Recent Stories in Theatre

It takes a certain audacity to start a new theatre company, regardless of the current economic climate. When it's bad any new venture is risky, and when it's good everybody else shakes their heads and wonders out loud why you're not investing in real estate or some such thing. Folks who start new theatre companies either have some urgent artistic notion to express, or they suffer from an unfortunate shortfall in understanding exactly how big of an undertaking it is. (Hopefully always the former, but occasionally it's both.)

Sharp young company Gesamtkunstwerk!--more succintly known as That G Theatre!--definitely has talent and urgency that should make you sit up and take notice. Freshly installed in The Galley Theatre, tucked in the back of a building you've likely walked or driven past a hundred times without noticing, That G Theatre! has launched its ambitious second season by doing two plays in repertory: Sam Shepard's The Late Henry Moss and the American premiere of British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Shoreditch Madonna (continuing through this Saturday, Dec. 18, tickets $10-$17.)

Unfortunately, due to schedule and circumstance I have only been able to catch Shoreditch Madonna, but I would be remiss if I didn't suggest that you catch one or both of these shows before they close.

Shoreditch Madonna is a play about art, loneliness, and loss. When grizzled former painter Devlin (Tom Wisely) proclaims that all art is about procreation, the sadness behind his eyes reveals a deeper truth about the existential loneliness of the human condition. Colleen Carey and Alyssa Kaye turn in particularly gutsy performances; Josh Ryder, Jeffrey Evans, and Ashton Hyman round out the excellent ensemble cast.

That G Theatre! is the kind of place where, moments before opening night, you might find the artistic director crawling around in the lighting grid troubleshooting equipment. If that kind of one-for-all experimental theatre ethos gets you excited, you'll feel right at home with this company. And if it doesn't, it should.

This is fresh, intense work that might be best described as multimedia installation theatre. Even where the work doesn't succeed, it takes big risks and wrangles with big ideas. It's the most excited I've been walking out of a play in a long time. Go.

A protestor in Minsk during police crackdown. Photo courtesy of Alex Litvinka.

First off, I apologize for the incompleteness of this article, but I'm trying to do my small part to help the international campaign. Yesterday in Belarus, strongman President Alexander Lukashenko won a fifth term in a vote international observers determined fell far short of international standards for free and fair elections, which is basically journo-speak for, he's a dictator and steals elections he'd probably win anyway. Belarus's fragmented opposition protested in Minsk, the capital, and were brutally cracked down upon by security services. Various reports suggest several people were killed and several hundred detained.

Among the detained is Natalya Kalyada, the director of the dissident performance group Belarus Free Theatre, and her collaborator and husband Nikolai Khalezin. One of--if not the only--independent theater companies in the country, the Free Theater has, along with pretty much every other facet of open society, faced severe repression. Lukashenko--a former manager of collectivized farm prior to entering politics--has maintained a Soviet-style state, complete with secret police and a command economy that has substantially hampered economic development, leaving the nation poor and dependent on outside aide. For much of the last 15 years, that aide has come from Russia, but the relationship has cooled over the past couple years, leaving the regime isolated and increasingly paranoid. In the run up to the election, they even allowed some free speech from opposition parties, but Lukashenko handily won with arround 80 percent of the vote.... (more)

Alice Gosti and Devin McDermott in "Spaghetti Co." (Photo: Tim Summers)

Near the beginning of Alice Gosti's Spaghetti Co. (Something just happened at 1:19 p.m.) a big bowl of pasta with red sauce is just that...a big bowl of pasta with red sauce, probably very tempting if you showed up to the Northwest Film Forum prior to dinner--it's part of the Forum's "Live at the Forum" performance series and ends with an 8 p.m. show tonight, December 18.

But by the end, the food has transubstantiated: the pasta is a doughy yeastiness in the air, a slippery cushion on the floor, the red sauce a gouache over the canvas of the body. While the people in the front row have had occasion to use their protective trash bags, the people in the second row are primed to duck the occasional rogue strand that heads their way.

