West Seattle Weisenheimer

What a difference a day makes

2012-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Various dubious Internet sources attribute a quotation to Mark Twain opining that it takes three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. While he likely never said it, it's a good sentiment that might well be applied to writing one-act plays as well.

14/48, the World's Quickest Theater Festival, blatantly ignores Twain's advice, giving its playwrights 12 hours—the overnight ones, no less!—to take a play from broad theme to completion. Then it gives everyone else involved about 12 hours to direct, memorize, rehearse, costume, score, tech, and stage the play before its world premiere performance before a packed house. Then they do it again the next day, creating 14 new plays in the space of 48 hours.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster. Yet 14/48 is our most anticipated theatre event every winter and summer because this insane premise almost always delivers remarkable results. None of the plays are perfect, because they can't be; if Shakespeare were alive today he'd probably still be tinkering with Hamlet. But many of the scripts tell compelling stories, and even those that don't are often bailed out by inspired performances or clever staging.

Except for this weekend. The last two days of the winter festival were especially interesting because Friday night was a complete goose-egg. Oh-for-seven. All of the plays were total bombs. A couple of them had a few laughs and some interesting performances, but on the whole the evening was disappointing. Even the band, comprised of mostly familiar players whose talent we admire, seemed off beat and lacking energy.

Then an amazing thing happened. The same suspects returned on Saturday, even more sleep deprived, and gave us seven pretty good plays, despite a theme—special teams—that organizers felt compelled to explain to the audience because it has its root in sports, certainly foreign to most who partake in theatre, especially if its spelled with an re instead of an er.

I especially enjoyed For Love and Love Alone, a spy thriller by Josef Krebs and directed by Nik Perleros, featuring Trick Danneker as the spy, Amanda Lee Williams as the mad evildoer bent on world domination, Zoey Belyea as the chain-smoking French ninja (every play has to have some sort of standard character), and Mark Fullerton as both the chief of the operation and Trick's love interest.

Our faith in 14/48 and in the insanely talented pool of theatre artists in Seattle is restored.

Kudos to the super talented José Amador, who was given the Mazen Award in recognition of his contributions to the spirit of risk taking and camaraderie embodied in the 14/48 process. Amador is a regular on the 14/48 blog and did some marvelous writing about theatre for Seattlest until it was boarded up. He is now writing for the new Seattle Star. Check out his insider report about the Jan. 6-7 weekend of 14/48.

Lessons from the weekend: Keep putting yourselves on the line. And don't schedule 14/48 for Friday the 13th!

Thanks for taking the risks and for putting on great theatre!

A triple witching hour of theatre

2012-01-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

Wall Street, occupied or not, has its triple witching hour four times a year, when three different types of securities expire all at once, creating a volatile market. I'm not aware of any similar jargon in theatre, but Friday night's calendar in Seattle had me wishing I could be in three audiences at once.

Up at the Erickson off Broadway, Balagan Theatre opened its much-anticipated production of Spring Awakening, a 2007 Tony-winning musical about teen angst and sexuality. Balagan's executive director Jake Groshong calls it "the best thing we've ever done," and that's saying a lot for Balagan, which first caught my interest with Othello in 2008 and has had numerous wonderful productions since. Spring Awakening is directed by Eric Ankrim, who directed and starred as Dr. Horrible at Balagan in 2010 and will grace the 5th Avenue Theatre stage as Curly in Oklahoma! later this year.

Down at Seattle Center the Seattle Shakespeare Company opened its production of Coriolanus, under the direction of David Quicksall. Coriolanus doesn't get staged often, though we saw a good performance of it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2008 and Intiman produced it early in the Bart Sher years. We're looking forward to seeing what Seattle Shakes does with it.

John Thomas (Ryan Higgins) gives the Little Man in the
Boat (Bobby Temple) the popsicle treatment during The
Descent Friday evening at 14/48, the World's quickest
theatre festival. Photo: 14/48.

Our Friday pick to attend, however, was day one of 14/48, the World's Quickest Theatre Festival. It has become a favorite event, a must-see each summer and winter. The premise is diabolical. Thursday evening the company throws themes into a giant ice cream cone. They pick one out at random. Seven playwrights go away and create a one-act play on the topic. Friday morning the directors pick plays and cast at random from the assembled company. Rehearsal commences, and the shows go on at 8 p.m. Friday. Then on Friday night a new topic is chosen, the process is repeated. By the time the lights come up early Sunday morning, you've seen 14 new world-premiere plays in 48 hours.

