The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Theater

Opus: Violence Behind the Elegance of a String Quartet

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

by Brendan Kiley Nothing about a synopsis of Opus will drive people to rush out and see it: a play about the backstage tensions and harmonies between members of a famous string quartet, written by a violist-cum-playwright who wants the actors to interact as the instruments would in a real-life quartet? It sounds so mannered and fancy, dry as a starched tuxedo shirt. As for "violist-cum-playwright"—what gall to have enough talent for two separate, full-time arts careers. You don't want to buy a…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

An Oak Tree: An Actor's Worst Nightmare Realized

editor@thestranger.com (Kaia Chessen) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

by Kaia Chessen It is a common dream: You are forced onstage, in front of an audience of strangers, and must perform a part you have not rehearsed. Last Wednesday, actor Aimee Bruneau lived this nightmare, performing in Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree opposite Theater Schmeater's artistic director David Gassner. An Oak Tree demands a fresh victim each night: The theatrical experiment was designed for one rehearsed actor and one unrehearsed actor. Gassner instructed Bruneau where to stand and what to say. He…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

At Home at the Zoo: Old Albee Is Better Than New Albee

editor@thestranger.com (Kaia Chessen) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

At Home at the Zoo: Old Albee Is Better Than New Albee by Kaia Chessen If Peter in At Home at the Zoo is the puppet, his strings are in precarious hands: First toyed with by his nauseatingly unsatisfied "you're good at making love but lousy at fucking" wife, Ann (Teri Lazzara, Schmeater's managing director), he then receives a fervent yank by storytelling transient Jerry (Alexander Samuels). The 1958 play, originally a one-act entitled The Zoo Story, was Edward Albee's first. Peter (J. D. Lloyd), a textbook publisher, meets a boardinghouse resident named Jerry on…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Waterworld

editor@thestranger.com (Kaia Chessen) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Sex and Desperation Under the Sea by Kaia Chessen T he crux of this new play by young playwright and Harvard alumnus Ashlin Halfnight is a question: What, in the end, is dispensable? Halfnight poses this problem in a postapocalyptic underwater bunker, where little—animal or object—survives. The play wonders what, in the end, we can keep. Bits of cultural nostalgia: the last remaining Polaroid camera, menus from a once popular restaurant chain called the Cheesecake Factory, or an instrument known throughout history as a trumpet? Which scraps of our…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

It's Not in the P-I

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

One Dying Industry (Theater) Stages a Play About Another (Newspapers) by Brendan Kiley The reporters are getting nervous. "My whole career, I've just expected that people should talk to me so I can write stories about them," says Tom Paulson, former science reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He lost his job this March when the P-I became one of over 130 American newspapers to cease printing in 2009. "But being interviewed by playwrights is nerve-wracking. It's role reversal." Paulson took his turn on the other side of the tape recorder as part of…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

No They Can't

editor@thestranger.com (Eli Sanders) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

A Stinky New Obama Musical by Eli Sanders If you are going to mount a musical that takes the election of Barack Obama as its subject matter, you had better have something to say. Or at least something to sing. Otherwise you are wasting everyone's time, because quite a lot has already been said—and sung—about the event: It's, like, perhaps the most said-and-sung-about presidential election ever. No shatteringly fresh perspective? Please do not put up signs and sell tickets and otherwise distract us all from enjoying the amazing…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Believers: Experimental-Theater Fail

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Brendan Kiley Theater Criticism 101 advises stumped critics to ask themselves three basic questions: 1. What is the show trying to do? 2. Does the show do it? 3. Was it worth doing? Jim Bovino's world premiere The Believers is a stumper—such a stumper that I cannot answer the first two questions with any confidence. First, a bit about Bovino. He recently movedhere from Minneapolis and wrote an introductory e-mail to The Stranger explaining that he's a veteran of the Edinburgh fringe…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Measure for Pleasure: A Sex Farce That Embraces the Garters and Eschews the Politics

editor@thestranger.com (Lindy West) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Lindy West As a general (and by general I mean UNFLINCHINGLY STRICT) rule, I make sure to stay away from people and situations that might possibly be described as "deliciously naughty," a phrase that breaks down as follows: Erotic Stuff (– Sexiness) + Unfunny Jokes + Entendre ^ Infinity Corsets = BARF. So imagine my dismay in discovering that Measure for Pleasure (a "deliciously naughty Restoration-romp-meets-modern-sex-farce") built an entire mighty citadel upon that bawdy, cinched, and buxom foundation. A citadel standing on…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Zastrozzi: Percy Shelley�s Murder-Revenge Camp