The three striking young women (Alice Gosti, Laara Garcia, Devin McDermott) gathered so decorously around the table--bright red lipstick, fingernails, toenails--have buried their faces in their plates, poured wine in torrents, grabbed handfuls of pasta from the serving bowl, and worried at huge bites like dogs with a bone. Their chic little white dresses (by Mark Ferrin) are stained, and they have pasta in their hair and between their toes. While it sounds like Gallagher, it's surprisingly deliberate in pace, and nuanced, illuminating both the beauty and comedy to pasta unfurling in flight through the air, while capturing facet after facet of the social matrix that spans the table. ... (more)

Just for Friday fun: the trailer for Radoslaw Rychcik's production of Bernard-Marie Koltes' In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields, which will be rocking the Pacific Northwest, first here in Seattle at On the Boards Jan. 13-16, and then in Vancouver, B.C. at the PuSH Festival Jan. 19-22.

I saw the show at PICA in September, and was incredibly impressed. Koltes is one of those too-French-for-his-own-good playwrights in my book, and his script--an abstract dialogue between a "dealer" (of what? don't be so fucking literal, ignorant American!) and a "client"--would be dead-on-arrival in most people's hands. Rychick, though, turns the affair into a trippy, downright threatening rock concert (with full Polish rock band in tow) with nods to Tarantino-esque aesthetics, at the same time he takes the script in directions that are downright shockingly unpredictable.

So definitely go see it, and if you haven't checked out the rest of the PuSH Festival's line-up, do so.

Catherine Cabeen, photo by Tim Summers

There weren't a lot of big openings this week, and the more interesting things going down are actually starting tonight, so I'm not particularly broken up to be getting to this on Sunday.

First up, it's not a performance per se, but it's related: tonight, the marvelous Catherine Cabeen is hosting a fundraiser at Havana Social Club (7 p.m.; $10-$20 at the door) on Capitol Hill in support of her upcoming show, Into the Void. There will be live music, dancing, and an auction in support of a good cause. The show, which debuts at On the Boards in April, promises to be a stunning exploration of the work of French artist Yves Klein: he was famous for performance installations in which nude models served as his brushes (oh the French...), so expect something impressive; Cabeen is, after all, one of the best dancers in Seattle.

Also tonight and tomorrow is the latest edition of 12 Minutes Max at On the Boards (7 pm; tickets $8 at the door), their long (longest, in fact) running program showcasing new work by Seattle and regional artists. This edition features the incredible UMO Ensemble excerpting a new work, new dances choreographed by Alia Swersky and Kate Wallich, an except of a new solo show about Ukrainian immigration by Yana Kesala, and finally a dance and installation work by Marissa Rae Niederhauser.

And then Monday and Tuesday, the Satori Group is hosting their own showcase of new things they're working on with First Look (8 p.m.; tickets $10-$50) down at their loft space in the 619 Arts Building at 619 Western Ave. The evening will excerpt a pair of works the company's been workshopping recently, as well as feature readings of two original plays by guest artists. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Satori is the hope for Seattle theatre, so show up and support.

Photo: Ben Kasulke

Thank god for Wade Madsen. I could watch that guy do anything. Eat dessert, for instance. Last night, I went to see Dayna Hanson's "Gloria's Cause" at On the Boards (through Dec. 5) and there he was, eating cherry pie. Big as life!

He was concerned, as I overheard from a conversation with dancer Jessie Smith, that if he, Wade, read a letter for her, we, the audience, might become confused that he was the letter's author--Paul Revere--rather than George Washington, which is the plum role he was really looking forward to playing. (Thus, I'm assuming, the cherry pie association, rather than the more immediate Warrant reference.)

That is another reason to be thankful, because honestly it is not very easy to track what's going on onstage, which ranges from reenactments of the Albany Congress in 1754 to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, while Jessie Smith and Jim Kent dance, the band Today! plays songs, and Madsen, Pol Rosenthal, Peggy Piacenza, and Hanson herself act out informal "real world" vignettes. Oh, and of course, there's the meta-commentary of the overheard moments as I described above.

I find myself grudgingly respectful of this palimpsest formalism; at times, "Gloria's Cause" plays like a Schoolhouse Rock for a new generation--you might be baffled at how anyone might learn something from it, but it's agreeable and it has a fun beat. On the didactic side, you learn about Deborah Sampson (danced by Jessie Smith), the woman who dressed as a man so she could enlist in the Continental Army.... (more)

Donna B. Isobel of Aluminum Siding Dance. Photo by Tim Summers.

Yesterday I did a full-on preview of Dayna Hanson's phemomenal new show Gloria's Cause opening tonight at On the Boards, but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this week's performing arts offerings. Even as the big houses all turn to their yearly holiday shows (and as always, I highly recommend ACT's A Christmas Carol), there's plenty of not-remotely-holiday-themed work launching in the month of December.

