"Third" demonstrates Wasserstein's power to ignite, illuminate, challenge

Kate Witt and Marti Mukhalian in Third (photo Michael Brunk)

Third

ArtsWest

Through March 22

Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein died far too early (of cancer when she was 55 years old). Third was her last play, which played Off-Broadway in 2005, just before her death. It is now performing at ArtsWest with a tight cast of five, directed by actor/director Peggy Gannon.

Wasserstein focused resolutely, sometimes, on women’s issues and women’s voices, as she dissected and illuminated specific time periods and encompassed women’s rise to bang against the glass ceilings and find their voices. However, she did not neglect the classics, and in Third, her theme is King Lear.

Laurie Jameson (a vigorous, take-charge, and accomplished Marty Mukhalian) is at the peak of her career, having helped generate change and awareness of women’s issues and political power at a select, small Eastern university. She lectures on literature from a feminist perspective. As the play opens, Professor Jameson lectures the audience on King Lear.

A young man, Woodson Bull III (a convincing, earnest Mark Tyler Miller), presents a paper with his analysis of Lear. However, he is at the school as a wrestler, with dreams of becoming a sports agent. Given his name, legacy number (“the Third”), “jock” status, and white male privilege, Jameson profiles him and decides he doesn’t have the intellect or capacity to have written the analysis himself and accuses him of plagiarism.

The play can be looked at as a metaphor for Shakespeare’s King Lear, itself. Professor Jameson loses everything she worked for after mistaking Third’s honest opinion as stolen analysis, just as King Lear loses everything after rejecting his honest daughter’s expression of love.

 It can also be viewed as what happens when an outsider struggles so long and hard to become an insider that she forgets to be open to another’s viewpoint. So she becomes just exactly like those she supplanted in the first place, who judged her, as a woman, insufficiently intelligent or accomplished to be the professor she aspired to be at the beginning of her career.

Jameson’s portrayal is softened, enhanced, and explained by interactions with three key people: her daughter Emily (Kacey Shiflet), her dementia-increasing father Jack (Bill Higham), and her colleague Nancy (Kate Witt), who is battling cancer. Each of these strong performances and wonderful scene dialogues enlarge who Jameson can be, if she’d let herself, with Third. As we witness her compassion, her trials as a daughter, her difficulties as a mother of a grown child and a friend to a suffering colleague, we can see what she could offer Third as a mentor and teacher, and the tragic blinds she willfully keeps on her eyes.

This may sound like a tragedy, ala King Lear, but it’s far from that! It’s an absorbing, thoughtful play with loads of ideas and ways of examining what Wasserstein is saying. There are funny moments, wry moments, and especially heart-breaking moments where Mukhalian and Higham can move you to tears.

Gannon’s vision of Third is spare. Burton Yuen’s set design has a cloud-strewn backdrop and stately windows hung from the ceiling, implying the grandeur of the college. Costuming by Anastasia Armes is simple, yet effective. Lighting by Tristan Roberson is muted and subtle. Sound design and song choices root the play in 2003 (by Johanna Melamed). The simplicity sets of the complex clash of ideas nicely.

It’s a terrific opportunity to have a Wasserstein play on Seattle stage again. Third proves her power to ignite controversy, discussion, changing perspectives, and even an opportunity to see where feminism might have gone off the rails for some people.

For more information, go to www.artswest.org or call 206-938-0339. 

Megan Hilty Comes ‘Home’ to Sing Songs of Stephen Schwartz with SMC

Megan Hilty (courtesy Flying House)

The beautiful musical star, Megan Hilty, locally-grown talent and now gaining increasing fame in television (SMASH, Sean Saves the World) and movies (Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return), is performing with our own Seattle Men’s Chorus for the second time. Hilty and the SMC will do a concert at McCaw Hall entirely focused on the great composer/writer Stephen Schwartz and his songs.

Hilty has been incredibly busy, lately, even though her latest network television show (Sean Saves the World) has been cancelled. She put out her first album, It Happens All the Time. She’s doing the voiceover for the China Princess in Legends of Oz (the movie site says: “the diminutive high ruler of China County, the most eligible bachelorette in all the land, and nowhere near as fragile as you might think”). She joined the second season of what looks like a hilarious web series: It Could Be Worse.