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Brendan Kiley A wicked play based on an even wickeder novel by crazy Percy Shelley, Zastrozzi is romantic-revenge camp. A master criminal and evil genius who terrorizes Europe's upper classes, Zastrozzi fancies himself an avenging angel. He rapes, pillages, and assassinates "wrongdoers," including artists who make bad paintings. People, he says, must be held accountable. Since God doesn't exist—Shelley was a loud atheist—the job falls on the shoulders of the mighty Zastrozzi. The master criminal carries his most acute grudge against a…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Bone Portraits: Edison, the X-ray, and Ladies Buying Lead Underwear

editor@thestranger.com (Paul Constant) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Paul Constant Neither Steve Jobs nor antidepressant television ads would exist without Thomas Edison. Edison took the serious science of invention and pumped it full of old-fashioned American hucksterism until it exploded into the capitalist bonanza that it is today. Actor Roy Stanton doesn't look like Thomas Edison—he's tall and skinny and bald—but he's a perfect window into Edison's soul: a smiley, slimy showman who begins banging out a ragtime tune on a piano whenever anyone starts talking about things like ethics.…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Theater News

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

It's Only Rock 'n' Roll by Brendan Kiley Just as I was sitting down to write about Rock 'n' Roll—Tom Stoppard's 2006 play about communists and rock bands in Prague and London—a young playwright, a friend of mine who heard I was at the show, sent me a text. "Remember, Stoppard is both our friend and our enemy," he wrote. "He knows he can get away with this play because he's written better plays. And we give him a pass because we loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Dan Savage Interviews Frank Rich

editor@thestranger.com (Dan Savage) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Before Frank Rich Interviews Stephen Sondheim by Dan Savage On October 26, Frank Rich of the New York Times will interview musical-theater genius Stephen Sondheim in Seattle. In advance of that interview, Dan Savage interviewed Rich. Your career as a theater critic and a writer is profoundly linked to Stephen Sondheim. I'm thinking Follies, of course, and the essay you wrote as a student for the Harvard Crimson. I guess you had lunch with him after running that piece. What was that lunch like? Well, it was actually a…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Young, Dumb, and Full of Glum

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Abe Lincoln: Young, Dumb, and Full of Glum by Brendan Kiley A braham Lincoln is one of America's secular saints, but Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a peculiar hagiography: It knocks him off his plinth until the final moments of the final scene, when it quickly sets him back up where we're used to seeing him. Written in 1938 by Robert E. Sherwood (six feet eight; film critic for Vanity Fair; member of the Algonquin Round Table), it tells a rags-to-glory story that must've been powerfully attractive to Americans at the…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Theater News

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

McGinn and Mallahan: The Culture Plans by Brendan Kiley When the mayor's race began, neither candidate had an arts platform. The city was forced to speculate about what Joe Mallahan and Mike McGinn were thinking. How would they deal with music clubs and noise complaints? Would they give the city's arts offices more muscle? Did they understand that bolstering a city's culture attracts thinkers and businesses, makes money, and improves life overall? "No, they didn't," says David Brown, executive director of Pacific Northwest Ballet (which just won a Stranger…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Theater News

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

The Culture Constituency by Brendan Kiley The case has already been made that culture needs candidates, in this election cycle and beyond. That case has been made by many—including myself—not on art-is-good-for-you truisms but on cold, hard, conservative principles. Remember the figures from this column three weeks ago: In 2005, Seattle's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs (OACA) got a $2.57 million budget (minus funds for public art). That year, OACA and Seattle's arts institutions returned $12.3 million in city-government revenue. That's not counting money that…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Hamming Up Hitchcock

editor@thestranger.com (David Schmader) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

The 39 Steps Spews Comedy All Over Seattle Rep by David Schmader Long before it was co-opted for the comic stage fantasia that's delighted audiences in London, New York, and—starting last weekend—Seattle, John Buchan's espionage-adventure novel The 39 Steps had been well plundered by the world of cinema. Buchan's twisty tale has fueled three major films, the most acclaimed and iconic of which arrived in 1935, when Alfred Hitchcock released his love-interest-enhanced The 39 Steps and solidified his burgeoning reputation as a master of suspense. Starring the prototypically dashing Robert Donat, Hitchcock's…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Rom�o et Juliette: Not Afraid to Swap Some Spit

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Jen Graves Ballet was created to deter the disruptiveness of bodies. It is about control, mastery, and form—and it is awesome and reassuring. It does not moan. So what do you get in most of the 80 ballet versions of Romeo and Juliet? Teenagers with no hormones. Nobody copping a feel. No kissing—no way. Love is a platonic thing that is impressive and repressive and wears its hair in a bun. It's nothing to do with sex. That's the Romeo and Juliet…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Runt of the Litter: NFL Star Bo Eason and His One-Man Show

editor@thestranger.com (David Schmader) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by David Schmader When the lights go up on Runt of the Litter—a semiautobiographical one-man show written and performed by NFL safety Bo Eason—the audience finds itself in sideline seats to a locker room, where a pro football player is prepping for a big game. As he waits out the hour until kickoff—lacing up his pants, putting on his shoulder pads, injecting steroids into his knees—he tells the audience how he came to be here, starting almost at the beginning. Born the runty…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Bloody Henry: Puppet Blowjob! Kingly Masturbation! Talking Vagina!

