Past

As a Beaver and an Artist

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Snappy Dialogue Diluted by Performance Whatever

Whenever a reviewer is assigned a “show” described as a “bizarre performance art” involving “clowing, improv, movement etc. ”, one puts the brakes on one’s expectations and does not exactly expect a well-made play. Given that limitation As a Beaver and an Artist, was in fact not only extremely entertaining, containing some excellent witty dialogue, but expressed, through black humor, profound truths about human existence and more importantly, the uncontrollable changes occurring in life.

Past

My Fair Lady opens at Village Theatre

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There’s nothing new about the story of My Fair Lady: flower girl Eliza Doolittle picks herself up from the streets of London with the self-centered assistance of linguistics professor Henry Higgins. It’s a rags-to-riches tale — and a prototype for not only many other stage plays, but also hundreds of Hollywood movies and not a few Washington politicians — and in and of itself the story is inspiring and entertaining.

Past

Quirky Buyer & Cellar at the Rep

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Playwright Jonathan Tolins has created a whopper of a high concept play; a description of the premise tells us just about all we need to know about the work. The setup is an enticing mixture of truth and fiction. The truth: Barbara Streisand really has written a book entitled My Passion for Design in which she describes an underground shopping mall that really exists below her Malibu mansion. The truth: Tolins once met Barbara and she offered him a Kit Kat Bar, which he declined. The fiction: the mall has a special caretaker, the struggling West L.A. actor Alex More. The one-man show imagines what it must be like to have a full time job down there in Barbara’s wacky personal playground.

Past

MetaWARPhosis Showcases 9 Plays

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WARP (Writers and Actors Reading and Performing) Theatre has a noble mission to “facilitate an organic and non-biased gathering for local playwrights, actors, and other artists.” Twice a year it presents a showcase featuring short plays by its members. The current showcase presented nine plays in two acts and included a three-song performance during intermission by Chris LeVaughn.

This is entry level amateur theater

Past

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertholt Brecht

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Best Brecht in Town at Seattle Shakes

Seattle Shakespeare Company, opened a spectacular production of one of the most celebrated and visionary plays of Berthold Brecht: Mother Courage and her Children at Seattle Center on Friday. Written in exile in 1939, right after the Nazi invasion of Poland, its theme warns the profiteers of war that they themselves will not be spared its disasters no matter how crafty they are. Its setting, the 30-Year’s War, a long drawn out series of wars in the 17th Century, created untold destruction in German territories and depleted most of Europe economically, not unlike the aftermath of World War II.

Past

My Mañana Comes—Or Will It?

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A good play brings up many themes you can talk about. Elizabeth Irwin’s latest effort My Mañana Comes at ArtsWest, reaches that status under the direction of Matthew Wright and a brilliant cast and creative team. The themes bounce off one another like the banter of four men doing the best they can to live on the sub-minimum wage plus shift tips they receive working the back-of-house at an upscale Manhattan restaurant.

Theme One: there is no such thing as unskilled labor. The cast is never idle

Past

CODENAME:KANSAS, Witch Hunter

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Copious Anger not Love

Like the other Copious Love production I reviewed CODENAME: KANSAS, Witch Hunter, reminded me of the Flanders and Swan’s song “P** P* B**** B** D******” or “Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers” whose refrain is “Let’s talk Rude.” Flanders and Swan satirized the use of gratuitous profanity among the British intelligentsia ( in the early 60’s) and compares it to children swearing for attention.

Past

Mr. Burns, a post-electric play

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Mr. Burns, a post-electric play opens with the kind of disaster we have been fearing since Chernobyl. After a nationwide power failure causes a chain of nuclear meltdowns across the United States, a group of survivors crowd around a fireplace and recount their favorite episodes of The Simpsons in an attempt to stray away from the destruction around them. From there, the play leaps seven years into the future, where theatre troupes put on live productions of television shows in an effort to recapture the televised media that was lost when the grid shut down. Fast forward seventy-five years later, and the last act takes us to a far-off future in which pop culture and media have warped and twisted together until the theatre of the future becomes a semblance of a Greek epic opera revolving around the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons.

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