ICBW (the website says) “stars SMASH alum Wesley Taylor (Bobby, Seasons 1 and 2) as Jacob, a Broadway wannabe looking to make it big in a New York minute. Although he was cast in his first big Broadway show, he's often stuck at home tending to a needy long-term boyfriend, or is held back by his overbearing parents.”

And she got married to Brian Gallagher in November. Now, she and Brian are touring in performances together. Megan told SGN, in a phone interview, “It’s so great that we can travel together. He sings and plays guitar and he’s a dreamboat!”

Megan is on record as wanting to “just keep working.” She’s willing to do any kind of performance that comes along, from stage to television to movies to recording studio. She has said she got tired of “workshops and hearing, ‘We need a star,’ (before she became one). I can cry or (work to become) the person they’re going to hire. I’m lucky someone believed in me and took a chance.” Her code for longevity is: diversify.

(If you’d like to see an adorable video clip of Megan and her new husband, go here: http://better.tv/view/celebrities-celebrities2-megan-hilty-brought-her-husband-brian-gallagher-to-the-better-show-while-on-their-honeymoon)

I asked Megan to take us a little behind the scenes for the big, heart-shocking moment of transition when she walked on to the Broadway stage, after graduating college and becoming the stand-by for Glinda on Broadway in Wicked. The musical had opened just nine months before, and Glinda had been taken over by Jennifer Laura Thompson from originator, Kristin Chenoweth. Megan was cast as stand-by, which meant that she had to be there every performance in case she had to go on.

However, Megan describes that it also meant that she had only ever rehearsed with a stage manager saying lines to her, and had never even rehearsed in costume! Megan says, “Stand-by, you’re just in your dressing room until an emergency happens. It’s used for major roles that you need that extra insurance on. A lot of times Elphabas would go on in the middle of the first act. Whoever is playing Elphaba would realize that she couldn’t make it through (second act’s song) Defying Gravity and they would start getting the standby ready. The person playing the role would walk off stage in a scene and the standby would walk on in the next scene… Then during intermission, they would announce the casting change.”

So, that day, Megan had about two hours’ notice. I imagined that she would have been terrified. “I’m always nervous about everything,” Megan says. “I’m always afraid someone is going to figure out I’m not supposed to be there. They’ll find me out. But, I think something’s wrong if you’re not nervous. You have to not let nerves be in your way. You have to use them to your advantage. It keeps you honest, on your toes, and motivated to do the best you can to prove you really belong there.”

Megan describes, “Can you imagine? I made my Broadway debut opposite Idina Menzel having never done the show with other people before! It was a whole lot of new experiences at once. There were times during the show – there’s a rehearsal study in the Gershwin (Theatre) at the top of the building and me and the other standby would go rehearse together so no one would hear us and we’d do the scenes together, but that was about all I had before going on my first time.

“They called me a couple of hours before the show saying Jennifer had called out. Idina walked in the dressing room and asked if I wanted to go over anything. I was so terrified. She said, ‘Let’s just go out and make this show our own. Let’s have fun.’ She could have been particular about where I should stand or what I should do, but she wasn’t like that. She was really wonderful. It totally put me at ease and I was able to have fun. I don’t really remember much about that night, but I was able to relax a little bit.”

Megan describes how people in New York, in particular, feel very comfortable walking up to her on the street to talk about her role as Ivy in SMASH. “People don’t really understand. They think they’re giving a compliment, but it’s really not. ‘Wow! The camera does really add a lot (of weight), because you’re really tiny.’ That one’s a hard one to swallow.”

Currently, Megan and her husband make their home in Los Angeles, though she says she goes back to New York frequently. She also visits her family in Bellevue and was here for the holidays.