Friday night's theme was "Goin' Down South", which had many audience observers expecting seven plays about oral sex. Several of the plays went down there, none more hilariously than The Descent, written by Eric Lane Barnes and directed by Kate Jaeger. Special props to Ryan Higgins (John Thomas) and Bobby Temple ("The Little Man in the Boat.") Temple had the best line of the night, in offering some guidance to John Thomas: "I am not a popsicle!"

The 14/48 blog is super active; go check it out. Seven new plays on the topic of "delicious indescretion" will run at 8 and 10:30 this evening, and they'll do it next weekend, too. Spring Awakening runs at Balagan through Jan. 15, and it will likely be back for another couple of weeks in April. Coriolanus will be at Seattle Shakes through Jan. 29. Don't miss any of these shows. Support live theatre!

How much is that hankey in the window?

2011-12-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

It may be an indication of both my level of commitment to the Weisenheimer and of the quality of its content that the first post in nearly five months is obliquely scatological. But it cannot be helped. Exposure to great art has creativity coursing through my veins, and has thrust me unwillingly into the holiday spirit.

Window painting at a West
Seattle fast-food joint.

On my walk to breakfast this morning it struck me that this Christmas spud, painted in the window of a local fast-food restaurant, bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo. Maybe the dominant part of my brain is that of the 12-year-old, and perhaps I've watched too much South Park, but the window took me right to that spot.

I hesitated a bit before making this post. I didn't name the restaurant because this revelation might create trouble for the window painter. But I decided he (and let's face it, gender-neutral pronouns aside, if this window is a take-off on Mr. Hankey it was probably done by a guy) has a plausible defense: The thing in the window is a Christmas potato, and anyone who would see something else there is a true sicko. Plus, the creators of Mr. Hankey, Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, were originally accused of stealing the character from an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Later everyone agreed that singing and dancing poo was just a creative coincidence. Thus could it be with this painting.

Mr. Hankey, borrowed from the
South Park website.

I learned that last bit from a Wikipedia entry about the Mr. Hankey episode of South Park. This entry, about one episode of a 1997 cartoon, runs more than 4,500 words. That level of rigor is in itself an indication of the popularity and influence of the episode and of the immense power of the Internet to waste time, just as this blog post is an indication of the power of procrastination to put off doing real, productive work. Well, a little goofing off once every five months can't hurt!

Today's newfound creativity already has led me to two Groucho moments. The first, a reaction to my maturity level, recalls a Groucho insult: "You've got the brain of a 12-year-old, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it." (In the movie it was a four-year-old, a better insult.) The second was a comment to my sister-in-law, who posted on Facebook this morning that she's "teaching gym to preschoolers in my pj's today and tomorrow." You Grouchophiles wait for it: I couldn't help but respond, "How the preschoolers got into your pj's I don't know." Hooray for Captain Spaulding!

OK, back to work, except for those of you who go watch the episode, which clearly was influenced by A Charlie Brown Christmas. Howdy-ho!

Aladdin belongs to the Genie

2011-07-18T00:16:00.000-07:00

I was all set to dislike the production of Aladdin that's running at the 5th Avenue Theatre. We just don't need all of this Disney crap. (Misha Berson recently reported in the Seattle Times that Disney is considering a musical stage version of Freaky Friday. Wha-what??) Furthermore, the 5th did something of a bait-and-switch on us; I actually bought tickets for Oklahoma!, but that production was ditched when The Mouse came along with a scheme to gin up a musical version of the hit 1992 cartoon. Geez, was it that long ago already?

James Monroe Iglehart
steals the show in the role
of Genie.

Thus I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy a number of entertaining moments during the show, which should be re-named Genie!, because James Monroe Iglehart owns this sucker! Iglehart amped up the energy level tenfold whenever he appeared on the stage, as with show-stopping numbers "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali." (I'm often tempted here to steal the Noel Coward line: He stopped the show, but then it wasn't moving very fast.) Iglehart played in Memphis here in 2009 and then originated the role of Bobby on Broadway. He's a marvelous stage presence and a pleasure to watch.

