Stay outa the rain with March 2017 Theater Openings

Scott Shoemaker as Ms. Pak-Man (Doug McLaughlin)

Seattle Fringe Festival has changed its annual timing to March and has a robust line-up that may cause you to binge on short shows like candy! Other offerings include glimpses into inner city friendships, the struggle of a deaf boy in a hearing world, musical delights, and local writing. Get out your calendars. It’s time to schedule March plays!

Milk Like Sugar, ArtsWest, 3/2-25/17

On Annie's sixteenth birthday, her friends have decided to help her celebrate with a brand new tattoo. While there, one offhandedly reveals she’s pregnant. This humorous yet probing script peers into teens, friendships, inner city unhappiness, and choices that can last a lifetime.

www.artswest.org

Ms. Pak-Man: On My Last Heart!, Scott Shoemaker, 3/2-4/17 and 3/9-11/17 (at Rebar)

This original production is the third installment of the successful Ms. Pak-Man series. Watch this world-renowned video game superstar of the 1980s pop power pills while she shares scandalous songs and stories about her life and loves—glitches and all. She sings! She dances! She drinks! She might black out! There’s a chance she won’t remember the show, but you will!

http://www.strangertickets.com/events/40249902/ms-pak-man-on-my-last-heart

Valentine's plus Poetry = Lovers' Play

Alyssa Kay and Katherine Jett in When Love Speaks (John Ulman)

When Love Speaks

Thalia’s Umbrella

(at Taproot Theatre)

Through February 25, 2017

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" Well? Should I? Don’t I get an answer? If you have ever read any poetry and felt like maybe someone should be there answering “Yes” or “No,” then you are thinking like David Wright. Wright was reading a lot of poetry and decided that some of it, particularly the love poetry, sounded like it should be conversations and scenes. So, he put dozens of poets together in piles of potential dialogue, with a large portion of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, and made a lovers’ play.

First presented in 1992 by Seattle Shakespeare Company, When Love Speaks is being remounted in a pleasant and amusing fashion by Thalia’s Umbrella at Taproot Theatre’s small new space. Four talented actors and a cute Dionysian helper become visitors to an island resort – the kind where love might be born, but lust is also sometimes disguised as love.

Christine Marie Brown and Terry Edward Moore start out by appearing as the most in-love couple ever, only to have Moore suddenly become quite the temporary lover. Katherine Jett, the most shy and abashed and funny, is perhaps hopelessly in love with Alyssa Kay, who doesn’t mind, but seems to be looking for someone a little assertive.

Wacky and ominous, "Scary Mary's" vigorous production is well worth visiting

Corinne Magin as Scary Mary (Joe Iano)

Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine

Annex Theatre

Through March 4, 2017

A vigorous, inventive and visually stimulating show has just opened at Annex Theatre. Director Eddie DeHais and their team of enthusiastic actors and technicians are pulling out all the stops they can for Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine, a new play by Amy Escobar.

A relatively large cast of eleven never seems to overpower the small stage, in part due to expert positioning by DeHais. The nightmares referred to are created by an ensemble of five (Kai Curtis, Emily Pike, Kelly Johnson, Sarah Winsor and Raymond Williams) who wield a variety of puppets created by expert puppeteers Ben Burris and Zane Exactly. They are a series of scares that might haunt any of us, and are representative of those felt by people struggling with depression.

It’s not the Marx Brothers, but "Room Service" is still a fun farce

The cast of Room Service (Erik Stuhaug)

Room Service

Taproot Theatre

Through March 4, 2017

If you know who the Marx Brothers were, you might also know the movie they made called Room Service. It was based on a 1937 Broadway play and then they put their own improvisational, wacky spin on it.

Room Service is a farce. Taproot director Karen Lund is one of the best directors in town for farces in particular. She has a very clear sense of comic timing. Farce is not easy to get right. The main joy in farces is the quick movements of people coming in and going out of doors! That’s right, missing each other by parts of seconds! That is the height of silliness in farces. 

The Seagull Project's "The Cherry Orchard" reflects turmoil in society

The cast of The Cherry Orchard (Chris Bennion)

The Cherry Orchard

The Seagull Project

(at ACT Theatre)

Through February 19, 2017

Chekhov’s best-known play, The Cherry Orchard, mixes up all the levels of Russian society inside the failing estate of the Gayevs. Servants consort with their bosses in previously unheard-of cheekiness. Businessmen like Lopakhin are more wealthy than the aristocracy, yet have risen from progenitors who were serfs. Aristocracy can’t raise money, yet haven’t figured out their way of life is unsustainable. Life in Russia is in economic turmoil that results in creating a new society that few can reckon with!

The production of this play by The Seagull Project is more suited to these times, with an administration that seems in love with Russia, and has created the beginnings of what could be unknown turmoil, than anyone might have predicted when they began planning the production! There are many pleasing aspects to the play, with some wonderful actors working at the top of their game. There is also a directing choice that tilts the production over in its insistence.

Madame Ranevskaya (Julie Briskman) is returning to her indebted estate after living in Paris. She returns penniless, having no skill of understanding or keeping track of money. Her brother, Gayev (Peter Crook), is having no luck saving the estate, either, and both of them are waiting for a rich aunt to send money, though she doesn’t like them very much.

Powerful women play historical kings at Seattle Shakespeare Co.

Some of the cast of Bring Down the House (John Ulman)

Bring Down the House

Seattle Shakespeare Company

Through March 12, 2017

A great gathering of women is happening in the Armory Theatre where Seattle Shakespeare Company has joined with upstart crow collective to present a massive two-part Shakespearian epic! Why is it a gathering of women? Because all the actors in this play are women, most playing male roles!

Bring Down the House is actually an adaptation of Shakespeare’s trilogy about Henry VI (Henry VI, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). It’s created in two parts which you can choose to see either separately or both in one day. Throne of Treachery opened last week and Crusade of Chaos opens Friday, February 3. Director Rosa Joshi and upstart member Kate Wisniewski (who plays Queen Margaret) pared down these three long plays into a fairly nimble two-parter which speeds along at a break-neck pace.

While the plays are “historical,” they are not necessarily always accurate, and clearly depend on theatricalities and tensions. Given that, it is still a good way to learn about the period of The War of the Roses (1455-87), a period of turmoil over who deserved the English crown.