She is looking forward to her second visit with SMC. “They’re so much fun. I’m looking forward to working with them again. I pretty much knew, before I worked with them, that I was going to be walking into a fun, talented group of people. “

If you are wondering what her segments of the evening will be, she reports that she is singing Popular and For Good (from Wicked), Corner of the Sky (Pippin), Stranger to the Rain (Children of Eden) (Megan says, “The lyrics say, ‘I’m not a stranger to the rain,’ and that’s hilarious because I’m from Seattle.”), and Beautiful City (Godspell). For Good is being done as a solo. Megan says she sings to the audience as the people who have changed her “for good.”

For information about tickets on March 29 or 30, go to http://www.flyinghouse.org/smc/2013-14/totallywicked.asp or https://tickets.flyinghouse.org/public/show_events_list.asp or call (206)388-1400.

Taproot's "Pretty Fire" is one hot production

Tracy Michelle Hughes in Pretty Fire (Erik Stuhaug)

Pretty Fire

Taproot Theatre

Through March 22

Taproot’s new black box theater space is getting some inaugural productions and ramping up their workload around there. This month’s production is Pretty Fire, originally written and performed by the amazing Charlayne Woodard, who is a past-master at telling stories alone on stage. Ms. Woodard has performed in Seattle, often at Seattle Repertory Theatre, in the past. If she comes again, please make sure you do everything you can to see her work in person.

But Taproot is providing a real treat by allowing the amazing Ms. Tracy Michelle Hughes to perform the piece. Hughes has performed the piece before, some years ago in Los Angeles, so she brings a familiarity to it that is helpful to the overall effect. Her vigor and commitment to the work is completely submersible into the story at hand, and she makes it her own.

This story begins with a description of Charlayne Woodard’s birth as a preemie whose tenacity becomes part of what makes her the unique person she is. The large, involved family and in particular, the bossy, imperious, and loving Grandmother that holds everyone together, provide the atmosphere that Woodard grew up with.

Woodard’s play is not shy about exposing racism, poverty, Jim Crow, political upheaval, and other difficulties of her life. But she is able to do so with a personal reference point that makes it more powerful and identifiable.

She also writes about fun and enjoyable moments in family life and entwines her family’s religious routines and beliefs, as well. In this piece, the focus is on how she developed her love of performing and how she came to be thrust on the stage in the first place. A cheeky description of Grandma’s dying wish creates a clear understanding of how young children are manipulated, sometimes for their own good, into trying things they find they love.

Hughes’ performance is heart-warming and touching as she performs with only a bench and flowy, easy-to-move clothing and a versatile scarf. Director Nathan Jeffrey provides the rest of what is needed and weaves together the great sound design by Jacob Yarborough, and lighting from Roberta Russell in a seamless production.

Pretty Fire is a proven piece of writing with a talented performer. It is a beautiful and moving evening of theater. It deserves to be seen.

For more information, go to www.taproottheatre.org or call 206-781-9707. 

Enchanting "A Little Night Music" at SecondStory Rep (the little theater that can!)

Micheal O'Hara and Jennifer Littlefield in "A Little Night Music" (photo by Tim Poitevin)

A Little Night Music

SecondStory Repertory 

Through March 9

SecondStory Repertory is continuing to expand its repertoire of musical theater productions in a big way. For some years, the company has included at least one major musical production in its season, and currently they are presenting an enchanting production of the intricate musical, A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Hugh Wheeler (book).

Not only are they tackling this difficult little ditty, but right afterward, they will present Kiss of the Spider Woman and hard on its heels La Cage aux Folles. This is a heady season full of musicals!

Directed and choreographed by Chris Nardine, ALNM is wonderfully cast with exquisite singers. Nardine does a terrific job using a quintet of singers to distract from discreet scene changes and augment the basic plot as a kind of Greek Chorus. The Quintet (Shelly Traverse, Beaven Walters, Britt Boyd, Elias Traverse and Doug Fahl) begin the musical with what sounds like a warm-up routine that blends into the overture – snippets of songs to come.

Some of Sondheim’s loveliest songs are part of this musical. The first set: Now, Later, Soon is a complex suite of songs that explain the characters of Fredrik (Micheal O’Hara), married to an 18 year old still-virgin wife, Anne (Becca Orts), and Fredrik’s son Henrik (Tristan Carruthers) who is secretly also in love with Anne. As Fredrik sings Now, about wondering whether to go to bed with his wife, Anne sings Soon, as a plaintive plea for not being ready yet, and Henrik chafes at always being told “Later, Henrik, Henrik, Later.” The three pieces blend gorgeously together after being presented individually.

