Village Theatre’s "In the Heights" hits the heights for dancing and excitement

(from top left in circle)
Naomi Morgan, Iris Elton, Jennifer Paz and Tanesha Rass in In the Heights (Mark Kitaoka)

In the Heights

Village Theatre

Issaquah: through October 26, 2014

Everett: October 31 – November 23, 2014

(printed in Seattle Gay News)

Did you know that In the Heights is a dance musical?! It is! It’s also a rap musical, and a hip hop musical, and a heartwarming story of the residents of Washington Heights, New York City, bonding through song, and an electrical blackout.

Did you know that the cast of Village Theatre’s production of In the Heights is insanely good? It is! Village has brought back some ex-Seattle residents along with a few guest visitors that ratchet up the talent on stage to unbelievable…heights. (Yup, I said it.)

This musical is so much fun. The music reflects the Latin influences of Washington Heights and even though people are struggling and low-income, they still have self-esteem and drive and dreams of making it. We meet corner-store proprietor Usnavi, who wants to leave the Heights and open a store in the Dominican Republic, home of his deceased parents. In the meantime, he takes care of his father’s store and his cousin, Sonny, and his adopted grandmother nearby.

The other story is about Nina, the smart girl who managed to get a scholarship to Stanford University, but has had to drop out after working two jobs and losing the scholarship due to dropping grades. Her family owns a car transportation service and a young worker, Benny, consoles her about having to disappoint her parents.

15 plus companies help create city-wide Beckett Fest - Best known play "Waiting for Godot"

Darragh Kennan and Todd Jefferson Moore in Waiting for Godot (John Ulman)

Waiting for Godot
Seattle Shakespeare Company
(At ACT Theatre's Central Heating Lab)
Through September 21

From the brains of George Mount, artistic director of Seattle Shakespeare Company, and then A.J. Epstein proprietor of West of Lenin and a few other theater practitioners, sometime back in 2013 or 2014, there came a decision to have a citywide festival celebrating Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Having thus decreed it, they bustled about making it so with fundraising and recruiting other companies to choose pieces of Beckett's writings and create productions. There are over 15 companies participating in the festival!

Beckett (1906-1989) was a practitioner of the "theater of the absurd" and prized minimalism. He grew to adulthood in Dublin and then taught in France and spent most of his life between the two countries. He often wrote in French and then made his own translations.

The festival has a website: www.seattlebeckettfest.org that includes a list of productions and companies and links to help you find them and buy tickets. There is also a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/seattlebeckettfest.

Life=Play and other events
A few events have already taken place. West of Lenin produced an evening of four short pieces, entitled Life=Play. Act Without Words, Part 1 starred Ray Tagavilla in a kind of humorous mime play where a man tumbles onto stage and the stage itself directs him to try to grab a vial of water hung from the ceiling, and mysteriously provides boxes for him to climb on to reach the vial. Ultimately, though, the vial is pulled too high to reach.

Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” demonstrates the personal devastation of many dictatorships

Fernando Luna (front), Frank Lawler and Tonya Andrews in Death and the Maiden (Michael Brunk)

There is another September 11^th, one we have little affinity for, but one that cements that particular date in history to particularly important historic activities, 1973: the Chilean coup of democratically-elected President Salvadore Allende by General Pinochet. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was a U.S.-backed coup. Pinochet’s dictatorship included 17 years of tortures and human rights abuses.

Argentina has had a long series of dictators and coup attempts, often followed by disappearances and deaths of dissidents, students, journalists, and many other “normal” citizens, numbered in the tens of thousands. Ariel Dorfman, playwright and native-Argentinian, has written a play about the results of torture set in a South American country that is unnamed.

Death and the Maiden  is being produced by Latino Theatre Projects through September 28^th. Tickets here (at the Ballard Underground).

Dorfman has said, “Twenty years ago, when Death and the Maiden, the play that tells this story, opened in London at the Royal Court Upstairs, the country where that woman, Paulina, awaited a constantly delayed justice, was my own Chile or the Argentina where I was born. Or South Africa. Or Hungary. Or China…. Today, as the same play is revived in London's West End, its main drama is echoed in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Iraq, Thailand, Zimbabwe and now Libya.”

