"Parade" - March for truth and justice!

The cast of Parade (Ken Holmes)

Parade

Sound Theatre Company

(at 12^th Ave Arts)

Through March 26, 2016

Parade is such a cheery name for a musical! However, it is the wry, unsettling, ironic title of a true-life musical story of Southern small-town bigotry and a still-unsolved murder mystery! Written by Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry, this 1998 Tony winner is being presented by Sound Theatre Company and is the first musical mounted at 12^th Avenue Arts.

First, the history: In 1913, Leo Frank (Jeff Orton), a New York Jew who moved and married in Marietta, Georgia, is a town outsider. When 13 year-old Mary Phagan (Delaney Guyer ) is found murdered in the basement of the pencil factory Leo runs, the night watchman is questioned, and Leo. With virtually no evidence and a town full of people willing to lie to convict someone, town prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (Brian Lange) gets a death sentence for Leo’s supposed crime.

After Georgia’s governor, John Slaton (Jordan Jackson) looks into the case and commutes Leo’s sentence from death to life imprisonment and transfers Leo to another prison, a mob breaks in and hangs Leo back in Marietta.

Charming “Brooklyn Bridge” offers community to a lonely girl

Rudy Roushdi and Analiese Emerson Guettinger in Brooklyn Bridge (Chris Bennion)

Brooklyn Bridge

Seattle Children’s Theatre

Through March 20, 2016

An enchanting play is onstage now at Seattle Children’s Theatre, suitable for ages 6 or 7 and up. Brooklyn Bridge, by Melissa James Gibson, focuses on a bright and articulate 5^th grader, Sasha (charmingly played by Analiese Emerson Guettinger) who has a very important research paper due and has struggled to get it onto paper.

The script is full of sparkling dialogue and is meant to address aspects of a lonely latchkey child and the isolation that can create. Sasha is portrayed as a very resourceful child, but in this instance, she must disobey her mother, in order to get the very important paper done by tomorrow. She doesn’t have a pen, at home, and is compelled to leave her apartment, contravening her mother’s instructions, to visit neighbors she doesn’t know to find one.

Have fun working: "9 to 5" at SMT!

Natalie Moe as Roz in 9 to 5 (Jeff Carpenter)

9 to 5

Seattle Musical Theatre

Through March 13, 2016

9 to 5, the musical based on the hugely popular 1980 movie starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, is now performing at Seattle Musical Theatre. Their production is fun, peppy and with a solid tongue-in-cheek atmosphere. There are also several stand-out talents among a solid cast.

The musical had a fairly short run on Broadway in 2009 and came to Seattle on tour in 2010 (with our homegrown talent Ryah Nixon understudying the Doralee role). The songs, including the hit wonder 9 to 5, all written by Dolly Parton, are fun but not significantly successful. The entire effort seems tailor made for regional and high school productions, with a strong feminist message. Young women, in particular, might feel encouraged and supported to reflect on how far we have come from the setting of the movie, a sort of 1970s-ish male-dominated business culture.

March stands for Musicals in Seattle (theater openings)

Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako in My Heart is the Drum (Village Theatre - Mark Kitaoka)

There is Seattle Fringe Festival going on that started at the end of February and continues in March. Multiple solo and small shows, often new material that people are developing, and usually about an hour in length, so you can see more than one in a night. Here’s the link: http://seattlefringefestival.org/about-us/

March seems to “stand for” Musicals, this year! Openings include Assassins at ACT Theatre (co-pro’d with 5^th Avenue), Parade by Sound Theatre Company, EVITA at SecondStory Repertory, My Heart is the Drum at Village Theatre, Violet at ArtsWest, Cotton Patch Gospel at Taproot, and at the end of the month, My Night with Janis Joplin at 5^th Avenue! We surely have turned into a musical theater town when no one was paying attention! Openings below.

Assassins, 5th Ave Theatre and ACT Theatre (at ACT Theatre), 3/3/16-5/15/16

A Stephen Sondheim musical about some of the most notorious figures in American history—the assassins who tried (and in some cases succeeded) to kill the President.

www.acttheatre.org

Violet, ArtsWest, 3/3/16-4/4/15

A disfigured young woman dreams of becoming beautiful. After seeing a faith-healing minister on TV, she embarks on a bus trip across the American south in hopes of finding the minister and healing her face. Along the way, she learns the true meaning of beauty, courage and love. Written by Jeanine Tesori, the 2015 Tony award winning composer of Fun Home. 

www.artswest.org

"Annapurna’s" journey is a worthwhile trek

John Q. Smith and Teri Lazzara in Annapurna (Robert Falk)

Annapurna

Theatre22

Through March 12, 2016

Seattle is having a mini-Sharr White festival. The first production is Annapurna by Theatre22. The next one will be The Other Place at Seattle Public Theater.  Sharr White, from the sharply drawn characters and plot of Annapurna, is a playwright to notice. And this was not the play nominated for a Tony…that’s The Other Place.