Fredrik takes Anne to a play starring an old flame of his, Desiree Armfeldt (Jennifer Littlefield), who cooks up a plan with her mother (Sharry O’Hare) to invite him and his new wife for a weekend in the country. Desiree thinks there might be a way to win Fredrik away from his wife and gain a more stable life with him. She must first get rid of her current lover, Carl-Magnus (Josh Krupke), a boorish officer who drags his wife (Jenny Vaughn Hall) to the country to compete for Desiree’s attention with Fredrik.

You may remember the most famous song, Send in the Clowns, came from ALNM. Desiree sings it to Fredrik as she realizes that he may well be lost to her, just as she is ready to embrace what they could have together. In the context of the production, it is a profound expression of realization and mature growth. The “clowns” reference the idea that someone should be laughing at the irony of their situation.

It is a comedy, however, so ultimately things work out. Anne figures out that Henrik loves her and she, therefore, loves Henrik. Carl-Magnus is made jealous when his wife throws herself at Fredrik, and decides he loves his wife after all. Fredrik feels relieved when Anne runs off with Henrik and he is therefore free to accept that he still loves Desiree.

All the leads are solid performers very well suited to their respective roles. O’Hara is commanding but a bit tired as Fredrik. Orts is twittery and unaware as Anne. Carruthers is woeful and bitter as Henrik, the desperately unhappy young lover. Hall is droll and amusing, and easy to identify with as the woman not sure why she is in love with a man who uses her badly. Krupke blusters amusingly as the boorish officer. Littlefield is arch and dramatic as the artist who wants to settle down, and has an easy way of being sexy without apology.

Also, Kristin Burch adroitly plays a maid who wants to have fun before she settles down. She finds a kindred soul in Frid (Chip Wood), the manservant to Mdm. Armfeldt. Young Catherine McCool plays Desiree’s young daughter with some innocence and a touch of surprising sophistication.

O’Hare as Mdm. Armfeldt is fantastic. Mdm. is a subversive older woman who laments liaisons and the disappearance of elegant mistresses who become gifted, as she was, with jewels and villas. O’Hare was a pleasure to watch in that select small role, and it was easy to imagine her playing Desiree, as her bio states she did some years back.

With musical direction by Paul Linnes, the musicians sound lush. Support from the technical side is also solid. The set has some lovely cut-out wooden lacework with a starry wall behind. (Sets, lights and sound are credited to The Squolf.) Handsome period costumes are designed by John Allbritton.

ALNM is a challenge to get right. The singers must be capable of light opera. The humor is a cool, arch and teasing type – the kind you smile at rather than guffaw loudly to. SecondStory Rep has managed to really get it right, even with much less of a budget than other musical houses around town. Kudos to the little theater that can.

For more information, go to www.secondstoryrep.org or call 425-881-6777. 

Fresh adaptation of Pinocchio entrances and educates

Pinocchio (photo by Chris Bennion)

Pinocchio

Seattle Children’s Theatre

Through March 9

A refreshing and enchanting production of Pinocchio is now on stage at Seattle Children’s Theatre. It is a new adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story by Greg Banks of Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Banks did the adaptation of Robin Hood seen at SCT last year, also. He directed this production as well.

In this faux-minimalist production, the play begins with an Italian painter who tells the audience they all need to leave because they will be painting and there is nothing to watch. Then he “realizes” that they all have tickets to a performance of Pinocchio and decides he must call in his fellow painters to try to tell the story as best they can.

The stage is full of scaffolding and ladders and paint cans and drop clothes. The painters have the usual overalls and caps on and the story is then told with rudimentary props standing in for what would be a normal set and props. Of course, it’s all planned, and when an actor has to “fly,” there is a credible rigging system that hoists him up into the air.

