Seattle’s Best Theater of 2018!

The City of London stage floor for Parliament Square  with scenic painter Annie Duffiance 
(Justin Duffiance)

The "macrame'd" backdrop for Parliament Square (Dangerpants Photography) 

It’s time to look back at 2018 and take note of some of the great theatrical presentations that took place on Seattle-area stages! As usual, there was a lot of fantastic theater to be seen and to experience! Here’s my list of notable and excellent productions, as I saw them. 

I need to acknowledge the excellent season that ArtsWest had in 2018 as Artistic Director Mathew Wright continues to elevate their overall presentations, both in terms of choices of scripts and in terms of technical support! This year, I saw most of their productions, including An Octoroon, Hir, Peerless, Skeleton Crew, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Every one of these shows is also listed in one or another of the categories below! Keep cranking it out, folks. I hope others are making plans to get subscriptions!

Top Honors:

Excellent stage productions usually include all the components of a piece, in terms of great technical supports, and a great script, and great performances by the actors. Here are some of those excellently well-done shows: Hand to God at Seattle Public Theatre was a gutsy and outrageous show. Hir, co-produced by ArtsWest and IntimanTheatre, was similarly gutsy and timely in terms of the focus, in part, on transgender youth. ASL Midsummer Night’s Dream by Sound Theatre Company was a massive endeavor by a pretty tiny company to include deaf audiences and actors in a seminal Shakespearean experience. Peerless at ArtsWest had a subject matter that I’m extremely tired of personally – high school angst, but it was such a high level of effort with a kick-ass ensemble and a funny-smart script that I was won over. Skeleton Crew, another of the terrific ArtsWest productions, highlighted people that don’t often get plays written about: factory workers and union members, and focused on corporate profit-taking at the expense of their personnel. Native Gardens by Intiman Theatre was a funny skewering of racial stereotypes and a bandying about of tropes about “the Man” and border walls and all manner of topical immigration issues. Ironbound at Seattle Public Theater was a taut, edgy character study in minimalism.

January Theater Shows Variety

The cast of Bohemia (John Cornicello)

The list of productions opening in January is shorter this year than most, but there are a lot of very interesting choices to see on our local stages. It’s a mix of old (I Do, I Do and Arsenic and Old Lace) and new (B and Last of the Boys). Get your calendars out and start getting those tickets!

14/48: The World’s Quickest Theater Festival, The 14/48 Projects and ACTLab, 1/4-5, 11-12/19

January 2019 provides The 14/48 Projects another opportunity to bring its unique brand of theatre-making challenge. The rules: 14 world-premiere plays written, cast, designed, directed, scored, rehearsed, and performed in 48 hours. That same process is repeated for a second weekend! You never EVER know what you’ll get, which is part of the fun!www.the1448projects.org

All’s Well That Ends Well, Seattle Shakespeare Company, 1/8/19-2/3/19 (at Center Theatre)

Smart and unwavering, Helena has pinned her heart to Bertram. He wants nothing to do with her and runs off to the wars for adventure and to escape his newly-arranged marriage. Helena follows him. Overcoming obstacles and aided by a fantastic collection of comical characters, the two begin separate journeys towards each other, both learning about the paradox of holding love tight as well as letting go.

www.seattleshakespeare.org

The Dina Martina Christmas Show Arrives at ACT Theatre

Dina Martina (courtesy Dina Martina)

The Dina Martina Christmas Show

ACT Theatre

Through December 24, 2018

Dina Martina is celebrating her 20^th year of producing a Christmas extravaganza with her now-world-wide known persona. Off-stage, Martina-creator Grady West is likely one of those quiet types that doesn’t attract a great deal of public notice when sipping coffee in a shop somewhere. But Dina enters with panache and splash and attempts to win the audience over with a combination of bad pronunciations, off-key singing, and generally groan-worthy jokes. And that is all on purpose.

For the last bunch of years, her show has been a complete sell-out in the squished and run-down performance space at Seedle’s (Dina’s way of saying Seattle) beloved ReBar. It’s become a holiday tradition to pack into those hard folding chairs, grab a bunch of drinks and let Dina mash up her stories and forget lyrics to songs.

This year, it’s her first celebration at ACT Theatre, where her costumes have gotten even better, and the set is quite a real set, with faux paintings, a real movie screen for segments of moving pictures, and room for a grand piano for the grand Chris Jeffries, Dina’s “adult prodigy” musical accompanist, to play.

The Heart of “My Ántonia” Beats in the Heartland

Tim Gouran and Nabilah Ahmen in My Antonia (John Ulman)

My Ántonia

Book-It Repertory Theatre

Through December 30, 2018

Willa Cather’s best-known novel is My Ántonia. She wrote movingly about the vast heartland of the United States plains and the joys and hardships of living in the sparsely populated and wild-weathered countryside. She wrote in a kind of spare, nature-loving way about the people who lived there and their ways of thinking and thriving.

Annie Lareau loved the book and adapted it for first production with Book-It Repertory Theatre back in 2008. It won a lot of critical praise and recognition at that time and Book-It decided to bring it back this year, with Lareau directing.

Lareau writes in the program that she long thought of the story about making a “home” for oneself and, this year, realized the connection to the current issues around immigration and integration that are so politically potent. This is what comes across most strongly in the production, this year. It is so palpably about the difficulties of leaving one’s homeland to make a new life in a new and strange land.

“Veils” – One of the Best Plays of 2018

Alaji and Fathiya Ritter in Veils (Joe Iano)

Veils

Macha Theatre Works

(at West of Lenin)

Through December 16, 2018

You can tell that Macha’s production of Tom Coash’s play, Veils, was made with love. They took great care to cast two talented women actors who are also of appropriate ethnic background to the characters (Arab or Muslim) – Alaji and Fathiya Ritter, and hired a newly transplanted-from-California Arab director, Lia Sima Fakhouri.  

They added set designer Parmida Ziaei, who created a dorm room that seamlessly transformed into a hotel room, fun college-age appropriate costuming by Sadiqua Iman, and solid sound design by Johanna Melamed and lighting by Zanna King. Projections are important in this production and were perfected by Suzi Tucker – one of the talented projection-creators in town, in case you weren’t aware.

“Annie” Gets It Done!

Cynthia Jones as Miss Hannigan (Tracy Martin)

Annie

The 5th Avenue Theatre

Through December 30, 2018

Annie, the musical, may be 40 plus years old, but since it started life as a “period piece,” set in 1933, it feels as fresh as the day it was written. Sure, it elevates an oligarch to hero status, though he only “saves” one orphan on Christmas, but if you look past that part to the simple story of people finding those who need them, it’s warmly inviting and a bit tear-inducing.

Part of the huge success of Annie has been the music. It contains iconic songs that people have grown up with for so many years now that the whole audience can practically break out singing with the cast. Song titles you would recognize include: Tomorrow, Hard Knock Life, Maybe, N.Y.C. and Easy Street!

The story, based on a long-running cartoon strip, Little Orphan Annie, focuses on a sturdy 11-year-old girl in an orphanage who was dropped off at birth with a letter from her parents saying they would be back to pick her up. Annie (played by Faith Young the night reviewed, who nails the sturdiness and has solid vocals) longs for her parents to come back, but weathers the antics of the horrid Ms. Hannigan (a comedy-turn-gem by Cynthia Jones) who takes care of the orphanage.