Chelsea LeValley in 'Penelope' - Can't Get Any Better

Chelsea LeValley as Penelope (John McLellan)

Penelope

Artswest

through December 21, 2025

Chelsea LeValley has been gallivanting around national theaters gaining credits (like touring with Come From Away) and valuable experience honing her craft. Thankfully, she's back in town for the run of this solo musical extraordinary effort, Penelope at Artswest. 

The promo blurb says, "Penelope has been waiting…and waiting…and waiting for her husband, Odysseus, to return from a decade-long war. Given the rest of the soldiers came home years ago—forgive her, but she’s going to need a drink while she tells you about it." A folk-inflected pop score, backed by a five-piece onstage band, this musical demands a compelling performer with vulnerability and a great belt.

Penelope was the wife of Odysseus - King of Ithaca - who left to battle in the Trojan Wars. True to the story in The Odyssey, she sings about the war being over in ten years, yet Odysseus does not return for ten more. That's a lot of waiting! 

Ha Ha Ha Ha-liday Shows (and a bunch of Scrooges)

Scott Shoemaker's War on Christmas (Bronwen Houck)

You know what’s in store on Seattle stages, this month! Go for the classics or go for the laughs. Plenty of shows to choose from! Get out yer calendars!

The Past, A Present Yet to Come (Michael Brunk)

The Past, a Present Yet to Come
Through 12/21/25 (at Kennedy Catholic High, 140 S. 140th St., Burien)
Burien Actors Theatre, www.battheatre.org
In this irreverent imagining of how Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol came to be written, a young entrepreneur in Victorian London sets out to produce a play that will soften his Uncle Ebenezer Scrooge’s hard heart. He turns to no-nonsense theatre producer J.B. Roth, who engages a broke, philandering Dickens. Are there ulterior motives for this unlikely mission to save Scrooge?
 
The Sound of Music
Through 12/21/25 (at 9315 State Ave, Suite J, Marysville)
Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts, www.redcurtainfoundation.org
Let the melodies of the Alps welcome you as we bring this beloved musical to life for the holiday season. Filled with iconic songs, heartfelt storytelling, and the inspiring story of the Von Trapp family, The Sound of Music continues to captivate audiences of all ages.
 
A Charlie Brown Christmas
12/4-27/25
Taproot Theatre, www.taproottheatre.org
Charlie Brown is depressed by the never-ending commercialism surrounding the holidays. Thankfully, Linus is there to help him find the true meaning of Christmas in this musical adaptation of the cartoon classic. 7^th year in a row, almost a holiday tradition! (40 minutes)

Fellow Passengers
12/4-22/25
Strawberry Theatre Workshop, www.strawshop.org

Greg Carter has adapted Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the actual narrative into a three-person presentation. The play engages found objects, clothes, and furniture to restore vitality to the most important story ever written. Imogen Love, Kiki Abba, and Heather Persinger share the role of literature's most famous haunted man and his joyful discovery that the people around him are "fellow passengers to the grave; not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." 

A Klingon Christmas Carol (courtesy Latitude Theatre)

A Klingon Christmas Carol
12/4-28/25 (at Seattle Center, Armory)
Latitude Theatre, www.latitudetheatre.org
With dialogue scripted completely in the Klingon language, and narrated in English by a Vulcan narrator (and translated with supertitles), Klingon themes of courage and honor propel Dickens’ traditional story of the cowardly SQuja’ (Scrooge) as he is challenged to revisit his choices and change his fate with the help of three Klingon warrior spirits.
 
The Dina Martina Christmas Show
12/5-24/25
Union Arts Center, www.unionartscenter.org
A beloved tradition for over 25 years, Dina’s cabaret performance offers a hilarious take on traditional and contemporary holiday tunes, accompanied by award-winning composer/musician/adult prodigy Chris Jeffries. Experience this hysterically funny and joyous production with your friends and family!

Seattle November Theater Provides a Warm Embrace

Acrobatic  Conundrum Threads (Josh Lieberman)

Lot of holiday oriented theatrical productions, of course, starting now. Some of our favorite laugh-factories are back for another go. There are world premieres and off-beat musicals and updates to classic musicals, too. Check it out and get out yer calendars, now!
 
