Pie Month! “Waitress” at 5th Ave - the Perfect Sweetness!

Tori Gresham, Kerstin Anderson, and Porscha Shaw in Waitress (Tracy Martin)

Waitress
5^th Avenue Theatre
Through March 30, 2025
 
On Pie Day, 3/14/25, a strong and sweet LOCAL production of Waitress opened at the 5^th Avenue. I joke - Pi Day (based on pi = 3.14) was the perfect day to open. The 5^th Avenue was able to snag one of the first regional rights to perform this charming musical and they’ve turned out a hit!
 
Director Lisa Shriver is back again after her triumphant direction, last season, of Beautiful at Village Theatre. Here, her pacing, smart collaboration with adroit set designer Julia Hayes Welch (a complicated set design moved swiftly and efficiently from scene to scene), and her work with the top-notch local cast combined to a light-as-whipped-cream flair.
 
We meet Jenna, a local waitress in a small town, and her waitstaff cohorts Becky and Dawn, the diner cook, Cal, and assorted townsfolk. She’s unhappily married to abusive Earl, feels trapped and scared, but makes amazing pies every morning. Can a pie contest help her win enough money to get out?
 
Kerstin Anderson fully immerses herself in Jenna. Her voice is sublime and sure. Her quirky character comes out and when she meets gynecologist Dr. Pomatter (wonderfully sweet and funny Adam Standley) and finds out she’s pregnant, and accidentally starts an affair with him, she shows a spunk that allows us to like this woman more than feel sorry for her.

Guest Review: "Clue The Musical" at Driftwood

Nicole Roundy, Doug Harkness, Royce Napolitino in "Clue, The Musical" 
at Driftwood Theatre (photo Dale Sutton)

CLUE, THE MUSICAL

Driftwood Theatre

Through April 6, 2025

Guest Reviewer Kelly Rogers Flynt

As the characters from the classic board game come to life and break out of the box and onto the stage with Edmonds Driftwood Players, they invite the audience to play detective and unravel the mystery of who, how, and where Mr. Boddy is murdered. Through music, dance, and witty dialogue, clues and hints are revealed and bring you closer to the answer. Entertaining, engaging, and marvelously fun, the musical delivers immersive theater to the whole audience.

The show proceeds as if the game were being played by the audience, including the sound effect of rolling dice between each move. The killer, the weapon, and the room are selected by random audience members and placed in a giant "confidentail" envelope on the side of the stage. The cast then adjusts the show to fit those results. Mr. Boddy, acting as narrator, gives you hints of motives and opportunities of the characters. Some are clear, some with a caveat, but all bring you closer to solving the mystery.

Lion or Lamb? Lots to See Onstage in March

Cast of A Raisin in the Sun at Taproot Theatre (Robert Wade)

Classic plays, many musicals, world premiere! So many great choices. Get out yer calendars!
 
Mother Russia (or Periods of Collapse), Seattle Rep, 3/6/25-4/13/25 (world premiere)
Playwright Lauren Yee brings us a comic view of the fall of the Soviet Union! Evgeny and Dmitri are just two average guys who dream of joining the KGB—but when the fall of the Soviet Union puts hiring on hold, they find jobs surveilling a former pop star instead. As they bumble their way through the assignment, both spy work and life under capitalism prove harder than they thought. When old systems and strongmen fall away, and we let the free market decide—freedom might not taste as good as we thought it would.
www.seattlerep.org
 
Is This a Room, Harlequin Productions, 3/7-23/25
A true story, still unfolding. June 3, 2017. A 25-year-old former Air Force linguist named Reality Winner is surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated, and then charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S. elections. Reality subsequently received a record-breaking sentence. The verbatim FBI transcript of her interrogation is the heart of Is This a Room, conceived as a play by Obie Award-winner Tina Satter, in which an extraordinary human drama unfolds between the complex and witty Reality, and the agents who question her. As Reality’s autonomy shrinks before her eyes, a simmering real-life thriller emerges, asking what it is to have honor in this American moment, and how the personal can reverberate globally.
www.harlequinproductions.org