The message of this searing drama is that it happened, and happens, everywhere, and for those who go through the abductions and tortures, rapes and beatings, if they do not die, they have little to no recourse for justice or reconciliation. Dorfman’s play uses the small to write large.

Death and the Maiden  focuses on a mid-level political appointee to a new government (Gerardo Escobar – Frank Lawler) and his wife. Paulina (Tonya Andrews) has become a recluse, protected by Gerardo from too much agitation. Gerardo has been offered a prestigious appointment to a government taking over from a recent dictatorship. Trust in the government is close to non-existent, but Gerardo would be investigating crimes of the dictatorship with an eye toward justice and reconciliation.

Did she? Sound Theatre's production leaves it up to you.

Caitlin Frances and Peggy Gannon in Blood Relations (Ken Holmes)

Blood Relations

Sound Theatre Company

Through September 27, 2014

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” That rhyme and variations has been around since shortly after the murders of the parents of a real Lizzie Borden in 1892. But Ms. Borden was acquitted in a trial. Shouldn’t that be the end of the story?

Apparently not, because there are whole scholarly books out on the subject and Harvard Law School has tried her again and again, only to have their juries acquit her, too. Plays have been written and recently a rock musical was presented by Village Theatre at their summer festival.

Another play, Blood Relations, is now on stage by SoundTheatre Company at the black box stage behind Cornish Playhouse. Written by Sharon Pollock, a Canadian playwright I had not heard of, this play is content to not quite answer the question, either.

Part 2 of "Angels of America" more lively than Part 1

Timothy McCuen Piggee and Adam Standley in Angels in America (Chris Bennion)

Angels in America
Intiman Theatre
through September 21, 2014

(as printed in Seattle Gay News)

Perestroika is a Russian word for 'restructuring.' In Part 2 of Angels in America, it is a harbinger of change to come. In large and small ways, the characters in the play and the society in which they live are restructuring. 

One of the ways politics in the 1980s and '90s were restructuring was due, at least in part, to the activism that AIDS forced on the LGBT population. Gay people had to become vocal or die. President Reagan had to be forced to acknowledge the epidemic and to put financial resources to work to combat it. While Angels is focused on the late 1980s, we sit in 2014 in a very different landscape, where same-sex marriage is very close to becoming the law of the entire United States. Laws are very much restructured. 

Angels in America is a seminal play in the documentation of the AIDS crisis in the mid '80s. It reminds us how terribly painful AIDS was at first, before the possibility of 'managing' the disease. It reminds us how stigmatizing AIDS was as America focused on homosexuality and not the disease. 

Although Part 2 is actually longer in length, it moves faster. But it would be hard to imagine making the marathon that Intiman is encouraging, seeing Part 1 in the afternoon and then Part 2 after a dinner break! That is six and a half hours of just performance, plus breaks. (Those actors are working hard!) 

5th Ave's " A Chorus Line" a singular sensation

The company of A Chorus Line (Mark Kitaoka)

A Chorus Line
The 5th Avenue Theatre
through September 28, 2014

A Chorus Line opened at the 5th Avenue Theatre last night with a powerhouse cast, a brilliant orchestra, and an overall terrific presentation. They have taken the time and effort to secure the "bible" of the Michael Bennett original choreography, as lovingly translated through original cast member Kerry Casserly. So, it all feels very "original."

If you've never seen the show, this is a great time to go see it on stage. You can feel the energy from the very beginning, with all the dance hopefuls massed on stage, going through their choreographic auditions and singing, "I Hope I Get It." If you have a young person who aspires to a Broadway career, this is a very instructive musical, even though it's supposed to be 1975. If you think much has changed in the audition process, you'd be very mistaken.

Each of the auditioners gets to tell a story, some of which become songs. The original musical was even developed with the help of real actors, a number of whom became originators of their roles on Broadway.