Adam Jacobs and Courtney Reed were fine as Aladdin and Jasmine. Their magic carpet ride during the rendition of the Oscar-winning song "A Whole New World" was a marvelous bit of staging.

Many of the supporting characters were more fun, though. Babkak, Omar, and Kassim (Brian Gonzales, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, and Brandon O'Neill) were funny as Aladdin's street-band sidekicks who didn't make the cartoon version. Jonathan Freeman was diabolical as the meanie Jafar, and Don Darryl Rivera was great as Jafar's toady Iago.

Director and choreographer Casy Nicholaw keeps things moving. The dance is good as always. One beef with the costuming, though: this was the most demure group of harem girls one ever didn't get to lay eyes on. Damn Disney.

Aladdin is a work in progress. It's been running since July 7, though the "official" opening isn't until this Thursday, July 21. In fact, it was announced before the show that the creative team was in the audience today checking on reactions. One might guess there could be changes as they continue to tweak it.

The 5th plans to do Oklahoma! next season. Unless that Freaky Friday thing bumps it, or maybe The Mouse will want to do a musical version of The Love Bug.

Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, day 2

2011-07-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

After a full day of four plays last Saturday, my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I took in two more Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival shows Sunday, July 10 at Volunteer Park.

L-R: Ben McFadden as Arthur, Adria LaMorticella as
Morgan, and Daniel Goodman as Merlin in Balagan
Theatre's King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground.
Photo by Andrea Huysing.

Balagan Theatre delighted a good park crowd with its world premiere performance of King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground. The show is billed as "the epic legend of King Arthur set in the most politically charged and high-stakes setting the world has known: recess." It's just what it sounds like: Arthur and company are fifth graders at Camelot Public School #1. (It's only a model.) The kids loved the show with its madcap pace, goofy humor, and kid problem solving. There was plenty for the adults to enjoy as well, with its smart references to various episodes of the Arthur legend and, for the youngest adults, lots of references to video games as well. Plus there's an epic knock-knock-joke battle, and everyone gets juice at the end

Directed by Sam Hagen and written by Jaime Cruz, Maggie Lee, Juliet Waller Pruzan, Joanna Horowitz, Paul Mullin, and Matt Smith, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground features Ben McFadden in the title role, and Adria LaMorticella, Allison Standley, Andrew Murray, Charles Norris, Daniel Goodman, Jehan Whittaker, Johnny Patchamatla, Libby Barnard, Nik Donner, and Rachel Ross. They're all great fun!

Arthur played this weekend at Cal Anderson Park. The next two weekends (July 23-24 and 30-31) they will be at Magnuson Park, and then play at the Paradise Theater in Port Townsend Aug. 6. Check it out!

The Comedy of Errors cast at its curtain call July 10 in
Volunteer Park. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

The finale of the festival last weekend was the Wooden O production of The Comedy of Errors. Directed by George Mount, the show was a hilarious and marvelously entertaining end to a great festival. Mount sets the familiar mistaken-identity romp in Vaudeville times, and pulls it off beautifully.

For me the highlight was the two Dromios. For my money Chris Ensweiler is one of the funniest actors working Seattle stages (see our raves for his work in Seattle Shakes productions of Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Servant of Two Masters, and Twelfth Night). He's right on track in this one as Dromio of Syracuse. David S. Hogan is equally riotous as twin Dromio of Ephesus. Keith Dahlgren is a scream as the (intentionally) worst ventriloquist you'll ever see (several of the characters are dummies...) and, well, I really hate to single anyone out, because all of the performances were so fine in this satisfying show.

I am tempted to compare Mount's Comedy of Errors to the one directed by Ryan Higgins for GreenStage at the festival two years ago. But I won't do it. We really loved the Higgins version, which received six Wisey Award nominations in 2009, and won two, including best director for Higgins. But the past is over, and Mount has a great show you can see this summer. Get out and see it here and there through Aug. 7.

Now, if we can just find time to think about the 2010 Wiseys....

Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, day 1

2011-07-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

July is a great month to be a theater fan in Seattle. This weekend is the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival at Volunteer Park. GreenStage, producers of the festival, and Wooden O, the outdoor arm of Seattle Shakespeare Company, will be doing their free shows around the area well into August, and 14/48, the World's Quickest Theater Festival, plays the last two weekends of the month.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I took in four shows on opening day. The first, a production of As You Like It by Last Leaf Productions, was ultimately unsatisfying because it was often very difficult to hear even though we were in the third row of blankets from the front. Project, actors, project! Volunteer Park is a tough venue, with no acoustics to speak of, planes and helicopters overhead, barking dogs, and playing kids.