The big dance event this week is Velocity Dance Center's annual Next Fest NW, a festival of the region's top choreographic and dance talent (tickets $15). The line-up this year features new work by Salt Horse, SANDSTROMMOVEMENT, and Kristin Hapke's tindance, as well two people whose work I don't know: Aluminum Siding & mattisonmovement and Portland's Eliza Larson. As an added treat, Velocity's teaming up with NW Film Forum to extend the festival a third day with Next Dance Cinema (tickets $7-$10), featuring short dance films by the likes of Alice Gosti, Karn Junkinsmith, and Corrie Befort.

The Ensemble (or their theatre, The Little Theatre on 18th, at least) is playing host to a new experimental theatre work called Ithaca I'll Never See, a devised work by Basement Co., founded by the trio of Shannon Erickson, Laurie Roberts, and Kate Sumpter. The show follows the trajectory of three women imprisoned in a foreign country who--realizing they'll never be friend--go on an inward journey freely inspired by Homer's Odyssey, Joyce's Ulysses, and The Wizard of Oz. Oh, and here's the kicker: it's free! You just have to RSVP by emailing basementco(at)gmail.com; it runs Fri. through Sun. at 8 p.m.... (more)

Ed: 5th Avenue Theatre has requested that we clearly mention that Seth is talking about a preview performance, and that seems like a good idea, because Seth thought he was buying tickets to the real show. It's an easy mistake to make. 5th Ave's publicity says the show runs from Nov. 26 - Dec. 30. If you look at the schedule page, there's nothing distinguishing preview dates from the official run. Nothing on the ticket order page does. The show officially opens on Dec. 9, though after 15 minutes of clicking through the 15th Ave's site, I can't find any notice of this. 

Photo: 5th Avenue's "A Christmas Story: The Musical!"

Addressing a packed house Sunday night at the 5th Avenue Theatre, the theater's Executive Director David Armstrong shared a vision of Christmas future. "I'm hopeful that someday you'll look back and say 'I was at the creation of that holiday musical tradition, A Christmas Story.'"

I was dubious. But after seeing the show [Ed: as mentioned, a preview performance--it's not officially open yet, and what Seth saw has already changed a little], I think Armstrong's foresight may be 20/20. A Christmas Story: The Musical! is well-paced (far better-paced than its screen daddy), consistently funny, occasionally adorable, surprisingly smart for a musical that has a mostly pre-pubescent cast, and features a hilarious comedic performance by Broadway vet John Bolton.

Back east, on Broadway, another well-known story is getting a musical adaptation. "Spider-Man" is a $65 million (and counting) production directed by Julie Taymor and with music by Bono and The Edge. Here's what Bono has to say about the show's theme. "We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones — the cost of feeling feelings."

(If anyone has a hint of a clue what Bono is talking about, please drop a note in the comments. Sounds to me like a line the smarmy faux-poet dude in your freshman dorm would use.)... (more)

Michael Patten as Martin Luther, Connor Toms as Hamlet, and Chad Kelderman as Faustus in "Wittenberg" (Photo: John Ulman)

Playwright David Davalos may be responsible for the existence of the play Wittenberg (at Seattle Shakespeare Co. through December 5) but the set-up was just a matter of connecting the dots. As Davalos explains: "I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that Shakespeare identifies Hamlet as a student at Wittenberg, Marlowe cites Faustus as part of the faculty there, and history puts Luther there, teaching, preaching and launching the Protestant Reformation."

Thus, Wittenberg's biblio-porn slash-fic in which genial philosophy professor John Faustus (Chad Kelderman) and volatile theology instructor Martin Luther (Michael Patten) spar about the merits of faith and reason while "guiding" their undeclared-major head-case, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Connor Toms)--before he is called home for a family emergency. Like most prequels, it struggles to get to its dramatic feet, and in fact it works best when Hamlet is a bit part. (Hamlet gets enough attention as it is--on a multipurpose note, Wittenberg's set is Jennifer Zeyl's Hamlet set, gussied up with collegiate warmth.)

