Jeanne Paulsen leads strong cast in "Mother Courage"

Mother Courage (John Ulman)

Mother Courage and Her Children

Seattle Shakespeare Company

Through November 22, 2015

Jeanne Paulsen provides a strong and appropriately stalwart performance of the title character in Mother Courage and Her Children at Seattle Shakespeare Company. This is the most well-known of Bertolt Brecht’s plays, though seldom performed.

The character’s real name is Anna Fierling, but she’d been given the nickname Courage while dashing among fighting soldiers to sell them moldy bread. She’s to small businesses what Trump is to towers: the ultimate example, augmented by PR.

Guaranteed big laughs if you buy tickets to "Buyer and Cellar!"

Scott Drummond in Buyer and Cellar (Chris Bennion)

Buyer and Cellar

Seattle Repertory Theatre

Through November 22, 2015

Are you a Barbra Streisand aficionado? Or do you yawn when you hear her name? Or are you not quite sure what all the fuss is about? The main character, Alex, in the wonderfully funny and sweet solo show at Seattle Repertory, Buyer and Cellar, is kind of the latter. Yes, he’s Gay, but nope he really doesn’t know all that much about Babs.

Until however, he gets a call, in between looking for acting gigs, to work for a rich person living in Malibu… and takes on one of the strangest hourly jobs a person might have: working in Barbra Streisand’s basement!

This is the set up for this charming show full of belly laughs and gently poking into financial inequity and our obsession with celebrity. At the start of the show, Scott Drummond, the New York-based actor getting a work out in this complex piece by Jonathan Tolins, tells us that we need to remember that none of this actually happened. It’s all the imagination of the playwright.

"My Dear Miss Chancellor" - an evening sure to please

Sophia Franzella and Tracy Leigh in My Dear Miss Chancellor (Joe Iano Photography)

My Dear Miss Chancellor

Annex Theatre

Through November 14, 2015

There are thousands of Regency Romance novels with debonair, dashing young eligible bachelors and demure young debs daring to throw their caps at them. There are horses and carriages and gowns and corsets. Scandal might be when a young lady is seen unchaperoned and out with a young man, flouting convention and gossip. But where were the Gays and Lesbians?

There must not have been any. At least until Oscar Wilde. He was the first, right?

Not according to a spanking new play by local thespian Caitlin Gilman. My Dear Miss Chancellor dives deep into hidden Lesbian culture in the London social scene. In her vision, Lesbians daringly gather in secret societies, where they know each other and keep each other’s secrets. Where, if found out, they are certain to be drummed out of fashionable society and never heard from again.

Warm up with musicals for November 2015 Theater

Sgt. Rigsby - aka Scot Augustson (Tiffany Diamond)

What is it about November? We’ve got four big musicals and a musical sketch review, all opening this month! Musical lovers, you’re going to be in hog heaven, as they say! My Fair Lady, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, (world premiere) Come From Away, and The Sound of Music all get major productions. Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales return with a holiday skewering. 

There is a new subversive puppet extravaganza from Sgt. Rigsby & His Amazing Silhouettes. And Theater Schmeater gives us another installment of Twilight Zone – Live!

My Fair Lady (Mark Kitaoka)

My Fair Lady, Village Theatre, Issaquah: 11/5/15-1/3/16, Everett: 1/8-31/16

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, the story explores societal prejudices towards class and gender through the tale of lowly Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Allison Standley) and her unlikely run-in with linguistics teacher Henry Higgins (Mark Anders), who embarks on an experiment to transform Eliza into a proper lady.

http://www.villagetheatre.org/My-Fair-Lady.php

The Ballad of Karla Fox, Printer's Devil Theater (at Theatre Off Jackson), 11/5-21/15

A new Scot Augustson and Sgt. Rigsby & His Amazing Silhouettes puppet world premiere, performed with radio show-style voices supplied by live actors, original live music, and a menagerie of two-dimensional puppets, the story follows the adventures of orphan Karla Fox, inspired by classic thrillers such as Gaslight and Rebecca. After her parents die in a suspicious accident (involving a drunken bulldog driving a moving van full of pianos), Karla Fox goes to live with her strange, stern Aunt Sadie. But soon Aunt Sadie’s particular brand of crazy gets too real and Karla is forced to flee in the night for her very life. (Not For Children)

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2298746

Post-apocalypticly, the only theater that "matters" is The Simpsons?

The cast of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play (Chris Bennion)

Mr. Burns, a post-electric play

ACT Theatre

Through November 15, 2015

Random audience member quote: "This is either genius or a complete mess, I can’t decide." That’s an intermission utterance overheard at ACT Theatre’s performance of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play (by Anne Washburn). By the end of the evening, that same audience member decided. It was a mess.

I don’t disagree with him. I don’t know what the play looks like on paper, and maybe there is some clarity that arises from the words laid out neatly on the page. What the experience is is not clear, and not even coherent within the world it creates. Playwrights often create worlds that don’t exist in reality, and when they do so, that world must cohere inside itself, at minimum. This one doesn’t feel coherent, in that way.

Rave Review of Water By The Spoonful

Jany Bacallao and Yesenia Iglesias in Water by the Spoonful (Elise Swanson)

Water by the Spoonful

Theatre22

(at West of Lenin)

Through November 14, 2015

From the moment Water by the Spoonful begins, you are plunged into a turbulent story of deep family ties and resentments, and the challenges of lives lived in poverty and struggle. Who needs time for exposition? Let’s get this show on the road! The play, a 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner by Quiera Alegria Hudes, is one of the best scripts to hit our region’s stages in quite a while!

Directed by Julie Beckman, the tight 7-member cast has great support from a deceptively simple set by Montana Tippett, sound designer Kyle Thompson and lighting designer Tristan Roberson. In a moment, far into the 2 ¼ hour production, where a story is told that brings the title to life, water is poured from a spoon, and a hidden aspect of the set is revealed. It gave me goosebumps, it was so good.

Elliot Ortiz (Jany (Hah-nee) Bacallao), a troubled ex-Marine, and musicologist cousin Yazmin (Yesenia Iglesias) have an ailing aunt who dies. She is one of those saintly women who helps so many others that her absence is a blow to more than just immediate family. For Elliott and Yaz, it is that moment they must grow totally up and begin to take on the adult responsibilities, like heading the family as elders.