strangely appealing but flawed play.

Past

Gold Rush

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All that Glitters just Might Be Gold

Sandbox Radio, on Monday night, in the basement of Town Hall, delivered an evening not just of glitter but of sheer 100% golden entertainment with their new show, Gold Rush. Like gold, live radio is difficult to find, difficult to refine, conducts electricity, but also has a softness to it. Sandbox’s new show created an electrifying effect on the audience, as the audience actually participates in creating the show. Hosted by Leslie Law, one of the producers, Gold Rush had several sketches, the best of which were spoofs about the foibles of Seattleites, hilarious PSA’s, music composed by Jose “Juicy” Gonzales and a few monologues.

Past

Really Really

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“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” Socrates (469 -399 BC)

What is usually called the older generation, always says a variant of the above quote about every younger generation. For the baby boomer generation, we had Christopher Lasch’s punditry. It seems today, we are actually a little bit more enlightened by science about the plight of youth; given the advances in brain science. Physiologically , the most sophisticated part of the human brain, the frontal lobe, where judgment is processed, does not fully develop until age 26, so that is why youth behaves irresponsibly, without reflection and sometimes highly immorally.

And in my experience, it is always the people who were the most irresponsible and most self-destructive in their youth, who are in turn the most judgmental of the growing pains of the under 30’s. The play Really, Really, by Paul Down Coliazzo, produced by Touch Productions, currently running at West of Lenin, was a treatise about the biggest defect of being young, their selfishness.

Past

Duels

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Disappointing Duels

A world premiere by Nick Stokes, Duels, a play billed as being “made up of a heady mix of Beckett, magic realism and a tragic love story” opened at 12th Ave Arts this weekend. Although I would agree with some of that statement, I disagree with the adjectives used, as it was not “heady”, nor did the love story strike me as particularly tragic. Instead it was a poor script with a lot of pretentious touches, whose director, José Amador, did not seem capable of damage control, as the production did not showcase the considerable talent of two of the most accomplished actors in town: Carter Rodriquez and Marianna de Fazio.

Past

One Man, Two Guvonors

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One Show, Two Styles

Richard Bean’s 2011 adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 Commedia dell’ Art scripted play A Servant of Two Masters, translated into Cockney English as One Man, Two Guvnors, opened this weekend at Seattle Center Theatre to a highly appreciative audience in splendid air-conditioning. Directed by Ken Michels and produced by Sound Theatre Company, it highlighted some interesting problems concerning the adaptation of physical comedy into a script written in a dialect known for verbal circumlocution and wit.

Past

Blood Wedding ( Bodas de Sangre)

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Lost in Translation

Frederico Garcia Lorca, one of the most important figures in the intellectual and political history of early 20th century Spain, seems to be having a revival around Seattle, since in the past few years, I have seen a three plays either by him or inspired by him. Directed by Ana Maria Campoy, this weekend at Ballard Commons, far away from the noise of airplanes, 1-Off Productions staged an outdoor production of Blood Wedding ( Bodas de Sangre) in what was called a “bilingual production”. Given that it was far away from the flight pattern in Volunteer Park and was staged in front of a lovely grove of Birch trees, it was by far the most pleasant place to stage outdoor theatre in Seattle I have yet seen.

Past

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

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It takes more than an excellent Hamlet to make a watchable Hamlet

Having recently been thoroughly enthralled by Conner Neddersen’s performance in Strawberry Workshop’s Production of 9 Circles, I was so excited to see him play Hamlet, that I dragged my 12 year old grand-niece and nephew to Wooden O’s outdoor staging of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark at Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island. Neddersen’s performance was outstanding; unfortunately, it was the only thing that made this production worthwhile.

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