It's the argument between colleagues Faustus and Luther that animates the play, but Davalos has also overstuffed the proceedings with historical and literary in-jokes. Imagine if Airplane! was written by a post-doc, or better yet, imagine The Simpsons Harvard writers taking a crack at "theatre." From the opening scene of Dr. Faustus nailing papers to a bulletin board, to Hamlet's strange dream of a black obelisk on the moon, the play is a cyclonic mingling of esoteric and happily random references. ... (more)

"Under" from Manifold Motion (Photo: Divide)

After having yearned for immersive performance experiences a couple of weeks ago, I had my wish granted a second time by Manifold Motion's Under (through November 28, tickets $12-$30).

Under, (previewed by The SunBreak here, including an interview with Manifold Motion's artistic director Keely Isaak Meehan), is an ambitious cross-disciplinary work inspired by "lichens, fungi, mosses, and molds".  You might think that sounds like a challenging concept to build an engaging performance from, and you would be right. Manifold Motion rises (or perhaps lowers?) to the challenge.

This is a performance that surrounds you with sights, textures, sounds, and the smell of soil. Built at Inscape in SoDo, Under features one of the most impressive dance solos I've seen in quite some time, by the amazing Elizabeth Rose.  Inspired by a man with a rare condition that made his appendages look like tree roots, Rose plants her hands on the floor and doesn't remove them for the entire length of her performance. It's an incredible display of agility, strength, and grace.

The greatest achievement of Under, though, is the lush and living space that Manifold has built for the performances to occupy. The walls breathe, ooze, and wriggle. From the ceilings to the floors, the attention to detail is what makes this a performance worth seeing. The installation spans across three rooms. I wished it were ten. Even though there were a couple of moments in the choreography where I started to feel a little restless, there were so many more moments of hey-look-at-that! that if there are shortcomings in the choreography itself, they're easily overlooked and quickly forgotten.... (more)

Suzy Hunt as Marilla, Kasey Nusbickel as Anne and Dennis Bateman as Matthew in Village Theatre's Anne of Green Gables (Photo: John Pai)

For the holidays and beyond, Village Theatre offers a sweet, well-cast, new musical production of Anne of Green Gables (thru Jan. 2 at the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre in Issaquah and the Everett Performing Arts Center Jan. 7-30; tickets $20-$60). While it won't change your life, it's further illustration that Village does what it does exceedingly well: Create and deliver solid musical theatre pieces that will live beyond their Village Theatre run. This is not a theatre that would give us The Addams Family. 

Based on--and following closely--Lucy Maud Montgomery's beloved book, Anne... is the story of Anne Shirley, a red-haired, 12-year-old orphan girl who arrives in the farming village of Avonlea on Canada's Prince Edward Island to live with bachelor farmer Matthew Cuthbert and his bachelorette sister Marilla.

Played by Dennis Bateman (doing a pretty good Hal Holbrooke) and veteran Seattle actor Suzy Hunt, the Cuthberts are surprised to find that the orphanage has delivered a girl instead of the boy they were looking for to help around the farm. Matthew is taken with Anne and wants to keep her. Practical Marilla isn't sure and keeps Anne on probation for a while. Even if you haven't read the book, you can likely guess how it all turns out. ... (more)

Paul Taylor Dance Co.'s Taylor 2, this week at Meydenbauer (Photo: Tom Caravaglia)

This week, I'm moving my weekly performing arts column up to Monday (and yes, that's in part because I didn't get to it last week). But it's more due to the fact that we've got some very interesting performing arts events that aren't falling on the weekend this week, so I gotta catch 'em somehow.

First up, by virtue of chronology, is NewsWrights United's Journalism: a.WAKE.ning, tonight at Theatre off Jackson (tickets $20). NewsWrights United is the company formed by Paul Mullin and a variety of other collaborators to produce last year's It's Not in the P-I and the upcoming The New New News. The company has revived the old idea of the "living newspaper" as a renewed form of documentary theatre they're using to explore the changing media landscape and its broader impacts on community and democracy. Journalism: a.WAKE.ning is a fundraiser, reading, and panel discussion featuring everyone from Brendan Kiley to Monica Guzman to Dave Horsey (Michael van Baker wrote about this more over the weekend), a stellar line-up due as much to the popularity of the project as to the fact the news media, new or old, love the chance to talk about themselves. And on that note, let me add further that you should be interested in this play because yours truly makes a cameo (as a character in the play, not an actor) in The New New News, albeit in Tweet form. But they've assured me I'm properly credited with an "M" in my name.

