Interview: Rodney Hicks talks about originating musical roles - "RENT," "Scottsboro Boys," now "Come From Away!"

Rodney Hicks in Come From Away (Kevin Berne)

Rodney Hicks is a talented actor/writer, husband to Portland Center Stage’s artistic director, Chris Coleman, and has originated multiple roles in Broadway musicals to great acclaim! He is ready to open the brand new musical, Come From Away, at Seattle Repertory Theatre, after a lauded run at co-producer La Jolla Playhouse, November 18^th.

Come From Away is a heart-warming story about a little known aspect of fall-out from 9/11. When planes were caught in flight during the no-flight mandate over the United States, planes had to land somewhere. 38 planes were grounded in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada! It is a tiny town unaccustomed to so many visitors. The town springs into action to support all these passengers.

A talented roster of performers, including locals Eric Ankrim, Chad Kimball, and Kendra Kassebaum create this ensemble-driven piece playing multiple roles. Directed by Christopher Ashley, artistic director at La Jolla, the production is still being heavily revised by writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein (My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding). They are certain to be working to bring the production to Broadway, though the exact route there is unknown at this time.

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.

Seattle Immersive Theatre’s "Listening Glass" – keep this company on your radar!

Listening Glass (Fedora el Morro)

Listening Glass

Seattle Immersive Theatre

(at a warehouse: 2724 6th Ave S)

Through November 29, 2015

Seattle Immersive Theatre has taken immersion to a whole new level for its first two offerings. Their production, DUMP SITE, was created inside a warehouse which they filled with walls of cardboard boxes to create rooms, and where the audience was treated to a mystery unfolding in front of them. The actors interacted as if unobserved and related to each other the way any of us might with people we know well.

A brother and sister argued, though it took some time to allow their argument to reveal the subject area of disagreement. A stranger was introduced. The brother and sister revealed more information. The audience could walk around the set and were asked to be aware that an actor might need them to move out of the way! Masks were provided so that observers became stylized birds. It was meticulously planned.

Listening Glass, now presenting in the same warehouse, and almost totally sold out (even after adding more dates) is another meticulously produced environment. This time, it’s a small county police office, with a fingerprint room, a break room with real donuts and coffee, detective office space and an interrogation room. The glass the audiences listen to is the two-way mirror of the interrogation room, where the audience is invited to hear a suspect being grilled by a detective.

Contemplative "Molly Sweeney" scientifically explains sight

Jenni Taggart and Dara Lillis in Molly Sweeney (Michael Brunk)

Molly Sweeney

KTO Productions

(at TPS 4, Seattle Center Armory)

Through October 24, 2015

Playwright Brian Friel was considered a prolific writer of plays. His range was wide, as were his interests, but often he set his story in the town of "Ballybeg" (from the Irish Baile Beag, meaning "Small Town"). KTO Productions was in rehearsal for Molly Sweeney, one of Friel’s more contemplative plays, when he died on October 2^nd. Seattle audiences were treated to a lovely production of his Dancing at Lughnasa at the Seattle Rep in 2010.

Molly Sweeney, as a play, is a bit challenging, and one must bring patience to let it unfold. But if you allow the play to work its magic, you will get a lot to think about on the way home.

The named subject is a woman (Jenni Taggart) who has been blind since her first year of life and is content, well-adjusted and happy in her life. Technology and medicine have caught up with her condition after 40 years and her new husband (Dara Lillis) loves the idea that surgery might allow her to see again. The doctor, Mr. Rice (Doug Knoop), admits in an early monologue that he is partly motivated by acclaim and reputation to see if he can restore long unused sight.