What Was the Best Theater of 2017?

Carolyn Marie Monroe and Sofia Raquel Sanchez in Lydia (John Ulman)

It’s that time for the annual recounting of theater in the Seattle area. 2017 was a pretty great year for musicals. The 5th Avenue Theatre started off the year with a rousing version of Pajama Game with the by-now taken-for-granted wonderful local cast and then bookended the year with a warm, sweet Holiday Inn with another terrific local cast augmented by special guest Lorna Luft. They also provided a moving, historic and excellent production of Ragtime.

We sometimes need a reminder of just how strong our pool of musical performers is. Seattle has become a hub for new musical development and continues to strengthen as a “try out” venue for musicals heading for New York City. That brings more top talent to town to stay.

Village Theatre strengthened its already-strong new musical program by hiring Brandon Ivie to formalize his already created bi-coastal lifestyle and backing their new Beta Program (debuting this week with the next trio of developmental musicals). Their season provided my pick for Best Musical production of 2017: Dreamgirls! It was said to be on Steve Tomkins “bucket list” before he transitions from Village Artist Director and our fair community now has enough top African American talent that they can blow our socks off in productions such as these. Their vigorous productions of Newsies and Into the Woods were also a lot of fun.

What January Brings to Seattle Stages

From Crime + Punishment by Akropolish Performance Lab (Margaretta Campagna)

We’re off to an eclectic start to 2018 with all kinds of flavors of shows. We have musicals, and a new adaptation of Crime and Punishment, Shakespeare with a woman at the helm, David Frost and Nixon played by women, August Wilson and more!

Crime + Punishment, Akropolis Performance Lab, 1/5-13/18 (at West of Lenin)

Raskolnikov, a debt-ridden and disillusioned university drop-out, devises this theory … then acts upon it. After dehumanizing, robbing, and murdering a pawnbroker, Raskolnikov descends into a guilt-ridden fever dream where he is plagued by the ghosts of his crime and conscience. In this original adaptation of Dostoevsky’s master work, APL ventures into the lower depths of 19th-century St. Petersburg, where the mysteries of the Russian soul and intellect, crime and love are deeply, irrevocably entwined as we reveal the mind of a killer in his search for meaning and redemption.

https://www.artful.ly/akropolis

How to Break, Village Theatre, 1/5-14/18 (Part of the Beta Series – developmental musical)

Book and Lyrics by Aaron Jafferis, Songs and Lyrics by Rebecca Hart, Beatbox Score by Yako 440

Ignited by an electric collision of theatre, breakdancing, and lyrical flow, this new musical follows two teenage hip hop dancers as they battle not only their disease, but also the hospital caregivers, for control over their own bodies. With a score backed by a beatboxed soundscape of the patients’ breaths and IV beeps, tensions rise as race, class, and language create life-threatening rifts between the patients and their treatment team.

www.villagetheatre.org

SPT Presents Charming “The Flight Before Xmas”

Cast of The Flight Before Xmas 

The Flight Before Xmas

Seattle Public Theater

Through December 24, 2017

A sweet, family-friendly new Christmas-time play is performing at Seattle Public Theater, penned by versatile local playwright Maggie Lee. SPT has retired it’s perennial Best Christmas Pageant, and is trying this new show. The Flight Before Xmas brings disparate humans into contact with each other as they all wait for a flight that must be delayed by weather.

It’s a nightmare that can bring out either the worst in people or the best. In this case, it’s a little of both. It’s a situation we can all identify with: the sinking feeling of being out of control of events while wishing desperately to get to the next thing.

It’s Christmas Eve at SeaTac Airport and we meet a family headed to Hawaii, all in matching shirts, a businesswoman trying to make an important meeting, a young couple of Lesbians, two sets of kids traveling between family households in their now-obligatory need to share visitation, a complaining older woman, a single man, and an airport airline employee who tries hard to provide great customer service.

What Could Happen if Trump Were President…? Oh, Yeah, He Is.

Shermona Mitchell and Tim Gouran in Building the Wall (Richard Sloniker)

Building the Wall

Azeotrope

(at 12th Avenue Arts)

Through December 23, 2017

Robert Schenkkan’s blistering play, Building the Wall, is not a play of nuance. He wrote it in an apparent white-hot fury on the eve of the 2016 election and it’s been refined, slightly, since Trump won, to account for more real-time events. Since most of Schenkkan's career writing is of historic events and conversations that propel events rather than “dramatic” scenes, he has become a master at building energy in conversation.

This 75 minute play presents Rick in prison. Rick (Tim Gouran) has done something awful and Gloria (Shermona Mitchell), a professor of history (it seems), wants to understand how he got to this point. Her letter to Rick asking to interview him appealed to him, he says, because of its honesty, and so he allows her to visit.