Second, we've got the Paul Taylor Dance Company out in Bellevue for one night only, Weds., Nov. 17, at the Meydenbauer Center (tickets $30-$49). I know it's a hell of a drive, but keep in mind: Paul Taylor is one of the lions of American Modern dance. He's in his eighties now and has six decades of choreography under his belt, no small amount of which pushed boundaries aesthetic, political, and sexual in their time. The company that will be appearing is the Taylor 2 Company, a rather clever idea that was launched in 1993 that reduced the number of dancers required to peform Taylor's repertory works to facilitate cheaper and broader touring, so that more people would get to see the work.... (more)

I can't attend "Journalism: a.WAKE.ning?" this Monday, November 15, because I'll be one of the hosts of BlogsGiving, but if I weren't, I'd be in the audience in the Upstairs Gallery at Theatre Off Jackson.

The evening kicks off at 7:30 p.m. As you enter you'll be presented with the choice of champagne or a shot of rye, symbolic of the question: "Are you celebrating a revolution in journalism or dancing on its grave?" 

Paul Mullin

"I may just stay sober," playwright Paul Mullin told me on the phone. "I don't know which way it'll go."

With NewsWrights United's second Living Newspaper production coming up in February, The New New News, Monday night is both promotion and fundraiser. Mullin sees the Living Newspaper model as a way to inject some much-needed life into theatre, writing:

Happily, when we produced our first edition It’s Not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper, we noticed an added bonus. The people came—and we sold out nearly every night—not to see excellent theatre adeptly presented by trained professionals but rather stories about a local newspaper that they loved (or hated) that had died recently.

After a preview scene comes a panel discussion on new media and journalism, moderated by NewsWrights producer Tom Paulson and featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Dave Horsey (Seattlepi.com), Monica Guzman (Intersect.com), Josh Feit (PubliCola), sportswriter legend Art Thiel, columnist Brendan Kiley (The Stranger), and Chris Grygiel (coordinator of political coverage for the Seattlepi.com blogs). Tickets are $20 via Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.... (more)

Izabel Mar as Pearl and Zabryna Guevara as Hester (Photo: Chris Bennion)

"I learned about my family in bits and pieces," playwright Naomi Iizuka said in an interview. "There are things that still peek out in the telling, like my father's sister will tell me something he neglected."

Similarly, you only get bits and pieces of Hawthorne's story in her play The Scarlet Letter, showing at Intiman Theatre (through December 5).

Audiences I think would be better served by knowing that Iizuka's work is to Hawthorne's as Kaufman's Adaptation is to The Orchid Thief. (Except that Iizuka's adaptation runs just over 70 minutes; you've hardly sat down, it seems, when everything is all done.) In both cases, the adapting author has introduced a significant personal element into the source. Here, that includes a paraphrasing of that "bits and pieces" line by the adult Pearl (Renata Friedman) who introduces and narrates the proceedings.

It's not a satisfying reworking, in that it hardly improves upon the original, and never makes a bold claim for its new existence--just like the little Pearl in the play who would like to be noticed but doesn't realize the attention the town fathers pay her is not for her sake.

Rather than a Puritan costume drama, what you see is a sort of memory play--part imagination, part hallucination--in which Pearl tries to recover her father, and make peace with the choices her mother made. (Tangentially, I direct you to Susan Faludi's "Feminism's ritual matricide.") Where Hawthorne's story is driven by Hester's conflict with Puritan society, Iizuka's play is not driven much at all, though it pretends to be (by a repressed memory that arrives right on cue).... (more)

Megan Cole, Alexandra Tavares, and Suzanne Bouchard in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. Photo by Chris Bennion

Proust coined the term "involuntary memory" to describe recollections triggered by cues in everyday life. Famously, the French writer used a cookie as a literary device in illustration of this notion. I am no Proust expert by any stretch. (Dear In Search of Lost Time: Seriously dude, tl;dr.) Yet Proust was certainly on my mind during Three Tall Women (Seattle Repertory Theatre, through Nov. 28; tickets).