Threads
Through 11/8/25
Acrobatic Conundrum, www.acrobaticconundrum.com
A tangled world, by turns emotive and exhilarating. Rope papers the walls, rope becomes an animate object in the hands of a clown, rope elevates dance-storytelling into the air. Acrobats revel in the messy knot of being connected to each other, pulling their weight, trusting, and putting their lives on the line for each other. Threads is a circus opus featuring seven performers and a musician, an exploration of connection, love, and endings — a story strung with grace and daring that will leave you inspired and curiously alive.
 
OMNIA Break Room (world premiere)
11/6-16/25 (at Meany Studio Theatre)
UW School of Drama, www.drama.uw.edu
In a world of streamlined efficiency, the employees of OMNIA (Latin for “everything”) convene in the breakroom during their shifts. Employees feel isolated and disconnected in an environment constantly extracting the most of people, until the inhumane system creates a schism, revealing a different life on the other side.
 
Anything Goes
11/7-22/25 (at Theatre Off Jackson)
Reboot Theatre Company, www.reboottheatre.org
When the S.S. Reboot heads out to sea, etiquette and convention head out the portholes as two unlikely pairs set off on the course to true love... proving that sometimes destiny needs a little help from a crew of singing sailors, a comical disguise, and some good old-fashioned blackmail.  Songs you may know, of pop and jazz standards, but might not know were from this musical, include "Anything Goes," "You're the Top," "All Through the Night," and "I Get a Kick Out of You."

New “Shrew” Lacks Love

Shrew - Jocelyn Maher and Rachel Guyer-Mafune (photo Giao Nguyen)

Shrew
Union Arts Center
Through 11/2/25
 
The blurb for this production, Shrew, said, “Girl meets boy. Girl hates boy. Girl agrees to marry boy against her will so her sister can get married too. Got it? Shrew uses the classic Shakespearian (Taming of the Shew) text — but inverted, upended, and overturned — to offer a modern-day perspective on how far we’ve come when it comes to love — and how far we still have to go.”
 
It is a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. But the promise was perhaps oversold on the “modern-day perspective.” Many playwrights have been updating Shakespeare’s plays these days because we all know the 1500s were not shining examples of egalitarian attitudes towards women. Sometimes, people will argue that Shakespeare himself took great pains in some of his plays to empower his women characters, so there’s that.
 
The Taming focuses on Kate, an independent-minded woman who doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and as Shakespeare’s language portrays her, is rude and indifferent. She’s “untamable.” Because of her dowery – and maybe because she’s pretty, Petruchio decides to marry her and sets out to prove that he can tame her. Essentially, he starves her, isolates her, and demands that she learn to accept his word as the law.
 
And it’s a comedy. All this does not mean I dislike the play. It really does need to be contextualized for its time. And this is one of his more egalitarian storylines, in spite of the barbaric plot line.

October Theater Offers Mystery, Monsters, and World Premieres

Outside Mullingar (courtesy As If Theatre)

October looks like fun on our stages with quite a number of world premieres and a few shows with murder and mystery. Get out yer calendars!

The Coast Starlight (Michael Brunk)

The Coast Starlight
Now open through 10/19/25 (at Kennedy Catholic High School, 140 S. 140th St., Burien)
Burien Actors Theatre, https://battheatre.org/the-coast-starlight-2025
A young man with a life-changing secret boards a long-distance train, the Coast Starlight. With the help of his fellow travelers, who are reckoning with their own choices, he has roughly a thousand miles to find a way forward. This story of “what ifs” looks at what happens when we step beyond being strangers to connect, and how our interactions can change ourselves and others. A story about our capacity for invention and re-invention when life goes off the rails.
 
Outside Mullingar
10/2-10/25
As If Theatre, www.asiftheatre.com
Anthony and Rosemary are two introverted misfits who live on adjoining farms in the Irish countryside. Neighbors for generations, things come to a head when Tony Reilly, Anthony’s father, reveals his plan to disinherit him and sell the farm to another relative. As a feud simmers between the two families, old secrets, surprising truths, and long-hidden feelings threaten to emerge. In this quintessentially Irish story, the heartbreaking and the hilarious are woven together to create a deeply moving story of yearning, loss, family, romance, and the vulnerability of taking a chance on love.