Live Girls! Asks "If Abraham Lincoln Was Assassinated Before Inauguration, Would the U.S. Still Exist?"

The cast of SILON (Roberta Christensen)

SILON (The Secret and Impossible League of the Noosphere) in The Baltimore Plot

Live Girls! Theater

(at Theater Off Jackson)

Through December 16, 2017

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a sighting of the first play in a SERIES! Woot! Yay! How fun is that!

Ok, so there are a few more days to catch the world premiere Live Girls! Theater production of The Secret and Impossible League of the Noosphere) in The Baltimore Plot. Once you see the play, you’ll understand the outlines of a new series of SILON plays, all somewhat science-fantastical, all somewhat based in history. Not quite steampunk, but not quite not.

Darian Lindle has cooked up an engaging story of Nikola Tesla (Sherif Amin), Lord Byron (Daniel Christensen) and his daughter Ada Lovelace (Alyssa Kay) traveling along the side of Time as this Secret  and Impossible League, and realizing that they have a mission to prevent an anomaly that could disrupt History which could possibly destroy the United States of America! How? They have to prevent Abraham Lincoln from being prematurely assassinated in 1860, before he is first officially sworn in as President.

“The Humans” is a darkly funny slice of life

The cast of The Humans (Julieta Cervantes)

The Humans

Seattle Repertory Theatre

Through December 17, 2017

Stephen Karam has filled his 2016 Tony-award-winning Best Play, The Humans, with a lot of human darkness, which then allows for some darkly funny commentary. The play, starting a national tour at Seattle Repertory Theatre, has a power-house cast (Richard Thomas, Pamela Reed, Daisy Egan, Lauren Klein, Therese Plaehn, Luis Vega) portraying an uneasy Thanksgiving family gathering.

In a somewhat stereotypical way, the family has: issues that complicate the holiday, secrets that get revealed, and sets of disappointed hopes and dreams of individuals. In less stereotypical ways, the family has: the oldest member suffering severe dementia that is dealt with in a loving way, a younger family member with gastrointestinal issues that will best resolve through surgery that results in an ileostomy – and some plain speaking about it, and a married couple as the sandwich generation who are in difficult financial straits.

Pleasing Show For All the Holidays

Cast of Holiday Inn (Mark Kitaoka)

Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn

5th Avenue Theatre

Through December 31, 2017

Ah, Lorna Luft! We are so happy you are gracing our local stage and bringing a lot of joy with you! You make Holiday Inn so much fun!

If you have never seen the 1942 oldy-but-goodie movie, Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds, you probably know nothing about the new musical on stage at the 5th Avenue Theatre except the holiday-themed name. Jim Hardy, Ted Hanover and Lila Dixon (Eric Ankrim, Matt Owen, and Taryn Darr) are a song-and-dance trio working to make it big. Jim and Lila are engaged, but they have completely different goals.

Jim wants a quiet life in the country and Lila still has stars in her eyes. Jim finds an old farmhouse in Connecticut and snaps it up, but just then, they have a great six week offer. Lila wants to go and promises to come to Connecticut after, so they part. (This is a bit different from the movie, so if you know the movie, know that the musical won’t track exactly.) We’re not surprised that Lila doesn’t ever move there.

Heartfelt Play With Song Bites Off Too Much Story

Cast members in A Civil War Christmas (Robert Wade)

A Civil War Christmas – An American Musical Celebration

Taproot Theatre

Through December 27, 2017

An endearing and hard-working cast brings to life a tapestry of stories set around Christmas Eve, 1864. Figures of note in the Civil War are present, including President Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, General Ulysses Grant of the Union Army, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army, and a whole host of then-notable and some completely unknown and fictitious characters.

The stories, chosen and interwoven by playwright Paula Vogel, are meant to acknowledge many issues present at that time of divided national interests. Slaves are being freed, North and South are still at war and full of enmity for one another, and Lincoln is under increasing threat of attack. There is much darkness, and the struggle for peace and for human connection is a difficult one to win.

An ensemble cast of 13 plays multiple roles. There are, I hear, 60 scenes, which is a lot of scenes. This is apparently less than the published version, and was cut by permission. Still, the tumultuous tales don’t blend easily and following their paths takes a lot of attention from audience members.

December Shows to Lift the Gloom

Cast of The Secret and Impossible League of the Noosphere in The Baltimore Plot (Roberta Christensen)

December brings gifts of world premieres, and options of holiday cheer and a few options that can provide some relief from holidays, if you choose.

A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration, Taproot Theatre, 12/1-30/17

It’s a bitterly cold Christmas Eve on the banks of the Potomac River where the lives of abolitionists, assassins, soldiers, enslaved and free are woven together in an American tapestry. In their darkest hour, when peace seems impossible, the promise of Christmas breaks through despair in this musical celebration of compassion and hope by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel.

www.taproottheatre.org