Tag: nick garrison

Charlotte Keeps You Guessing in Rep’s <em>I Am My Own Wife</em>
Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Charlotte Keeps You Guessing in Rep’s I Am My Own Wife

At a hundred and forty minutes, with one intermission, I Am My Own Wife is lengthy by solo-actor standards, and is essentially about a number of conversations held with a 65-year-old, self-styled museum curator, so you have to make allowances, and sit back and relax as Charlotte tells her story in her own time, complete with digressions and evasions, instructing you in the history of the Edison Gramophone and the antique furniture in her Gründerzeit Museum. Continue reading Charlotte Keeps You Guessing in Rep’s I Am My Own Wife

Why <em>Inherit the Wind</em>? Why Here? Why Now?
Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Why Inherit the Wind? Why Here? Why Now?

Where their recent Laramie Project came to bruised, bleeding life onstage, this Inherit the Wind (through October 8 at Erickson Theatre Off Broadway; tickets: $30, $15 students/seniors, Thurs. half-price) only occasionally feels charged by a long-festering conflict. Though the play contains a famous line about journalism afflicting the comfortable, this production goes down remarkably easily in the company of fellow liberals. Continue reading Why Inherit the Wind? Why Here? Why Now?

The Love Markets Give Weimar the Slip
Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Love Markets Give Weimar the Slip

Songs in the repertoire are by Kander & Ebb, Hanns Eisler, Kurt Weill, Friedrich Hollaender, Piaf, but also by Leonard Cohen, Janis Ian, and Angie Louise herself. If it takes a certain chutzpah to put your songs in the mix with Weill, Louise’s efforts come off very well. Partly, this is context: Cabaret would normally bring you music (and concerns) of the day, and Louise’s “Ballad of the Housing Bubble” is a terrific tune that feels very right, uniting eras in outrage over banksters and fleeced sheep. Continue reading The Love Markets Give Weimar the Slip

Go On, Let Strawshop’s <em>Cloud Nine</em> Tweak Your Psychosexual Boundaries
Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Go On, Let Strawshop’s Cloud Nine Tweak Your Psychosexual Boundaries

But you also need a cast that can switch gears from the mostly satiric, slightly absurdist comedy of the first act to something much more authentically human in the second. Without backing off on the liberation project, Churchill also evokes the sometimes painful stretching of relationship ties as people try to create new ways of feeling at home in the world–this is why Garrison is an inspired choice to direct, because he’s as at home with arch, slapsticky, and bon mot humor as he is with moments that seem to cleave the characters to their vulnerable core. Continue reading Go On, Let Strawshop’s Cloud Nine Tweak Your Psychosexual Boundaries

Seattle Rep’s <em>This</em> Isn’t All That, But It’s Pretty Cool (Review)
Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Seattle Rep’s This Isn’t All That, But It’s Pretty Cool (Review)

I don’t want to tell you the ending of This, because I didn’t like it and am trying to forget it. I wonder if it’s simply that plays like This shouldn’t have endings. It’s a play that ought, if true to its characters, reject the cathartic, everything’s-gonna-be-different moment. L.B. Morse’s set features–besides a kitchen, living room, apartment, and piano nightclub–a number of doorways that people hang around in, emphasizing their inability to escape the liminal. They prefer the ambivalent space. It’s fascinating how the attraction to maintaining live options can leave you with none. Continue reading Seattle Rep’s This Isn’t All That, But It’s Pretty Cool (Review)