Jay Irwin - Page 15

Showtunes is doing "Legally Blonde"? Don't they do obscure musicals that never get done? Yes, that's them, Dear Readers. Putting up for a few weekends, concert stagings with books in hand shows that usually don't see the spotlight. And now here they come with "Legally Blonde" that mega-hit. So why? Because they focus on rare voices and that could mean titles of shows or that could mean casting someone in a role for which they may never be considered. Enter an off-hand remark made at one of the 5th Avenue Theatre spotlight nights when Alexandria Henderson said she didn't have a dream role, just to be able to be cast without limitation and another actor on-stage shouted that she should be Elle in "Legally Blonde" and the crowd went wild. So, an African American Elle with the titular blonde locks. Why not? And that Dear Readers, is the last time we need focus on the fact that Ms. Henderson isn't your traditional Elle. For the rest of this article we'll only focus on the fact that she killed it!

Over the years I've been to several plays that have cautionary signs in the lobby. Usually they mention cigarette use or strobe lights but more than a few I've seen talk about trigger warnings in the piece. I'd never really understood the trigger warning until last night at Washington Ensemble Theatre's production of "Everything You Touch", a show all about body image. As a big guy myself, I've dealt with this stuff all my life but there was a quite powerful moment in the show where suddenly I had all these memories of my own childhood come rushing back including things like tauntings in school or my Grandmother mailing me weight loss articles she cut out from the newspaper. I'd never had that much of a personal and visceral reaction to a play before which leads me to think that either I'm not as well-adjusted as I think I am or, the production from WET is just that good. I'm going to assume it's the latter. Yeah, that's it.

A few years back, on one of my trips back to the Mothership (New York), I was going to see one of the many incarnations of "Forbidden Broadway", a series I've loved for years. I asked my travelling companion if he wanted to join me. And while he enjoys theater he's not what you would call a theater nerd and so he opted out feeling that many of the inside jokes would fly over his head. It turned out to be a good call. Village Theatre currently has their latest show brought up from the Village Originals Festival onto the Mainstage, "The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes" and while it has a few moments where the story drags or gets slightly mired down in its own joke, I found it to be super fun. But in retrospect, it's super fun to me and was super fun to the person I was with but we're both musical theater nerds. I think the inside jokey-ness of this one might be lost on your basic theatergoer.

Well, Dear Readers, this is a first for me. It seems the first Mrs. Rochester got a little over excited and jumped the gun as we had a fire alarm about 20 minutes into opening night of Book-It's "Jane Eyre" and we all were treated to an early intermission and a breath of fresh air. Luckily it quickly resolved itself and we were let back in for the show to pick up where we left off, ironically with Jane discussing the fires of hell with Mr. Brocklehurst. And while Jane does get quite keyed up in that conversation and her subsequent one telling off Mrs. Reed, unfortunately that's about as passionate as our Jane got.

Dear Readers, if you were lucky enough to catch Seattle Shakespeare Company and Upstart Crow's all female epic productions of the "Henry VI" Trilogy that they dubbed "Bring Down the House" and showed in two parts a few years back then you know of the power that they brought to the stage with some of the best female actors sinking their teeth into those traditionally male cast characters. And you also may have had the same wish that many others had, including myself, that they'd keep that train going especially once they'd seen the remarkable Sarah Harlett play the young hunchback Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with such malevolent zeal. Who wouldn't then want to see her go on to play him in the sequel, "Richard III"? Because we all love a sequel. Well, wish granted. The hunchback is back and scheming around the boards of the Leo K. Theatre at the Seattle Rep and is just as glorious as before.

David Hare's "Skylight", currently playing at ACT, is a play teaming with recriminations over infidelities and the struggles of class at the heart of the demise of two people's relationship. It's packed with wonderful moments for both actors to make equally compelling arguments over who's at fault. Who's right and who's wrong. Who's got the moral high ground and who's grounded in reality. To the point that by the end you can see the good and bad in each and walk away with something to think and talk about. And then Hare adds a second ending that I can only describe as the Hollywood RomCom ending to drive his own point home, a point we already got, in a way that is at best superfluous and at worst just plain confusing.