The performance was also hampered a bit by not one, but two, understudies in the cast, particularly the key role of Orlando, who gave it a game try. It's got to be tough to perform with script in hand.

We never got a program for the show, so we can't give a shout out to good performances, but we liked the actresses who played Rosalind and Touchstone especially.

Last Leaf is based in Monroe and will be performing As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice at various Eastside and Snohomish County locales through early August.

The cast of Macbeth takes a curtain call July 9. Photo:
Greg Scheiderer.

Second up was a truly marvelous production of Macbeth put on by Wooden O. Sweetie and I agree that Reginald André Jackson's performance was the best by a Thane of Cawdor that we'd ever seen. Jackson seemed well at home with the Bard's language, and portrayed Macbeth's swings between ambition, regret, tenderness, violence, and insanity without falling into the sort of cartoonish flailing that sometimes plagues the role.

Tracy Hyland also was spectacular as Lady Macbeth, and the cast was studded with favorites such as Mike Dooly, Shawn Belyea, David Goldstein, and Carter Rodriguez.

A couple of quibbles with the production, directed by Tim Hyland. An effort to have Jackson recite the lines of the second round of witches' prophecies in sync with spooky recorded ones. It didn't work, as they never got close to being in sync. And Macbeth having to mess with the play doll at the end just turned into a distraction. But all in all, it was a great show.

Theater Schmeater gets the "family show" slot in the festival every year, this time turning in an entertaining world premiere production of Arrh! A Dinosaur Ate My Spaceship by Bret Fetzer and Juliet Waller Puzan and directed by Steve Cooper. Any show with a flatulent T-Rex (Aaron Allshouse), the creature from Alien (Kendra Pierce) who can't say "fart" because her parents are in the audience, a calorie-conscious great white shark (Anna Richardson), goofy pirates, and an insane mad scientist (Tracy Leigh) is sure to be a smash.

The cast of The Tempest takes a bow after its
performance July 9. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Batting cleanup for the day was the GreenStage production of The Tempest, directed by Michael D. Blum. We'd have to say this show was spot on, a delightful production with great performances from a marvelous cast. Blum has created a show that is funny, sexy, touching, and sweet. GreenStage takes their Shakespeare seriously, but not so seriously that they can't have a lot of fun with it. A great example is when Prospero, played superbly by Ken Holmes, barks a "no tongues" warning to daughter Miranda (Alyssa Kay) and suitor Ferdinand (Matthew Fulbright) as they got in some necking at stage left. Prospero and Ariel (Gina Marie Russell) use their special powers for good, not evil.

There's not a bad performance in the bunch, though in addition to Holmes and Russell we especially liked Anthony Duckett's loopy Trinculo, Daniel Wood as Stephano clad in Superman underwear (don't ask, don't tell), and Don MacEllis as a far more human Caliban than we usually see in The Tempest.

The set for the show was pretty spare, even by Shakespeare in the Park standards. Other than the brick wall of the Volunteer Park amphitheater, it consisted of one stump, and another stump with arms that served as Prospero's throne. They didn't need anything else!

We'll surely be seeing this show a couple more times before the summer is out.

A tip of the sword also to Performers' Forge, a group dedicated to the education, training, and safety of stage combat. Forge members staged fistfights, swordfights, stickfights, and general mayhem during the breaks between shows. They're good, and they teach their craft for a lot of theater companies around town, as well as doing performances of their own.

Sense and Sensibility Sense-sational

2011-06-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

The current production of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility at Book-It Repertory Theatre is great fun, and does the company's customary superb job of faithfully telling a story without having to cram every last page into a six-hour theatrical production. Kudos to adapter Jen Taylor and director Makaela Pollock for creating a delightful show.

Jessica Martin (left) as Marianne Dashwood and
Kjerstine Anderson and Elinor Dashwood in the
Book-It Theatre production of Sense and
Sensibility. Photo: Alan Alabastro.

