“Richard III” – Fascistic (and Oddly Funny)

Sarah Harlett and Suzanne Bouchard in Richard III (HMMM Productions)

Richard III

Seattle Shakespeare Company

And upstart crow collective

(at Seattle Rep)

Through October 7, 2018

15 black-clad determined women have overtaken Shakespeare’s Richard III this week, as Rosa Joshi and upstart crow collective combine their vision of all-female Shakespeare productions with Seattle Shakes. They’re finally tackling the play that finishes off their histories of Henry IV (Parts 1, 2, and 3 which they combined into a two-part Bring Down the House in 2017).

It must be said, first!, that Sarah Harlett is a masterful, powerful and sinister Richard III! She commands every scene she is in and infuses the whole piece with sly scheming that is actually…FUNNY. Dark, sinister and funny. It’s not funny that Richard blithely murders massive amounts of kinspeople, and that Shakespeare lays at Richard’s feet the slaying of his young nephews King Edward V and brother Richard in the Tower of London (though to this day no one is sure what happened).

But there is almost a glee in how Harlett’s Richard rises from sixth in line to the throne to King. It’s a macabre comedy, at that point.

Take Note and See “The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes”!

King 5 New Day Northwest appearance!

The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes (Mark Kitaoka)

The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes

Village Theatre

Issaquah: through November 18, 2018

Everett: January 17-March 24, 2019

Musical theater lovers and theater lovers (in particular) should run right out to see the jaw-achingly funny world premiere musical, The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes! By the end of the long-one-act (100 minutes?), you’ll have given your smile muscles a really great workout.

The title might give you a moment’s pause. It seems a bit clunky in the titling department, but it’s reflective of the punny sense of humor of the writers Christopher Dimon (book and lyrics) and Michael Kooman (music). The main character is a sort of schlub (Yiddish Slang - “schlub - a stupid, unattractive, clumsy person. It is akin to hick or yodel. It comes from the Polish word żłób, from which the English word "slob" is also derived.”) A guy who usually doesn’t get noticed very much, doesn’t make much of an impact on anyone’s life.

That’s Howard Barnes. He’s not particularly “noteworthy.” Until! Until one day he starts hearing music that no one else hears. And sees people singing and dancing that no one else sees! And no, he’s not crazy, his life has become a musical and he can’t seem to find the way out.

When Theater is Faith and Faith is Theater ("The Journey of the Saint")

A snippet of video of The Journey of the Saint

The Journey of the Saint (courtesy eSe Teatro)

The Journey of the Saint
eSe Teatro
(at ACT Theatre)
through September 30, 2018

Director and translator Rose Cano has a strong sense of dramatic ritual and theatrical staging. That is a major experience to be had in the latest production from her company, eSe Teatro. Cano saw a reading of Cesar de Maria's play The Journey of the Saint in Peru. de Maria is a prolific Peruvian playwright and Cano was drawn to translate this absurd, comic journey of some bones of a Saint across seas and mountains and rivers to reach seekers in Peru who wanted to worship her.

The script pokes gentle fun at theater and its ability to create "magical" effects by having theater impresario Tomaso (Paul Sobrie) tell a story of how many times he'd been asked to create "miracles" for his local church leaders so their flock would be impressed and adhere to their religious order better. And Juan Del Camina (Pablo Lopez) is an actor who has vowed to Heaven to no longer lie - so does that mean he has to stop acting?

It's an improbable tale told with pageantry, lots of props, and suspension of audience belief.  With a hearty band of ensemble players, beautiful music contributed by Meg Savlov, and a quick 90 minutes, this journey may make you think about how much people desire magic and miracles in their lives.

For more information, go to www.acttheatre.org.

“Waitress” – A Little Sour with the Sweet Bakes Up Nicely

Charity Angel Dawson, Desi Oakley, Lenne Klingaman in Waitress (Joan Marcus)

Waitress

Paramount Theatre

Through September 16, 2018

Waitress, a small indie film by Adrienne Shelly, about a pie-making waitress who is unhappily pregnant with her abusive husband, was turned into a celebrated musical by Sara Bareilles (music and lyrics) and Jessie Nelson (book), which debuted in 2015 and moved to Broadway in 2016. Part of the particular legacy of that musical is that it was also directed and choreographed by women, making it the only Broadway musical in history to have such a plethora female energy.

It’s essentially billed as a comedy, but there are a lot of dark parts to it, as well. Though Jenna, the waitress, and Earl, her ne’er-do-well husband are said to have begun their relationship as teenagers, Earl has clearly become more dangerous and abusive. The musical also makes it clear that Jenna’s mother and father were immersed in an abusive situation that hits at the heart.

“Native Gardens” says "Don’t Fence Me In"

Cast of Native Gardens (Naomi Ishisaka)

Native Gardens

Intiman Theatre

(at Jones Playhouse)

Through September 30, 2018

Oh, the difficulties with neighbors! Have you ever moved into a new house and shortly afterward figured out that the perimeter of your plot shows that the next door neighbors have encroached a few inches or feet over your plot line? It’s actually not all that uncommon. That’s what happens to Pablo and Tania del Valle in Karen Zacarias’ play, Native Gardens.