Known for her soulful sound in the pop music world, Sara Bareilles burst onto the musical theater scene out of the blue with her smash hit 'Waitress'. I'll admit some cynicism with this with the attitude of 'oh good, another pop star who thinks they can write Broadway.' The problem is, she can, and the show is just damn good.

Any theater company has that fear of, after weeks of rehearsing one play, having to switch it out for another with little rehearsal time left before opening. Maybe the rights to the play get pulled or some other act of the theater Gods which is out of their control forces their hand. But what if a theater were to decide to do it to themselves? Such is the case with Strawberry Theatre Workshop and their current production of Craig Lucas' "Prelude to a Kiss" which took over for what was to be their production of Lucas' "Reckless". After already diving headlong into the show they discovered that one character in particular felt so dated and out of touch as to be offensive without any kind of touchstone in the show to point out the offense. But this is not a review of their decision, so we won't go into all that, this is a review of what they put up … with the same cast … and the same scheduled opening night … after only 12 days of rehearsal.

For as long as there have been living spaces people have had points of contention with their neighbors, whether it's the people upstairs, next door, or on the other side of the fence. Maybe they're too noisy, or they shoot off fireworks right outside your bedroom window on the fourth of July, or they like to stack up their garbage by their front door rather than taking it to the dumpster (you guessed it, I once had the neighbors from hell). But no matter the differences the hope is that people can work them out (or just let them seethe inside for years) without resorting to pesticides and chainsaws as the folks in Karen Zacarias' play "Native Gardens" did, currently being offered from Intiman Theatre.

Several years ago, I remember watching the Tony Awards and seeing Broadway power couple Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker presenting the award for Best Score and getting all giddy and nerdy over it because "NEW SONGS!" Well that's how I feel every summer at Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals. I get to see what's out there up and coming and maybe get to walk away seeing a new gem. And this year was no exception with a couple of shows blowing me away. Now, of course, these are workshops and staged readings of shows, so we cannot really review them, but I can at least tell you what they offered us.

I've never been a fan of bees, in fact they terrify me. So, I found it a little ironic that the day I'm supposed to go see a play about bees, Madhuri Shekar's 'Queen' from ACTLab and Pratidhwani, that one of the little bastards decides to up and sting me for no reason. Sure, they're important for our ecosystem and without them we would end up with severe food shortages, but they don't need to be such jerks about it. And that's the central conceit of Shekar's play (their place in the ecosystem, not them stinging me). And while the play was intriguing, at times the actors didn't all seem to be a part of the same play, at least not at the same time.

Greetings adventurer, you and your party are approaching a multiheaded beast to which you must convey a story filled with drama, high stakes and dire consequences. You know in order to survive you need to present yourself in a certain way, so do you judiciously put forth just what you need in order to tell a focused and coherent tale thus placating/entertaining the beast or do you throw everything you've got at it and hope something appeases the monster? Well, if you're the folks at Theater Schmeater you do the latter as was evident with the forced, unfocused, and just plain loud production of "She Kills Monsters" currently playing.

Dear Readers, if you know me you know of my disdain for shows that end up as someone else's therapy on stage. So, you'll understand how I was filled with hope when ACT's current offering of Lauren Weedman's one woman show "Lauren Weedman Doesn't Live Here Anymore" began with Weedman commenting on how she too hates it when people go into the dirty details of their personal life as well as some seriously funny moments from Weedman. You'll also understand how let down I felt when she quickly abandoned that pretense and devolved into a journey of self-discovery as she laid bare all of her sordid issues as well as abandoning the funny by bringing in an unfocused and manic character to share the journey making the 80-minute evening just feel loud, scattered, self-indulgent, and pointless.

