You’ll Love “She Loves Me”!

Randy Scholz and Taryn Darr in She Loves Me (Tracy Martin)

She Loves Me

Village Theatre

Issaquah: through February 23, 2020

Everett: February 28 – March 22, 2020

A perfect music box of a musical with a cast to match. That’s what Village Theatre gives you with their production of She Loves Me!

The Sheldon Harnick lyrics are some of the very best in any musical and match Jerry Brock’s musical compositions like soft kid gloves. The book adaptation by Joe Masteroff of the short story about a Budapest couple who work together and don’t know they’re pen pals is just enough talking to keep everyone on the same page.

I have to opine that this musical is pretty much bullet-proof, so it’s hard to do it badly. Thank-fully, Karen Lund, usually directing both comedies and musicals at Taproot Theatre, inserts and pulls out many, many moments of fun. She and choreographer Scott Brateng also come up with more moments of choreography than many productions and that increases the delightful moments.

And the Award Goes To... the Winners of the 2019 Gypsy Rose Lee Awards

The Last World Octopus Wresting Champion (courtesy ArtsWest)

The winners of the 2019 Gypsy Rose Lee Awards are announced by the Seattle theater reviewers circle, Seattle Theater Writers!

This year, several productions were clear critical favorites, with multiple nominations and multiple wins. Gaining the most recognition among the winners were Indecent at Seattle Repertory Theatre and Village Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time in the Large theater division, and Sound Theatre Company and The Hansberry Project’s Citizen and Sheathed by Macha Theatre Works in the Small division.

And the 2019 “Gypsy Rose Lee Award” Nominees Are!

Fire Season (Truman Buffett)

The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion (John McClellan)

For the ninth year in a row, theater critics in Seattle have banded together to honor excellent theater in town over the past year. Anyone who is on the “inside” of this small industry knows that there are fewer and fewer places where people can write about theater, unless they establish a blog or other online outlet! However, there are still a few of us left trying to help audiences find great work.

To that end, the annual critics’ award still chugs along, at least for one more year. Spanning dozens of theater companies and productions, from large and prominent to small and humble, the Gypsy Rose Lee Awards honor the excellence found in as much professional theater as we reviewers can attend in a year. Named in honor of the famed theater entrepreneur and Seattle native, Gypsy Rose Lee, and in a nod to the vast numbers of theater practitioners forced to travel the country to earn their living, the Gypsys seek to acknowledge the excellence of the Seattle theater community. (The group’s online presence is at www.facebook.com/SeattleTheaterWriters.)

This year’s changes include the abolishment of “male” and “female” acting categories in favor of all-in-one “actors.” Each year, the reviewers seek to refine the awards to better reflect inclusivity and clarity.

The winners will be announced January 31, 2020. ​

Feminist “The Revolutionists” at Artswest

Sunam Ellis and Dedra Woods in The Revolutionists (John McLellan)

The Revolutionists

ArtsWest

Through February 9, 2020

ArtsWest is presenting Lauren Gunderson’s play, The Revolutionists. We’re in 1793 and France is in complete turmoil! The Revolution has turned into a free-for-all of executions (by guillotine, of course) of royalty and those who support them. The Jacobins are in power and the Girondins are against them. “People power” is generally what the populace wants, but how to get there is an open question.

Journalist Jean-Paul Marat has stirred up the populace with his rhetoric. Charlotte Corday (Hannah Mootz) decides he is an integral part of the power structure and if he dies then those fomenting the violence might significantly weaken. She determines to gain entry to his bath by pretense and to knife him there.

Olympe de Gouges (Sunam Ellis) is a playwright and activist who championed Haitians fighting for freedom from the colonialism of France. She wrote plays on the slave trade, divorce, marriage, debtors' prisons, children's rights, and government work schemes for the unemployed. As a playwright, she often was in the vanguard, writing political works on contemporary controversies.

Seattle Shakespeare presents “The Rivals”

Alexandria Henderson and Avery Clark in The Rivals (John Ulman)

The Rivals

Seattle Shakespeare Company

Through February 2, 2020

The Rivals, by Richard Sheridan, is a 1700’s comedy of manners. It basically pokes fun at the society that Sheridan lived among, though apparently, they didn’t take offence (the British spelling) to it, since it became very popular.

A 17-year-old ingenue, Lydia Languish (Alexandria Henderson), is so in love with romance novels, which she reads voraciously, that instead of looking for a wealthy husband, she thinks it far more romantic to choose a pauper to love. Young Jack Absolute (Avery Clark), who should “come into” a fairly significant fortune, falls for her. Knowing her penchant for paupers, he pretends to be a penniless Ensign “Beverley” and gains her heart.

Her guardian, Mrs. Malaprop (Julie Briskman), is enraged about this and has bottled Lydia up in the house while plotting to match Lydia up with someone with money. Suddenly Jack’s father, Sir Anthony (Bradford Farwell) shows up and the two elders decide their youngers should get married.

But now Jack has a problem because Lydia will find out he’s NOT penniless! Oh NO! Now what does he do? Lydia might fall out of love with him!

Make “Reparations” a requirement!

Reparations (Aaron Jin)

Reparations

Sound Theatre Company

(at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute)

Through Feb 2, 2020

Trauma is not individual. Whatever an individual experiences with trauma radiates out from that individual to all the others in the circle – family, friends, all associates. Once trauma changes the individual, trauma also changes others. This is the fundamental subject that Darren Canady tries to illuminate in his searing new play, Reparations, commissioned by Sound Theatre Company.

But wait? (You might ask.) Isn’t the play about Black people wanting or needing “reparations” for slavery? Isn’t this a political play?

The play tries to answer the question of “why” Black folks feel that some important recognition and/or compensation should be offered to Black families. This play doesn’t start with slavery. This play starts back only a couple of generations to the early 1920s when the KKK attacks, burns and lynches Black parents of three children in their home.