The 92-year-old, (or 91--she's not sure), nameless central character in Edward Albee's 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning script is layer upon layer of involuntary memories, each notion connecting tangentially to some other in an ever-denser web of senile dementia. Her memories are little other than involuntary, in fact. Albee's lead (Megan Cole, delivering a riveting performance in a difficult role) remembers everything, although rarely in the right order and almost never on command.... (more)

David Nixon (the meaning of life not pictured)

Occasionally, you come across a piece of art that can be enjoyed even without knowing exactly where it's headed. For me, that kind of gratification--art for art's sake--can be found in the writing of Marquez, Murakami, and Borges, Meirelles' City of God, and every single episode of Arrested Development. The Annex's new solo show by David Nixon--philosophy professor, actor, musician, artistic polymath, and member of absurdist art pop theater band "Awesome"--Center-Cut Ham Dinner Night Slide Show (Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m. through Nov. 17th), doesn't quite reach those artistic heights, but it aims high and delivers non-stop ruminative delights, all while making comedy out of the big questions.

Take it from a doctor of philosophy: the topic at hand is nothing less that the Meaning of Life. Is it the ability to take simple pleasure in even the smallest of moments, like a cat? Can it be found in hard work, nature, family, or religion? What about the pursuit of sex, creativity, happiness, intellectualism, and/or money? The answer, of course, is yes and no to all of the above, especially since no matter what you do, or how you find your own individual meaning, you're still going to end up dead. (Spoiler alert.)

Nixon pursues these ideas through a mixture of monologues, pre-recorded music, cartoons, digital animation, and physical humor. The show's sharp and sly nature reveals itself in the details, like the homage to the Slog (the Slög). It's clear that Nixon is always thinking, and even parts of the performance that look sloppy are actually well-coordinated and choreographed to a T. The whole piece just moves, and by the time it starts to feel like it's running long, it's over. Such is life.... (more)

PB_TMOG's "Ayudapii: The Primitive (The Evolution of Need: Phase 1)". Photo by Tim Summers

First up in this week's listings is Paige Barnes and Christopher Hydinger's Ayudapii: The Primitive (The Evolution of Need: Phase One) at Open Flight Studio (tickets $6-$14). That's a hell of a name, and the website's description can be equally oblique, but then again, this is dance: it's a physical language that doesn't lend itself so well to verbal description, making me think that the old phrase would be more appropriate if restated as: "Writing about dance is like music about architecture." Except that actually sounds pretty cool, and I think it's been done, thus disproving the sentiment. But whatever. I digress.

If you want my sales pitch for why you should head to the U-District for this show, which runs for only two weekends, it's that dancer/choreographer Paige Barnes is working with some fascinating elements here and the result is really interesting. First of all, the name "ayudapii" is a word she made up to describe the movement style she's employing, which relies on an intense relationship with the floor and the space just above it. Now, that may sound sort of academic, but trust me: in execution, creating dynamic movement in such a small space is actually remarkable, particularly when you account for the fact that it's not particularly easy to move on or near the ground. I've seen some video of this and it's impressive.

Partially that's owed to Barnes' company of dancers, which include a few of the people I frequently describe as dancers "whose work I've liked" or as "one of my favorite performers in town," but there's a reason for that, and Alice Gosti, Allie Hankins, and Monica Mata Gilliam all fit the bill. Finally, Hydinger (who performs as "The Music of Grayface") provides a haunting score, and the piece is visually stunning.... (more)

Everyone loves to bitch about their job. Even if you've got the best job in the world--quality control at the kitten factory--it's still essential and cathartic to find something or someone at work to complain about. (Not any of you at The SunBreak, of course. OMG, <3 u guys, j/k!!1!) Complaining about the ins and outs of a job gives you the laser-like focus you need to win those second-prize steak knives, or at least it gives you something to talk about when you're not working--whatever it takes to run out the hours. 

The Secret Lives of My Coworkers, the Annex Theatre's new late night show (running Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 19; no show this Friday, but Saturday Nov. 6 is pay-what-you-can) keeps that all in mind, as local comedian Michele Colyn walks you through a team-building exercise in which everyone's thoughts are heard and appreciated. Yes, Powerpoint and stock photos are involved. There's a cavalcade of comedic storytellers, the roster of which switches up every night, all wearing employee badges and telling their personal tales of work woes. Don't worry, you can volunteer to share your own stories of hellish job experiences (TPS reports, office birthday parties) after the intermission.... (more)

This is out of left field:

Intiman Theatre Board President Kim Anderson announces that Melaine Bennett, Intiman’s Director of Development, has been appointed the theatre's Acting Managing Director, succeeding Brian Colburn. The Board of Directors accepted Colburn's resignation for personal reasons, effective November 1, 2010.