An unexpected treat was the casting of Kjerstine Anderson as eldest sister Elinor Dashwood. We've enjoyed Anderson's work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in recent years, especially a truly hilarious turn as Clarice in The Servant of Two Masters, for which she received a nomination for the best supporting actress Wisey back in 2009. Anderson doesn't get to be very funny as Elinor, what with all the fretting about where they're going to live and whether she'll ever hook up with Edward, but she carries the show marvelously. Karen Nelsen is a ball of fire as the nosy and meddlesome Mrs. Jennings, Angela DiMarco fiendish as the scheming Lucy Steele, and Jason Marr is fantastic as both the super-shy Edward Ferrars and his total doofus younger brother Robert Ferrars. (Has anyone else who has never read the Austen books but seen countless film and stage versions always thought the name was "Farris"?)

We have only a couple of small beefs with the show. The spectacular Shawn Law doesn't get nearly enough to do as John Dashwood and Mr. Palmer. Jessica Martin as Marianne Dashwood does a credible job of playing air-pianoforte, but certainly they could have rigged up some sort of set piece that looked like an actual instrument. And the curtain-based scene changes were a little goofy and blocked part of the view of the stage for some of the audience, such as my Sweetie, the official scorer's mom, who was in town and came to the show with us the second time we saw it.

Unfortunately, you can't go see Sense and Sensibility yourself. The final performance in the run is on stage even as I write this.

Carp and Elliott separated at birth?

2011-06-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

I used to be a baseball fanatic. These days I don't even know the faces of most of the Mariners. There's a Japanese guy on the team who looks vaguely familiar, and I know Franklin Gutierrez because his likeness has been immortalized on a flyswatter. The rest of 'em I don't know from LeBron James.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I have not watched much Mariner TV in three or four years. That's about how long ago we had our cable TV disconnected. We realized that about all we really cared to watch was M's baseball, and that had become painful. So we saved the $50/month and gave up the cable. Without so much time wasted on television, we were free to waste more time on Facebook, Twitter, and writing silly blog posts.

Last year was the first year since 1976 that I did not attend even one Mariner game. (I nearly skipped 1995 in protest of the strike of 94-95, but got roped in during the Refuse-to-Lose miracle that Rick Rizzs keeps reminding us about.) We haven't been this year, either. And it's been quite a few years since I've bought a baseball card. So, following along strictly on the radio, I have really no idea what most of these all-stars look like.

Thus it was that we happened to be eating recently in a public establishment while the ballgame was on the tube there, and I was startled to see that a dead ringer for a famous comedian was playing for Seattle. I had no idea who the player was, nor could I quite place who it was I thought he looked like. A few minutes with Google gave me the answer:

On the left, Mariner outfielder/firstbaseman/designated hitter Mike Carp. On the right, funnyman Chris Elliott. Carp was tearing up the PCL in Tacoma to the tune of a .348 average and 19 home runs, but he's batting just .179 for the M's this season, his third cup of coffee in the bigs. So it's up to you to decide who is funnier.

While many Mariners performances over the years have been truly hilarious, Elliott may be the first true comedian to play for the club since several Groucho Marxes appeared on the field during funny-nose glasses night in 1982.

Arms and the Man entertains at Seattle Public

2011-06-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Seattle Public Theater is wrapping up its 2010-11 season with a hilarious production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. The show, directed by the company's artistic director Shana Bestock, kept the audience in stitches with its brisk pacing and fine performances from a cast of wonderful local talents.

Anne Kennedy Brady as Raina Petkoff
and Ryan Childers as Sergius Saranoff
in Arms and the Man at Seattle Public
Theater. Photo: Paul Bestock.

I wonder why we don't see more Shaw on Seattle stages. I recall a particularly wonderful production of Arms at Intiman about 2002, which featured R. Hamilton Wright and Laurence Ballard. Shaw is such a great wit, and the story of Arms holds up well more than 100 years after it was first produced: Boys meet girls, class lines get all muddied, and everyone mostly lives happily ever after.

Weisenheimer particularly enjoyed the performance of Frank Lawler as the chocolate cream soldier, Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary soldier who prefers lugging truffles into battle rather than ammo. He was so matter of fact and deadpan about his chickenhearted survival instinct! Bluntschli takes cover from the battle in the boudoir of Raina Petkoff (Anne Kennedy Brady) who is betrothed to Sergius Saranoff (Ryan Childers), a doofus local officer who really has more of an eye for the Petkoff's servant, Louka (Brenda Joyner). Bluntschli's return to the household to return a jacket turns into an extended stay, and all the romantic entanglements get straightened out. Props, too, to Julie Jamieson and Gordon Carpenter as the elder Petkoffs, and to Mark Fullerton who is remarkably straight faced as the butler Nicola.