Elise Langer plays Pinocchio throughout and Jason Ballweber, Maggie Chestovich, and Doug Neithercott play all the other roles, with Victor Zapanc providing wonderful musical moments. Langer is a fantastic Pinocchio with just the right aspects of puppet-to-human performance and a dead-pan clowning nature that keeps the events lighthearted, even when horrible things are happening. Pinocchio gets his money stolen from him and Gepetto gets swallowed by a whale and then so does Pinocchio, and Langer’s manner keeps it from feeling like a huge tragedy.

The whole production is done in understated clowning. It’s funny but not done for laughs, and the use of whatever is at hand gives it an improvisational air.

If you remember that Pinocchio’s nose grows and you think that the story is mostly about not telling lies, this version focuses on Pinocchio’s deep desire to be a “real boy.” So, finding a way to know how to become real is the heart of this production. Pinocchio makes all kinds of mistakes, even though he is told that he must go to school to become a real boy. The discoveries he makes are the lessons you can take home with your children. There are many discussions to be had about what your child could imagine doing differently than Pinocchio.

CTC and SCT certainly know what they’re doing and this production is highly recommended for everyone from 6 to 86. Even if you don’t need instruction in how to be “real,” you’ll enjoy the sophisticated clowning and the imaginative staging.

A satisfying twist in LungFish Prods.’ "The Last 5 Years"

(Kaitlin Mellinger/Kyle James Traver poster design)

The Last Five Years

LungFish Productions

(at Armory Theater 4)

Through March 1

A new company, Lungfish Productions has begun producing plays in the last year. Their latest offering was The Last Five Years, a musical that is easy to produce because it only has two characters on stage. It is written by Jason Robert Brown, who is famous for intricate music.

JRB, as many refer to him, has written some very autobiographical musicals, and this is no exception. This story is told with the male character falling in love and proceeding forward for five years of the relationship until the end, but the female character starts at the end of the five­year relationship and proceeds backwards in time to the beginning.

The male character is a writer, though to make it a little less autobiographical, he writes books, not musicals. The female is an actress, and she is written with a lot of insecurities. Maybe because it’s autobiographical and JRB isn’t good at expressing himself, we learn a lot about the woman, Cathy, and really don’t learn much about the interior life of Jamie. In fact, Jamie comes off as very self­centered and rather hard to like.

This production starred EmilyRose Frasca and her husband James Frasca, and they made a lovely and believable couple. The production used a number of photographs of the relationship as it went forward and backward, and all of the photos used were real ones taken of the Frascas’ relationship itself. The Frascas meshed well with one another and were both able to hold our attention and tell the story. They made a great casting choice for the production.

The music direction by Kimberly Dare was well done and the addition of a string section was marvelous. The musicians managed beautifully in a difficult performing venue where they were spread around and had some difficulty seeing their conductor. It’s somewhat the nature of that black box space.

Director Kyle James Traver had an interesting idea about The Last Five Years. He did not make any changes at all to any lyrics or dialogue, but he reinterpreted the meaning of a couple of songs in an interesting way.

After a first act that doesn’t reveal much about Jamie’s feelings, Jamie already comes off as an asshole.

In the second act, there is a song called “Nobody Needs to Know,” sung by Jamie. Typically, it is a song sung by Jamie supposedly to a woman he is cheating with, about how his wife, Cathy, doesn’t need to know about the affair.

The original understanding of the plot would be that Jamie cheats on Cathy and that’s why they end their marriage. But Traver reimagined the story and had James Frasca sing with a wine bottle in his hand, implying that what “nobody needed to know” was that Jamie is a closet drunk.

It certainly is a credible reason to break up – many couples break up over drugs or alcohol – but it softens the character flaw. If Jamie has an affair, what redeeming value does he have as a love interest for Cathy?

The last song in the musical has Jamie singing “I love you” to Cathy. If Jamie parts from Cathy due to his drinking, that makes it far more understandable for him to say “I love you” to her, even though he can’t control his addiction, than if he says that after cheating on her with another woman.

Kudos to Traver and the Frascas!

We shall look forward to what LungFish develops next, and applaud the creative thinking that led to a satisfying musical experience of The Last Five Years.