"Time Stands Still" at ReAct Theatre

Brian Pucheu and Maria Knox in Time Stands Still (Photo David Hsieh)

Time Stands Still

Starring Maria Knox, Brian Pucheu, John Bianchi and Mona Leach

ReAct Theatre

Through August 24, 2014

Two war correspondents, a writer and photographer, are forced by injury to come home, heal, and figure out if that life is still theirs. Donald Margulies has written an absorbing play, with interesting characters, in Time Stands Still. Of course time doesn’t stand still for anyone, but James and Sarah stand in a moment of transition. ReACT Theatre is producing this play at the Ethnic Cultural Theater in the U. District.

If casting is 75% of the effort, director David Hsieh cast well. Each of the four players here is well positioned to perform each role. While opening night turned out to be “first audience,” and therefore, the timing and rhythm of performing to others wasn’t settled in, I’m certain that each will deepen into “the pocket” in short order.

Next Week: 2014 Village Originals’ Festival of New Musicals

The 2013 developmental production of Watt?!? (starring Hugh Hastings - front) during Festival of New Musicals (photo by Sam Freeman)

The annual musical development party is almost here. Village Theatre’s robust Festival of New Musicals is a well-established, nationally and internationally known, incubator of musicals, many of which move on to more development. Often, one of the festival’s musicals makes it to Village’s next Main Stage season. Once in a while, excitingly, one makes it to Broadway! Two were next to normal and Million Dollar Quartet. That hope fuels everyone’s ambitions.

The format, now, is five draft musical “readings” (unmemorized, but rehearsed, with music stands and zero to rudimentary costuming) and one musical that gets a “developmental” production, with full staging and memorization, though only a two weekend run.

The developmental production this year had its debut last summer as a reading: The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes is created by book and lyrics writer Christopher Dimond and composer Michael Kooman. This is a delightful story that will tickle the funnybone of musical theater lovers, with some inside jokes. Why? Well, the press release says, “Howard Barnes is a perfectly average American guy; he likes baseball and grilling things. That is, until he wakes up to discover that his life has become a musical.” It’s actually not so fun to have your life be a musical and Howard has to go on a quest to find the person who knows how to escape from Musical Land.

MUST SEE IN A HURRY! Go to ACTTHEATRE.ORG for HOLD THESE TRUTHS tickets!

Joel de la Fuente in Hold These Truths (photo by Lia Chang)

Hold These Truths
starring Joel de la Fuente
ACT Theatre
through August 3, 2014

If you see this post and it is still August 1st, 2nd or 3rd, stop reading this and go get your tickets to this beautiful piece of theater, Hold These Truths, right now. I'll wait.

This powerful 90 minute solo performance is everything that makes theater unique, important, amazing. Actor-turned-playwright Jeanne Sakata was so moved by her subject that she became a writer to tell the story. She does a masterful job, with the help of consummate theater practitioners director Lisa Rothe and actor Joel de la Fuente.

It is a unique opportunity to experience this production in Gordon Hirabayashi's home neighborhood which makes it even more powerful, I would think, than anywhere else. "Opening night" included dozens of Gordon's family members in the audience, which made it that much more amazing to be in the room.

Gordon Hirabayashi was a Seattle native who refused to relocate to an internment camp and refused, again, to be drafted in the Armed Services because it meant signing a pledge that he would not swear allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. Though he was not a lawyer, and not even that great a student (by this account), somehow he figured out what few Japanese-Americans seemed ready to agitate for: the internment was anti-Constitutional and so was asking only Japanese-American potential soldiers to sign a loyalty pledge.

“Clue” on a Grand Scale! The Schmee's "Attack of the Killer Murder...of Death!"

Ashley Bagwell behind Allie Pratt in Attack of the Killer Murder of ...Death (photo D Hastings)

Attack of the Killer Murder … of Death

Written by Wayne Rawley

Theater Schmeater 

Through August 16, 2014

There is a ton to like about Theater Schmeater’s opening show in its spankin’ new space. Wayne Rawley’s Attack of the Killer Murder…of Death! is generally funny, though not hysterical every moment. What it is, though, is a great opportunity to hear spot-on dialogue from uniquely specific characters who break out of stereotype to become their own special beings.

Every single member of this large cast pulls his/her weight in solid, fully realized characters. There is so much going on on this stage that it can be hard to focus on the dialogue fully, and you do want to try to do that, because the dialogue is so smart and well-crafted. Like in real life, though, the characters don’t just stop and wait for others to speak; they are constantly interacting with each other, sometimes in hysterical ways.

The basic plot is a bunch of people on an island making a B-movie (or who knows how far down the alphabet you might go on this one). It’s a horror movie, but there are horrors when filming stops. The power keeps going out, props won’t work and then the leading diva does her death scene for the movie…and doesn’t get up!

“Seminar” at Theatre9/12 warns you “Never take a writing class!”

From left: Samantha Camp, Randall Brammer, Jeff Berryman, Michael LoSasso (photo by Michael Brunk)

Seminar

Theatre9/12 

Through August 3, 2014

Theresa Rebeck’s play, Seminar, now being presented by Theatre9/12, seems like a two hour exhortation to never take a writing seminar! You’ll meet people who are either uninteresting or socially awkward or competitive or all three. At least, the initial impression of the writers in her play, all of whom have found $5,000 in New York dollars to attend a select writing seminar, points to those personality traits.

Who killed “Jane Eyre the Musical”? Major Underscore in the Drawing Room with a Piano

Art Anderson and Jessica Spencer  in Jane Eyre at Taproot Theatre (photo by Erik Stuhaug)

Jane Eyre the Musical

Taproot Theatre

Starring Jessica Spencer, Art Anderson

Through August 16, 2014

The rather unfortunate musical, Jane Eyre, is being presented by Taproot Theatre, currently. It is a rare misfire for the company, though I can understand reasons why this company would really like the content (in a moment). An able cast still cannot succeed in making this musical more than palatable, unless your particular enjoyments include dour, unpleasant and almost hopeless circumstances.

If you know the Charlotte Bronte book, the basic story is included, though it experiences more like the greatest moments hits than an adaptation that works to include the feeling and scope of the novel. This is not inventive writing. In fact, it misses from the very beginning scene.

Jane comes out as an adult to begin telling us about her very unfortunate and difficult childhood. Here is a major opportunity to show us that she ultimately triumphs in the end (this should not be a spoiler). Here a song could be that says something like, “I thought it was hopeless, I had no reason to believe that a good life lay before me, yet here I am today to tell you that, but for the grace of God, I am happy and …” etc. Instead, the unidentified-aged Jane immediately plunges us into her childhood starting with a rousing song of, “Beat the liar out of that nine year old.”