Arms and the Man, highly recommended, runs at Seattle Public through June 12.

We're opera mad (and we're not even in Camelot)

2011-05-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

The three of you who read Weisenheimer on occasion know that my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I enjoy going to the theater. Yet up until this weekend we had, between us, exactly one visit to the opera in our entire lives combined. My Sweetie went with her third-grade class, and still recalls being petrified with all the rules laid down for her behavior: don't make noise, don't speak unless spoken to, don't stand up, don't fidget. She was afraid to breathe until the thing was over!

We're opera-mad in Camelot; we sing from the diaphragm
a lot. From Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Weisenheimer's opera experience has been pretty much limited to the movies A Night at the Opera by the Marx Brothers, during which Harpo inserts "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" into the score, and Moonstruck, in which Nicholas Cage wins Cher by taking her to the opera.

Oh, and there was Tommy, but that was a rock opera, and not quite the same.

Anyway, Friday we changed all that by going to The Magic Flute at Seattle Opera, and we had a darn good time! Speight Jenkins was the general director and Asher Fisch principal guest conductor for the work by Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder.

The folks at Seattle Opera did their best to frighten my Sweetie by sending out a pre-show email that included a First Timers Guide with handy tips on such topics as what to wear and when to yell "Bravo!" (After the song is over, it turns out, is a good time for that.) She didn't get scared, though, because she never got around to reading the note.

Cynthia didn't do the full Cher treatment, but did get her hair done. I didn't go all tux-y, but did wear gray slacks, a white shirt, black jacket, and my best comedy/drama tie. We looked smashing!

I'm not sure I'm qualified to review operas after one time, but the set was fascinating, the costumes gorgeous, puppetry and clowning fantastic, and there was some incredible singing, led by Mari Moriya, who was the Queen of the Night. Jonathan Boyd as prince Tamino and Leigh Melrose as Papageno were great, too, and a bunch of little kids who were the offspring of Papageno and Papagena were adorable, with one particularly getting amped up during ovation time. (Or maybe she just had to pee badly. Anyway she was hopping around like she was a pogo stick!)

Like Rick Blaine when the Nazis marched into Paris, my German is a little rusty, but I could pick up some of the lyrics and dialog, and luckily the English supertitles filled in the gaps.

I expect we will continue to mix some opera in with our theater-going in the future. Bravo!!

Greeks, guys, and dolls

2011-05-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

I experienced both ends of the Seattle theater spectrum this weekend, saw two enjoyable shows, and came away from it feeling a little sad.

Brandon O'Neill, center, plays
Sky Masterson in the 5th Avenue
Theatre production of Guys and
Dolls. Also pictured are Brittany
Jamieson, Kasey Nusbickel, Nikki
Long, and Marissa Quimby.

The 5th Avenue Theatre production of Guys and Dolls is a lot of fun. The show is stuffed with standards such as "Luck Be a Lady", "A Bushel and a Peck", "Adelaide's Lament", and "If I Were a Bell." The fabulous "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" by Nicely-Nicely (Todd Buonopáne) was a show-stopper at the end. Director Peter Rothstein filled the show with clever staging, Noah Racey's choreography and the dancing were marvelous, and Kate Sutton-Johnson's set was cool. The four leads all are familiar to Seattle audiences, as are many of the supporting players including the incomparable Clayton Corzatte and Laura Kenny. Musicals aren't Weisenheimer's favorite, but Ma Weisenheimer loves 'em and so we go. Guys and Dolls ranks among my favorites of the last couple of years. A big Sunday matinee crowd enjoyed the show immensely.

Friday night my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I took in Sophocles' Ajax at Open Circle Theater. Like the musical, the Greek tragedy isn't necessarily my favorite, though I write that knowing that, if we ever get around to handing out the Wisey Awards for 2010, the Seattle Shakes production of Electra probably wins. However the Ajax cast was loaded with talented Balagan Theatre pals, so it was a show we didn't want to miss. Todd van der Ark adapted the story and Linda Lombardi directed the tale of war, betrayal, rage, madness, and love.

