“Most offensive Musical Balagan has done so far. If you want culture go f*** yourself.”
Is how the announcer started off the evening ten minutes late. By culture I think he meant something like Wagner. Strangely, the whole evening reminded me very much of a Wagner Opera-excellent music, appalling libretto. Gott sei Dank, it was much shorter than the average Wagner opera.
Unrealistic response to sexual abuse
“Buckshot”, Macha Monkey’s world premiere by local playwright, Courtney Meaker, is running at Cornish Playhouse STUDIO ( not to be confused with the Cornish Playhouse-the old Intiman space). Like many Seattle Fringe productions, it deals with a “hot” topic but neglects to present it realistically or with an effective dramatic structure.
Serious Dose of Fun
Windfall productions produced two one-act plays by two of the “Greats” of the post World War II generation: Elaine May and Arthur Miller. Although Arthur Miller is more famous, as an American writer of international statute, Elaine May is perhaps more endearing to baby-boomers.
Jesus Wept!!!!!
The musicians, Owen Ross and Annie Jantzer, in Book-It’s new Circumbendibus series show Jesus’ Son were excellent. Adding live music with many different instruments and a vocalist was perhaps the only pleasant thing about this production.
A Marxist View
It was difficult to tell whether The Purification Process, written and directed by Malika Lee, was a social service event, which failed to raise awareness about breast cancer or a play about a woman whose catalyst to resolve some deep seated emotional issues was a diagnosis of breast cancer.
Two Aesthetes Sitting around a Corpse Discussing Nietzsche
Written by Patrick Hamilton, the play ROPE opened at Ghost Light Theatricals in Ballard on Thursday night. Inspired by the philosophical rationalizations used by murders Leopold and Loeb to justify their attempt at a perfect crime, it first opened in London in 1929 and was revived there in 2009.
I only ever review shows at Bishop Blanchet High School about every ten years or so, but I am always amazed at how these young actors deliver outstanding performances.
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.
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.
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.