The odd shake-up comes on the heels of two productions--Lynn Nottage's Ruined and a new adaptation of Molière's A Doctor in Spite of Himself by Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp--that both "exceeded their attendance and single-ticket goals," according to the theatre.

Darragh Kennan as Hamlet, David Pichette as Polonius, and Charles Leggett as Player King (Photo: John Ulman)

For its 20th season, Seattle Shakespeare Company has unveiled a Hamlet (through December 5) that you know from the first minutes will become legend in Seattle theatre, one of those remarkable Seattle Shakes casts joined this time by an extraordinarily purposeful creative team. You cease to be watching Hamlet, the iconic play, and instead join the court, humming and buzzing at the tribulations of these people come to life before you.

That's in large part due to director John Langs, who, in conspiracy with lighting designer Geoff Korf, turns every soliloquy into a confiding intimacy. This likely wouldn't work in a larger house--intimacy's effects, like gravity's, decrease greatly with distance--but Langs uses the soliloquies as a lever, transforming the audience into bystanders, even having Darragh Kennan's Hamlet leave the stage to walk the aisle of first-row seats.

A lesser director might insist on "breaking" walls, but Langs erases them, pushing his actors out, and pulling the audience closer. His Hamlet opens in the pitch dark of the night watch, everyone's eyes adjusting to the gloom, ears homing in on the voices, and already visible distinctions have vanished. When Claudius (Richard Ziman) appears to announce he's taken Gertrude (Mary Ewald) to wife, Jen Zeyl's set blazes into klieg-light majesty, and its brightness--everyone blinks in the glare--effaces the line between stage and audience.... (more)

Seattle Shakes' "Hamlet." Photo by John Ulman.

This weekend when it comes to theatre, the big news is the opening of Seattle Shakes' stunningly cast Hamlet (tickets $22-$38). Directed by John Langs, Seattle Shakes tackles the play that's just too big to ever be fully performed with a cast of amazing Seattle actors, including Adam Standley (in several roles, including Fortinbras), Charles Leggett (as the ghost of Hamlet's father), Shawn Law (Laertes), Brenda Joyner (Ophelia), and the incredible David Pichette as Polonius. With a set design by Jen Zeyl and sound by Rob Witmer, this is about as fantastic a group as you could bring together in Seattle, and I'd be more than willingly bury my longstanding dislike of seeing Shakespeare performed to head over for it.

Of course, the Rep's production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women is pretty stacked, too (tickets $30-$52). Directed by Alison Narver, the show stars Megan Cole, Alexandra Tavares, and Suzanne Bouchard in the titular roles. And yes, I dig Tavares, but Bouchard has been one of my favorite Seattle actors for quite some time--since at least ACT's The Women a few years ago. Last weekend, I also missed calling out the opening of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter (tickets $15). Produced by small and new-ish Seattle theatre company Azeotrope at Theatre off Jackson, Rapp is a playwright whose star's been rising in NYC for quite a while, since he clambered out from under the shadow of his older brother Anthony (of Adventures in Babysitting and Rent fame), and the show features Richard Nguyen Sloniker (Azeotrope's founder, who I don't think I've ever seen), and Tim Gouran (who's a strong actor).... (more)

Jeffrey Fracé as Padraic and David Roby as James, in The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh at ACT Theatre. Photo: Chris Bennion

"A young boy has died and at least 50 people have been injured in two bomb blasts close to the heart of a busy shopping centre," is how the BBC story on the 1993 Warrington bombing begins.

Warrington shook playwright Martin McDonagh into the pacifist's rage in which he wrote The Lieutenant of Inishmore (at ACT through November 14), a savage, Swiftian mocking of late-stage Irish republicanism. McDonagh knew that southern Irish might say one thing in public, and another late at night in the pub, if you asked them about the IRA, so his play forces the issue; it's difficult for laughter to come easily when secretly cherished ideals are being made sport of.

And in fact, Ireland's big houses wouldn't put on the play. The world premiere fell to the Royal Shakespeare Company, after years of foot-dragging. (Jeremy spoke earlier with Wilson Milam, the director of that production.)

Described as the "bastard offspring of J. M. Synge and Quentin Tarantino," The Lieutenant of Inishmore was written from within a world where bombs hurled limbs about carelessly. 17 years after Warrington, in America, the impact has dwindled. ACT's production is notable mainly for its ability to make 50-year-olds queasy with arterial spray. Directed by Kurt Beattie, it plays very much like the "gleefully gruesome comedy" suggested by ACT's marketing copy. Well, why not? We're not being indicted, and McDonagh writes down hilariously inappropriate things: A terrorist pulling toenails off a prisoner takes a cell phone call, asking his dad if it's important, because he is a little busy.