A few years back, Dear Readers, I stumbled on an article about a new little show called 'Disenchanted', about Fairy Tale Princesses in a musical revue telling about how life ain't so happily ever after and since I always love a good dose of snark I instantly became obsessed. I followed its journey, hoping it might come to a city near me or at least one I was visiting and even corresponded with the creators, book writer, composer and lyricist Dennis T Giancino and director Fiely A Matias who were kind enough to get me some sample recordings which only deepened my obsession (and put Siri in a tizzy as she has to censor herself when attempting to repeat back to me the original title). Well now, by the grace of the theater Gods and the good folks at Mamches Productions, that wonderful revue has come to Seattle and with the original creators in tow with Giancino directing this time and Matias assisting. And while the gloriousness of those scathing songs is there, the show itself needs a bit more settling time and some technical help to be truly great.

A young idealist comes to town with an aim to take down the rich fat cats who have rigged the government to only work in their favor only to be swayed by the trappings of their wealth and power. Sounds like something from our government today but no, I'm referring to Henrik Ibsen's play, as adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, "The League of Youth", currently being offered from Theatre9/12, examining the goings on in a small town in Norway, 1869. I guess political corruption has been around as long as there has been politics.

Back in 2005 Broadway was abuzz with the arrival of a musical version of the much beloved book and movie "The Color Purple". The problem was, when it arrived it landed with a thud and not a splash. It had a decent showing running for three years and touring but never really catching fire (at least not for me). I saw the original on Broadway and in the tour and it just felt like they missed the mark not really focusing on the heart of the story and with music that felt out of place. Then in 2013 the folks at The Menier Chocolate Factory in London revived the show, scaling it down to a more intimate and streamlined piece and low and behold, it now works! And that, Dear Readers, is the gloriousness that's currently playing at the Paramount.

Dear Readers, I recently commented on a show at ACT on how it was the veggies to your theatrical diet. A show that may be hard to swallow but it's good for you. Well if that show is your veggies then another show currently at ACT is your dessert. "Pageant: The Musical", currently being offered from A Sensible Theatre Co., is a frothy, glitzy good time filled with oodles of gorgeous "real women with a little something extra". And while I certainly had a blast and laughed my butt off throughout, there was one moment that stuck with me and made me say, "huh?" But we'll get to that in a bit.

We all remember hearing of the tragedy of August 9th, 2014 when Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri was shot in killed by police officer Darren Wilson in his attempt to apprehend Brown after a convenience store robbery. It may have been on the other side of the country from us but the racial unrest that followed surrounding the shooting is something that was felt everywhere. But this polarizing issue is a hard one to unpack and discuss especially without the context of being there. Enter Dael Orlandersmith and her one woman show, 'Until the Flood' currently playing at ACT, with its unique and quite complete viewpoint to give us all a new perspective.

If you think you know Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' you may want to think again. In fact, many only know the most basic plot based on its many references in popular culture throughout the years. But whether you're a novice or a die-hard Dorian Gray aficionado, you're in for a treat from Book-It as they've based their adaptation on the only recently published original manuscript that was deemed too racy for Victorian England. But it's here now complete with all its taboo subjects the way Wilde intended and Book-It's production is, in a word, delicious.

Let me start, Dear Readers, by saying this is NOT the frothy Disney cartoon you may recall from your youth. Yes, it does contain many of the Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz songs from the 1996 Disney animated film but this show is more akin to the Victor Hugo novel than the cartoon. Gone are the silly, wise-cracking gargoyles whom you might find recreated in a Happy Meal, and amped up is the story of religious persecution, intolerance, sex, and betrayal. Leading me to wonder, what audience are they aiming for? Disney songs, filled out with heady albeit soaringly beautiful choral pieces, and a dark and gritty story that (spoiler alert) does not end well for everyone. And this is my biggest problem with the show, it can't make up its mind as to what it wants to be.