They did a great job. We really like Ryan Fields, who was super in the title role. Ryan Higgins as Achilles was one of the more intense dead guys you'll ever see. Daniel Arreola, Ashley Bagwell, Curtis Eastwood, and Hannah Schnabel were super.

Unfortunately, there were just 10 people in the audience, including the bartender. Friday night in Belltown and they couldn't draw a crowd of any sort. We had dinner at a restaurant just a block away, and our server had never heard of the show or the theater.

That's where my sadness comes in. The 5th Avenue has resources. I remember thinking a couple of years ago, while watching their production of Hello, Dolly!, that the train everyone climbed aboard was a set piece that probably cost more than Balagan's entire annual budget. They're pleasing big crowds. Meanwhile Open Circle is pleasing crowds, too, and talented actors are working hard to put on a show that entertains. But their program includes an appeal for donated office supplies and, maybe, a new sewing machine.

This weekend is the final one for Ajax. I think you need to get out and see it! Guys and Dolls runs at the 5th through June 5.

Fly swatter day? Are you kidding me?

2011-05-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

Back in the day major league baseball teams used to give away cool items that were worth having in order to entice fans to the ballpark. Bat night, ball night, mitt night, cap night, seat cushion night, and t-shirt night were staples. I had a Seattle Pilots helmet given away on helmet night. The helmets had two holes in the top, ostensibly for ventilation, though we smart-ass 12-year-olds considered the helmets to be crying buckets (given the sorry nature of the club) and thought the holes had to be plugged in order to avoid the spilling of the tears all over town. For years I carried my keys on a Mariners give-away keychain that was emblazoned with the team slogan of the year, "Anything Can Happen." They might even win 50 games this season! Wow!

As Dave Barry would say, I am
not making this up. If you're free
for the M's afternoon game of May
19 you can get a Franklin Gutierrez
flyswatter absolutely free.
He's got a huge mitt. Get it?

Thus it was with a certain amount of disbelief that as my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I listened to today's game during a drive down to Seaview for a stay at the Audubon Cottage at China Beach Retreat, we heard a promo for the upcoming Franklin Gutierrez fly swatter day.

This is no joke. Well, it is, but it's also apparently a true story.

Gutierrez is a fabulous center fielder who has earned the not-so-creative sobriquet "Death to Flying Things" for his ability to snare fly balls. It wasn't a great leap, then, for the marketing geniuses with the team to come up with the idea for flyswatter night. It puts me in mind of the old George Carlin bit, "How much is that dog crap in the window?", in which the guys in sales came up with suggested placements for fake vomit that would maximize the humor. "Near the refrigerator! Hey, Charlie, stop the presses!"

As if flyswatter day needed any help being funny, the subject of the giveaway, Gutierrez, has been on the disabled list all year with irritable bowel syndrome, which suggests that there might be a Lomotil night in the M's future. And flyswatter day is Thursday, May 19, a game with a 12:40 start time that ensures that mainly business executives and the rest of the luxury suite set, the homeless, the unemployed, shift workers, and truants will be able to snag the Guti swatter. Not everyone, though, just the first 20,000 people through the turnstiles. How many of these things will we see on EBay within 24 hours? (As of this moment there are 404 results on EBay for "flyswatter," though none of them involve Gutierrez or any other baseball player. You can get a flyswatter with the Cubs logo, just $7 plus shipping, and there is a lovely WWF swatter, too.) And what sort of price will they fetch?

You can buy a hand-made
Cubs flyswatter on EBay. I
am not making this up.

What sort of promotions are other teams cooking up for their star players? I wonder if there's a Derek Jeter mousetrap night. How about Albert Pujols roach motel giveaway? Maybe a Roy Halladay no-pest-strip promotion.

Back when the M's were winning 116 games in a year, the good promotions must have been easier to come by. Now that they're in their more familiar place as 100-game losers and A.L. West doormats, the club is so bad that flyswatter day isn't even the dumbest promotion on the schedule. Last month they gave away bags of dirt to fans, a mockable event (I joked at the time it was nearly as exciting as Jack Wilson bobblehead night), though it apparently had something to do with educating fans about composting. During today's broadcast I swear I heard a promo for another dirt night, though there's nothing on the M's website about it. And mark your calendars for Sunday, June 5, which is Little League Day, at which all kids 14 and under will receive a Chone Figgins poster because there's no better model for kids than a self-centered .217-hitting malcontent who is probably still on the payroll of the Angels, who are paying him to continue to suck while playing for a division rival. And Friday, July 29, is Sonics Celebration Night, some sort of remembrance of the NBA club that last played in town three years ago. One has to hope that Howard Schultz will throw out the first pitch. A lot of folks in town would love to give him a little chin music. There's also an M's Oktoberfest, which is scheduled for Sept. 27 because, let's face it, the M's won't be playing in October.