This isn't unique to ACT; a Variety review of a New York production under Milam's direction claimed that the imported result was "a satire without sting," and criticized the "cartoon violence." But if there was rage to be had at ACT last night I missed it, unless it came in the person of Padraic, the sociopathic splinter-group terrorist played by Jeffrey Fracé. This is doubly odd because Beattie is quoted as saying, "it's easy for us to forget that his play is really centered in the realities of this tragic chapter of Irish history."... (more)

Enjoy it while you can, kids. Aleksandra Kurzak (Lucia) and William Burden (Edgardo) in Seattle Opera's production of "Lucia di Lammermoor." ©Rozarii Lynch photo

"Actually," said the man walking out of McCaw Hall, "that was much better than I thought it'd be--by a long shot." It stuck in my head, as a thumbnail review, because I was thinking the same thing.

After a long, long day (beginning with an economic discussion at 7:30 a.m.), I'd given myself permission to snooze during Seattle Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor (running through October 30). But events conspired against me; not only did I not feel drowsy during the show, I was up for another two hours, head buzzing with what I'd just seen and heard.

Now, some people love Lucia, don't get me wrong. If you were to assemble a hit-opera algorithm, it'd no doubt create Lucia by the third or fourth try. In Italian, check. Great songs, check. (If you put a bass line under "o bell'alma innamorata" you'd have a Top 10 hit on the Italian charts tomorrow.) Big chorus numbers, you got it. Castle filled with hot-tempered Scots? Absolutely. Ghost? Yes, of course there's a ghost. Doomed lovers separated by a family feud? Claro que si. Watch the preview. There's even an aria near a tomb while snow falls.

But this is also the problem: Left to its own devices, Lucia can, like Johnny 5, crank itself to a semblance of life and chirp and stab at you from the stage, all melody and broody aesthetic, like a cryogenic Belle & Sebastian tour in 2150.

A good Lucia isn't a kitschy performance; it's a reenactment of what you can read about in the news today. Every so often, the impersonal forces that operate in human lives produce maddened spasms of violence. Lucia's family is more or less facing foreclosure; they're under tremendous pressure to save the family name and her wedding to the wealthy Arturo is all the plan they've got left. When that plan goes awry, the opera fountains with gore--but it also shivers and strains with the attempt to contain Lucia's insanity. Mental illness is one of the great human traumas, and Donizetti lodges it in his heroine's throat like a blind bird eating its way out.... (more)

Pat Graney's "Tattoo," part of the "Faith Triptych" this weekend at On the Boards. (Photo: Tim Summers)

The big, one-weekend-only event this weekend in the big restaging of Pat Graney's Faith Triptych at On the Boards (tickets $20). A work in three parts which took over a decade to complete, it's a testament to an artist who's not just a fixture of the local community, but part of its bedrock. An entire generation of dance artists came to Seattle for the opportunity to work with choreographers like Graney, including Lingo Dance's director KT Niehoff, who will be appearing in Faith Triptych reprising a role she helped create. And unlike Mark Morris, another Seattle-based choreographer who came up in the Eighties before decamping for Europe and New York, Graney's continued working primarily in Seattle to this day.

Anyway, I'm sad to be missing out on it because it should be a stunning (if, at nearly three hours, long) evening as Graney revisits three deeply imaginative works. And anyway, I want to see how a "Judy Jetson sound skirt" works. Brendan Kiley has a nice preview of the show.

In the world of theatre, tonight's the official opening of our locally grown production of Martin McDonagh's infamous The Lieutenant of Inishmore at ACT Theatre (tickets $10-$55). A caustic, ultra-violent 90-minute romp worthy of Tarantino, the play centers on a certain "Mad Padraic" (pronounced "Patrick"), a sadistic Irish terrorist too violent for the IRA, or, for that matter, the ultra-violent IRA splinter group he's a member of. Long story short, about the only thing he cares about is his beloved pet cat, left in the care of his increasingly terrified father back home in Inishmore. Well, the play starts with the cat dead and goes downhill from there as Padraic pretty much goes ape-shit on a bunch of other people, most of whom are trying to kill him.... (more)