You can see how they handle their dilemma in Intiman’s smart, funny production housed at the Jones Playhouse. The crackerjack cast of Phillip Ray Guevara as Pablo, Sophie Franco as Tania, Julie Briskman as Virginia and Jim Gall as Frank (with some help from Gloria Alcala and Yolanda Suarez) handle all the angst and banter with perfect comic timing.

New Village AD Jerry Dixon Envisions Musical Theater’s Future

Jerry Dixon (Serge Nivelle)

Wouldn’t it be such divine fun to have one of our local musicals headlined by Mario Cantone as the lead? Alas – I’ve been informed by a close source that Mario would rather not work that much and if he does work, he goes for big bucks to make it “count.” 

Who’s my “in the know”? Why, it’s his husband, the new artistic director of Village Theatre: Jerry Dixon! He’s a pretty good source!

SGN got to sit down with Mr. Dixon to have an extensive and wide-ranging chit chat about the shape of Musical Theater and what might be coming down the pike. Mr. Dixon is a powerfully intellectual thinker with deep appreciation for the collaborative art that is theater and few limits on visions for the kinds of people he’ll meet as a new ambassador for Village work in the future.

SGN spoke to Dixon…. Ok, I’m switching to “I” and “Jerry”…. Here is a little primer on Jerry Dixon: Wikipedia says he is an “actor, director, lyricist, choreographer, and composer best known for his work on the Broadway stage.” He married Mario Cantone in 2011, having been constant companions for 20 years by then!

September Theater Openings - Back to School Edition

Legally Blonde (Danielle Barnum)

The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes cast (Mark Kitaoka)

Richard III (John Ulman)

Skeleton Crew cast (John McLellan)

Reliably, when kids go back to school, theater productions explode all over Seattle. This month, we have very interesting choices, from playwrights some may be particularly wishing to see on stage (Karen Zacarias, Native Gardens, Dominique Morriseau, Skeleton Crew), a homegrown musical incubated in Village’s new musical development pipeline (The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes) and an exciting all-female Richard III that follows last year’s Henrys.

 

Peruse below and see other tantalizing offerings. Ding! The bell just rang! Hurry!

Prelude to a Kiss, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, 9/6/18-10/6/18

Peter and Rita fall for each other and decide to get married. During their wedding reception, an old man kisses Rita. Peter soon realizes that the kiss has caused Rita and the man to switch bodies. As he searches for a way to switch them back, Peter faces the dilemma of loving Rita in the body of a terminally ill man or staying married to a stranger posing as his wife.

www.strawshop.org/prelude.html

Native Gardens, Intiman Theatre, 9/6-30/18 (at Jones Playhouse)

You can’t choose your neighbors. In this new comedy by Karen Zacarias, cultures and gardens clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Pablo, a rising attorney, and doctoral candidate Tania, his very pregnant wife, have just purchased a home next to Frank and Virginia, a well-established D.C. couple with a prize-worthy English garden. An impending barbeque for Pablo’s colleagues and a delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spirals into an all-out border dispute, exposing both couples’ notions of race, taste, class and privilege.

http://intiman.org/nativegardens

“Rules of Charity” is not charitable toward its characters

Rules of Charity (Ken Holmes)

Rules of Charity

Sound Theatre Company

Through August 25, 2018

It’s pretty apparent what drew folks at Sound Theatre Company toward the play Rules of Charity by the late John Belluso. Belluso was a playwright with physical challenges and wrote characters with physical challenges in his plays. STC’s theme is toward “radical inclusion” and that theme has been reflected by identifying barriers unwittingly erected against variously challenged communities and working to eradicate them.

In some areas, the company has been extraordinarily successful, particularly in their gorgeous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with deaf and hearing actors, giving the deaf community both access to Shakespeare from watching an ASL-signed production and also giving more platform to deaf actors to perform.

While Rules of Charity is written with the central character as a man living with cerebral palsy, the play itself is much less successful in connecting emotionally with an audience. It’s clear that many audience members disagree with that statement, and some have been and will be deeply connected.

New "Phantom" Lives up to reputation

(courtesy The Phantom of the Opera tour)

The Phantom of the Opera

Paramount Theatre

Through August 19, 2018

Well, guess what! I liked the musical The Phantom of the Opera a bunch more than I expected to. See my preview at http://sgn.org/sgnnews46_32/page21.cfm. (What kind of critic, you grumble, uses the phrase “a bunch more”?) Truly, the famous songs that have become popular from this musical, particularly The Music of the Night, and The Phantom of the Opera, made me feel like running away instead of marking my calendar for productions to see.

This touring production is quite honestly very lavish and attentive to making a great experience for an audience. It’s opulent to look at when it needs to be and dark and mysterious, too. The folding and unfolding set works beautifully to change locations. The falling chandelier is not really all that scary (it doesn’t fall that fast), but it’s really pretty.

One aspect that definitely delighted me was how campy funny some of the moments in the musical are – at least in this production. There are two scenes in the production office of the opera company where the characters all produce notes written to them by the Phantom, as he threatens them variously to pay him or else, or let Christine sing or else, or various other demands or else. It’s clear that they know it’s a joke and make the most of the moment. It got big laughs from the audience.