Ms. Frankenstein's Monster (courtesy The Phoenix Theatre)

Ms. Frankenstein’s Monster
10/2-29/25
The Phoenix Theatre, https://www.tptedmonds.org/season18shows.html
You've never seen Frankenstein like this! Baron Frankenstein is down on his luck. The sparsity of viewers staying up to see his old monster on late, late TV shows depresses his ego and his credit at the bank. Can he renew his fame and fortune as a monster maker? Yes! He’ll create a football superstar cheered by millions. But his sister, Baroness Frankenstein, has her own ideas. She furtively creates a female monster attractive enough to become a Hollywood star. The town’s husbands are on one side, and their wives are on the other. The Baron commands his monster to destroy his sister’s. The reaction of the monsters at their first meeting is a tour de force of comic action.
 
Stage of Fools (world premiere)
10/3/25-11/2/25
Seattle Public Theater, www.seattlepublictheater.org
A scrappy feminist theater company is about to go under when it receives an offer it can't refuse: has-been ’80s action movie star Jake Stone will give it more money than ever dreamed of, if it will produce King Lear, with him in the titular role. Never mind that he's an entitled, egotistical blowhard. These women can survive anything for the sake of the theater they love...right? A world premiere written by local playwright Joy McCullough.

September Theater Openings – Off to the races!

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle from Book-It (Michelle Bates)

We have a Keiko Green mini-festival with two of her newest plays (Hells Canyon, Exotic Deadly) opening at once! A few events are one-day or one-weekend short, so attention is needed. World premieres and wildly different subject matter give us so much to see and do this month. Book-It pops in again! (Check out the new formatting... do you like it?)
 
The Laramie Project

9/4-28/25 (at ReAct Studios, 562 1st Ave S - 4th Floor)

ReAct Theatre www.reacttheatre.org

The critically acclaimed documentary-style play explores the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, a young gay man in a non-accepting community. Based on real interviews with residents of Laramie, news reports, and journal entries, it captures the community’s reactions to the hate crime and its impact.

Hells Canyon
9/5-21/26 (at 12th Avenue Arts)
Washington Ensemble Theatre, www.washingtonensemble.org
Seven-months pregnant Ariel arrives at a remote cabin with some old friends. Resentments surface and buried histories claw their way into the light when the group hears something outside, trying to get in… or out? In this horror-thriller, there are some decisions you cannot outrun.
 
For Colored Boyz (on the verge of a nervous breakdown / when freedom ain’t enuff)
9/5-21/25 (at Base Camp Studios, 2407 1^st Ave)
The Underground Theater, www.underground.theater
Written by Bryan-Keyth Wilson, this choreopoem brings to life the voices of queer Black and brown men through poetry, movement, and music. Raw, vulnerable, and transformative, it is a call to reflect, to listen, and to see one another more fully.
 
Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play
9/6–20/25 (at Theatre Off Jackson)
Porkfilled Productions and SiS Productions, www.porkfilled.com
Ami, an awkward Japanese American high school girl in 1999, wants to be invisible. But her world comes crashing down with a terrible discovery: her family is responsible for manufacturing MSG, the poison spice getting all the kids hooked. A mysterious new girl arrives from Japan, named Exotic Deadly. and she’s not playing by the rules. This whimsical, time-traveling adventure is a riotous romp through teenage crushes, family secrets, and female power.
 
Yaga
9/11-27/25 (at 12th Avenue Arts)
Dacha Theatre, www.dachatheatre.com
A genre-bending, darkly comedic fairy tale meets thrilling whodunit, giving voice to an antihero of epic proportions whose story has historically been told by men. An in-over-his-head detective finds himself in an isolated college town asking what the disappearance of a young heir to a yogurt empire has to do with a random folktale about an old witch. Involving an apprehensive local sheriff, a university professor with a taste for younger men, and a whole cast of curious characters, the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga twists into a new labyrinth of secret lives, ancient magic, and multiple suspects.