editor@thestranger.com (Lindy West) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Lindy West Two-hour puppet show. Two-hour puppet show. Two-hour puppet show. Two. Hour. Puppet. Show. Seventy-three minutes into Bloody Henry, the all-puppet reconstruction of the life 'n' loves 'n' stillborns 'n' severed heads of King Henry VIII, the lights come up. Intermission. "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived," I count on my fingers, remembering ye olde mnemonic. Seventy-three minutes and we were only through "divorced, beheaded." Two wives in. FOUR WIVES TO GO. Holy papal dispensation on a communion wafer, this shit…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Contact: Carl Sagan Deserves Better Than This Crappy Musical

editor@thestranger.com (Paul Constant) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

by Paul Constant For one brief, thrilling song, the idea of a musical based on Carl Sagan's sci-fi novel Contact makes perfect sense. The song is called "Prime Numbers," but none of the characters sing; instead, they count along with tolling synth notes arriving in a frequency from Vega, a far-off star. Gradually, the scientists learn the notes are coming in the form of prime numbers—which signifies an intelligent force behind the signal—and celebrate their discovery by jumping up and down and screaming…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Child's Play

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A Horror-Movie Play, Tortured by Genre Clichés by Brendan Kiley It's curious that Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom isn't playing through Halloween. The script is perfect for the season, a horror movie for the stage with all the trimmings—worrisome adolescents, their distant and self-involved parents, ambiguous but malevolent forces, the creepy ghosts of dead children, and a violent fantasy that breaks into flesh-and-blood (especially blood) reality. The script even trots out a variation on that venerable horror cliché: The call... is coming... from inside... THE HOUSE! The adolescents of an…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

A Confederacy of Dunces: A Holy Trinity of Awesome

editor@thestranger.com (Brendan Kiley) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A Confederacy of Dunces: A Holy Trinity of Awesome by Brendan Kiley Last weekend, midway through his triumphant lead performance in A Confederacy of Dunces, actor Brandon Whitehead accidentally dropped a hot dog on the floor. Whitehead was playing Ignatius J. Reilly—a fat, sanctimonious, and flatulent eccentric whose mind is stuck in a medieval monastery but whose body is stuck in 1960s New Orleans. Reilly is a glutton (and probably thinks the germ theory is some kind of modern perversion): He would certainly eat a hot dog off the floor. Whitehead bent…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Billie Jean: The Legend: The Creamy Crème de le Crème of Good-Bad Theater

editor@thestranger.com (Adrian Ryan) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Billie Jean: The Legend: The Creamy Crème de le Crème of Good-Bad Theater by Adrian Ryan If really bad theater were really good theater—and sometimes it is, don't ask me to explain—then Bad Actor Productions would be the creamy crème de le crème of really good-bad theater. Really. You know the Bad Actors: the hell-bound gang of perverts, acting-school dropouts, fags, drunks, unemployable sociopaths—led by a couple of emotionally unstable and garbage-mouthed drag queens—responsible for such fabulous tragedies as Exorcist: The Musical, Designing Women, Super Females!, Desperate Liaisons (which was supposed to be called Dangerous Lee…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Sex in Seattle 17: Coming Clean: A Soap Opera for the Stage

editor@thestranger.com (Lindy West) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Sex in Seattle 17: Coming Clean: A Soap Opera for the Stage by Lindy West I last reviewed Sex in Seattle in June 2006 (Episode 13: "Risking It All for Love"), and I could pretty much take all the words I wrote then and put them in a jar with a mysterious pregnancy and a Barry White dance number and some Cheetos (eaten with chopsticks) and shake the jar and make them fight and out would come a perfectly serviceable review of Sex in Seattle Episode 17: Coming Clean. Because not much has changed. But…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Wicked: It Does What Musicals Are Supposed to Do

editor@thestranger.com (Tara Hayes Constant) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Wicked: It Does What Musicals Are Supposed to Do by Tara Hayes Constant Elphaba, the green-skinned witch of the West, doesn�t start out with a reputation for wickedness. She�s just a geeky goth girl prone to scary and embarrassing outbursts of magic, and hopes a mentorship with the Wizard of Oz will be her ticket to the good life. But when the great man disappoints, her disillusionment with Oz�s political machine turns to fury. That cold, immovable machine is present throughout the musical. It�s embodied in the steel rivets of a dragon (inexplicably…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]