Annapurna is a play full of projective references. The title is the name of a real mountain with a storied history of treacherous ascents. The mountain is symbolic of a treacherous relationship between Emma and Ulysses. They were once married. Ulysses was a cowboy poet and professor. They had a child. Something happened twenty years ago to cause Emma to run from their home with their son. Ulysses was too drunk to remember why.

Now, twenty years later, Ulysses is dying of lung cancer and living in the Colorado mountains, alone and reclusive. Suddenly, Emma shows up.

"Julia" at On the Boards - TRY to fit it in - Beautiful, hard to describe

Julia
adapted from Miss Julie by August Strindberg, and directed, by Christiane Jatahy
performed by Julia Bernat and Rodrigo dos Santos

(In Portuguese and subtitles)

Tonight 2/13 at 8pm, tomorrow 2/14 at 5pm
http://www.ontheboards.org/performances/julia

This film/stage, screen/live offering is a powerful experience as Jatahy dances on the edges of film versus live, stage versus screen, private versus public, and many other aspects. She has been working on this piece since 2011 with the same actors. This allows tremendous risk and vulnerability from these seasoned performers, and they are asked to take full advantage of that (with a live sex scene, more viceral than most but on-screen!) and a physical intimacy that is almost too much to bear.

You will be glad you saw this. I project that you will remember this piece for a long, long time.

"Success" with a bullet!

A great example of the vivid color combos in How to Succeed (Tracy Martin)

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

The 5^th Avenue Theatre

Through February 21, 2016

This 5^th Avenue production is a Skittles (or older candy: Chiclets) colored musical that tastes as sweet, tart, and happy as it looks! How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a popular musical for high schools and summer camps because it’s so G-rated. Here, the retro feel is on full display, and every moment of fun is amped to a 10!

The story is of a young man reading a book on succeeding in business (fun fact: former Seattle mayor – and musical theater lover – Norm Rice is the narrator of the book sections), and he follows the book to the letter. The book is amazingly prescient and covers every possible situation on your rise to the top. But also, Pierrepont Finch (who adds a J. to the beginning to sound posh-er) is a whiz at thinking on his feet.

Meaty two-hander, "Annapurna," next up for Theatre22

John Q. Smith and Teri Lazzara (Ahren Buhmann)

Annapurna

Theatre9/12 (at 12th Avenue Arts)

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2405204 or call 800-838-3006

2/19/16-3/12/16

The next offering by Theatre22, Annapurna by Sharr White, seems like an actor’s paradise. It’s a two-hander, as they say, two actors who get to throw themselves into meaty, emotional material. It’s about a long-extinct marriage where the ex-wife comes back to nurse her dying ex-husband and rehash their relationship.

Most won’t get the title reference. Annapurna is a mountain in the Himalayas; the play is set in mountains of Colorado; so the mountains are the struggles of the relationship. Very poetic. White wrote the play in 2013-14, and it was done Off-Broadway in 2014. So, it’s very new. White has other plays that have been well received, and you might think of him as “up and coming.”

I spoke to director Julie Beckman about this play. Beckman is an award-winning director (she won the Gypsy Rose Lee Award in 2014 for directing A Small Fire at Sound Theatre Company and was nominated for directing Water By the Spoonful for Theatre22 in 2015). Here’s a taste of how she goes about directing a play.

"Buzzer" doesn't quite work

Andrew Lee Creech and Spencer Hamp in Buzzer (Michelle Bates)

Buzzer

AJ Epstein Productions at ACT Theatre

Through February 21, 2016

A lot could be said about gentrification. There are all kinds of sides to look at: the people who live in a blighted area because they must (no income options, red-lining, etc.); the people who move there early to take advantage of lower costs in anticipation of the boom; the people who move there after most or all the dangerous elements have been displaced. Plays have examined this, somewhat, like Clybourn Park.

Since so often gentrification has happened to areas that start with poor black residents and become majority white, there are powerful stories to be told in play format. Tracey Scott Wilson has written one that defies easy categorization as commentary on gentrification, Buzzer, now onstage at ACT Theatre, co-produced with AJ Epstein Productions. She includes an uncommon trio, and in this production, the trio on stage feel uneasily linked. So, should the play be seen as commentary on gentrification?