“Stupid Fucking Bird” at ACT
“Brush up your Shakespeare, Start quoting him now…” —Cole Porter, in “Kiss Me Kate” A modern take on “Taming of […]
Fatal Footlights
Historical Fiction about Great Theatrical Figures
Billed as a “new Steampunk mystery/comedy/thriller, an original script, by Louis Broome and John Longenbaugh, Fatal Footlights opened at Theater Schmeater on Friday. Steampunk, the internet told me, has to do with 19th century historical fiction and technology. Fatal Footlights concerns murder and intrigue in an 1885’s theatre in London. Apparently, two of the characters are members of the Brass family and the play was part of a series about them, so the Artistic Director communicated to me the next day.
The Tempest
O Brave New City that has such talent in’t
One of the occupational hazards of a theatre critic is seeing the same plays over and over again. This is especially true of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, particularly the romances, whose setting are the outdoors and are regularly staged at summer Shakespeare Festivals. Usually, the productions are draped in concepts and gimmicks but rarely do I go to a production, where the language occupies center stage and successfully carries the play. This weekend, New City Theatre, opened The Tempest, which should be the standard by which all other Shakespeare plays should be measured. All the actors were of the highest vocal caliber, and used the text expertly to communicate to the audience.
‘brownsville song’ shows the ripple effect of tragedy
Grief and Trauma are Anything but Tedious
Kimber Lee set for herself in brownsville song: b-side for tray the task of rounding out for the public the “other story” of someone like Tray Franklin. In the play Tray is 18 and working on his scholarship essay. In real life, Franklin was a black college student and winning amateur boxer who was one of three youth shot by gang members in Brownsville, Brooklyn in 2012. His friends survived, he did not.
Listen carefully to the opening soliloquy by Lena, Tray’s grandmother (Denise Burse) as she speaks apparently to the “press” or non-Brownsville society in general—”Tray was not …” she insists and repeats. Burse cries by the end of her long speech.
What is the b-side?
La Salle Fragments
The Silent Treatment-Noir Style
Drawing on the Silent Movie and Film Noir styles, Irrational Robot Bureau presented the Lasalle Fragments, a live “performance” at the Pocket Theatre in the Greenwood neighborhood. Our seedy detective Casimire LaSalle, played by Robert Reidl, opens the play in silence with the first of many hung-over inner monologues played electronically for the audience to hear. As the evening progresses, he ends up in bars, in a Mercury Sedan, at a train station, in a room and back at his office/humble abode. Throughout the evening various pockets get picked, information gets stolen, he gets tortured and it all ends up back at the bar, where the characters finally speak lines from Bogie’s best detective films.
Past
The Cabiri Presents Tarhun Legend of the Lightning God
As a regular theatre goer, but new to The Cabiri Seattle’s Aerial and Dance Theatrical Troupe, I was eager to
SPT Goes to “The Other Place”
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.
“Belleville”, by the MAP
How many ways can people lie to each other and to themselves? Amy Herzog’s rich, somewhat troubled script explores the
Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw
Conventionally Unconventional
When the Victorian version of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” is ignored between a mother and daughter, and the wealth, which paid for the daughter’s expensive education, comes from prostitution and pimping, all hell break’s loose in George Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Directed by Victor Pappas, Seattle Shakespeare Company opened this delightful play at Center House in Seattle Center last weekend