Entrancing "Dick Whittington" is perfect family fun for the holidays

Mike Spee and Fawn Ledesma in Dick Whittington and His Cat (Chris Bennion)

Dick Whittington and His Cat

Seattle Children’s Theatre

Through December 21, 2014

The world premiere musical at Seattle Children’s Theatre, Dick Whittington and His Cat, is the perfect all-family holiday show this season! At a fast-paced hour and a half (including intermission), this magical adventure will entrance children as small as three and keep their parents, aunts, uncles and grands happy to be there.

Book and lyrics are by Jeff Church, currently producing artistic director at The Coterie Theater in Kansas City, and local multi-talented composer Richard Gray. The score is filled with ornate references to Irish drinking songs that augment the British flavor of the script. The theme focuses on giving a child a chance, since Dick Whittington starts life as an orphan and is dependent on people believing he can be trusted.

The hard-working cast of nine becomes travelling vagabonds, Londoners, sailors, foreign court dignitaries, pirates, and more. A fun activity might be to see if you can spot the single actor as he or she moves through as many as seven or more different characters.

Before "Rent" there was "Tick, Tick...Boom!" SecondStory Rep offers a great production, but hurry.

Faith Howes, Adam Minton, and Ryan Lile in Tick, Tick...Boom! (Michael Brunk)

Tick Tick … Boom!

SecondStory Repertory 

Through November 22, 2014

In a terrific introduction to three newer-to-Seattle-stages musical theater performers, SecondStory Repertory is presenting Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! This musical preceded Larson’s blockbuster hit, Rent, so it is a historical curiosity, and an opportunity to hear Larson’s development as a musical writer. It’s also a precursor to more “rock” musicals.

The story focuses on Jon (Adam Minton) who is turning 30 in New York City in 1990 and is despairing of actually writing the Great American Musical and is on the cusp of thinking he maybe should just give it up. It is autobiographical and references an even earlier musical that Larson wrote called Superbia that is about to be presented as a workshop production. Nascent musicals often move from workshops to developments, if producers come to and like the workshop. A lot is hanging in the balance.

Jon’s current girlfriend, Susan (Faith Howes), is a dancer who wants to settle down and have a family and, more importantly, move away. Jon’s best friend is Michael (Ryan Lile), who has already left acting for a corporate job, enjoying the money and stability. So, Jon is surrounded by people who have changed their goals, and maybe he’s supposed to as well. After all, he survives by waiting tables.

Absurdist Play Starts Funny Ends Dark

Laurie Jerger and K. Brian Neel in I Never Betrayed the Revolution (Truman Buffett)

I Never Betrayed the Revolution

West of Lenin

Through November 23, 2014

AJ Epstein directs a world premiere play that is absurd and deceptively simple. Playwright Christopher Danowski, a longtime associate of Epstein’s, writes short, simple, slightly humorous (at first) scenes of a pan-Slavic citizenry restive and oppressed by its government in I Never Betrayed the Revolution. We’re (overly) helped by scenic descriptor cards presented by a dour-faced, eyes black-lined, Kate Kraay, who exemplifies the severity of their mood. While the play could use more polishing, it has something important to say about governing.

Chris Dietz is a political poet, Letkov, whose subversive writing causes his disappearance from his love, Daleka (Laurie Jerger). She and Henryka (Susanna Burney) and Josef (Matt Aquayo), Alina (Ty Bonneville) and Januscz (Andy Buffelen) keep the faith and long for a world that is free. They want food, security, and the ability to have or at least grow what they need. Isn’t that what we all want, essentially?

K. Brian Neel is General Chuchelow, played as a haphazard, Funky-Chicken-dancing, crazy administrator who loves his desk, but is under the power of unseen governors. He exemplifies the Peter-Principle-executive (rising to his level of incompetence), easily deposed and just as easily, eventually returned to power.

Blood Countess: Sophisticated, bloody fun (Annex)

Terri Weagant and Sarah Winsor in Blood Countess (Dangerpants Photography)

Blood Countess

Annex Theatre

Through November 22, 2014

A real live flesh-eating noblewoman is the subject of Kelleen Conway Blanchard’s latest production at Annex Theatre. Blood Countess is a poetic and evocative telling of Elizabeth Bathory’s life, from her childhood, marriage to a fellow sadist, up to her final captivity and end.

Blanchard wouldn’t write just any kind of biography, though. She picks key moments in a life to dramatize with effective dialogue and unique characterizations. Mary Murfin Bayley as the Mother is venal, crazy and abusive…Apple meet Tree.

Terri Weagant in the title role displays a full range of emotions and facially transmits all kinds of information through her expressions: dislike, bordering on hate for her mother, longing to be accepted for herself, developing awareness of her own powers and desires, and progressing into a raging, crazy and megalomaniacal fully grown woman.

Girls do love their horses! Playing off stereotype to great advantage...

Sascha Streckel and Horse Girls (Dangerpants Photography)

Horse Girls
Annex Theatre
through November 19, 2014

Young girls fall in love with horses. That is so ubiquitous it's almost more than a stereotype. Do young boys do the same? Not being one, I just don't know, but having three younger brothers who did not seem to be gaga about horses, while I was, my small sampling indicates, "no." Not that boys dislike horses, but girls seem to obsess about them.

This stereotype is on full display with Horse Girls by Jenny Rachel Weiner at Annex Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A large cast (for a one-bedroom show) of seven young women takes the reins and gallops away with the script. (I just can't not do this.)

Review: The Case of the Disappearing Laughter ("Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" at ACT Theatre)

Pamela Reed, R. Hamilton Wright and Marianne Owen (Chris Bennion)

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

ACT Theatre

Through November 16, 2014

The reviews from New York productions of Christopher Durang’s new play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike pretty universally call it funny and even more. “Few Chekhov-inspired shows make you laugh out loud, and repeatedly at that. In fact there’s probably just one such rare bird on the planet,” says the New York Post.

So, if the current production of Durang’s play at ACT Theatre is not so funny, even with a cast one might expect truly humorous acting from, what might be the problem? This production has a few laughs in it, from time to time, but one does not experience an audience as the New York Times did … “The theater erupts in booming gusts of laughter that practically shake the seats.” Your faithful reviewer did not see any kind of indication of that in the slightest at ACT Theatre for the entire evening.