There are signs the weather won't be getting any better, too. King Felix knit cap night is June 18, and, in the heat of the summer, Aug. 26 is Mariners Fleece Blanket Night. The next night is singles night, and I'm not sure if that's for people without partners, or just a recognition of the team's lack of power.

Oh, and guys, on Fathers Day, June 19, the team will give away Mariners coasters to the first 10,000 dads. The folks who frisk you at the gate will also do the DNA test. Holy smokes!

We are slackers. Here are 13 mini-reviews.

2011-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Way back on Feb. 24 before a performance of The Brothers Size at Seattle Rep, Weisenheimer and my Sweetie, the official scorer, were grilled by readers Jason Harber and José Amador (and we were a bit amazed to find that we really had readers, actually) about our paucity of posts in recent months. Not to make excuses, but in early December we moved out of our house and into a rental for a two-month remodeling project that, as we move into month number six, is nearly finished. Somewhere in there I quit my job and joined the family firm. So things have been a little hectic.

John Bradshaw left, then returned to
Seattle Shakespeare Company,
where he's managing director.

We've managed fully one post since then, about the departures of John Bradshaw and Stephanie Shine from Seattle Shakespeare Company. Bradshaw left first, but upon the departure of Shine a week later, decided not to leave after all and returned to his post as the company's managing director. That's a good thing! We've not commented at all about the troubles over at Intiman, which has sacked its entire staff and shut down for the rest of its season, intending to regroup and re-emerge next year. How that will play with those who had recently forked over in an effort to keep the financially troubled theater afloat is anyone's guess.

Despite the craziness in our lives, we have still been getting out to the theatre. Here's what we've been up to since our last review, a Jan. 29 post about Balagan Theatre's production of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

Merry Wives of Windsor at Seattle Shakes. The final production of the company's current season, directed by Terry Edward Moore, scores with big laughs. Leslie Law and Candace Vance were especially great as the title wives, John Patrick Lowrie was grand as Sir John Falstaff, and Therese Diekhans was marvelous as the scheming Mistress Quickly. Merry Wives runs through May 15.

9 to 5 at 5th Avenue. A fun, musical stage version of the 1980 film featured Dolly Parton on video and a lot of period pieces on the set. Where did they find so many Selectric typewriters?

You are about to enter another dimension. Tim
Moore as Rod Serling in Twilight Zone Live!

Twilight Zone Live! at Theater Schmeater. Adapted from the TV series and directed by Tim Moore, who also got big laughs with his spot-on Rod Serling impression, the cast included many of this page's favorites, including Megan Ahiers, Ashley Bagwell, Tracy Leigh, Lisa Viertel, and Jon Lutyens. Props to Rob Burgess, who has roles in all three episodes, including Wordworth, the obsolete librarian from one of my favorite shows in the series.

Of Mice and Men at Seattle Rep. John Steinbeck is one of Weisenheimer's favorite authors, and there have been a couple of great film versions of the book, but we really hadn't intended to go to this until we learned of the cast, led by Seattle favorite Charles Leggett as Lennie, and also featuring Troy Fischnaller (George), Ray Tagavilla (Carlson), and Seanjohn Walsh (Curley). While we enjoyed the production, we thought director Jerry Manning went a little too cartoonish with Curley, who was in a ridiculous red wig and spent most of the time strutting about sputtering with his chest puffed out. Leggett's performance alone was worth the price of admission (which is getting awfully high at the Rep, I must say.)

Shawn Belyea as Daniel and Jaime Roberts as Virginia in
LGT's proeduction of Hardball. Photo: Omar Willey.

Hardball by Live Girls Theater at Annex. The world premiere of Victoria Stewart's play about a young woman's transformation from journalist to popular pundit. The story, the main character of which is not-very-loosely based on Ann Coulter, doesn't sound like that exciting of a premise for a play. But an outstanding cast and direction by Meghan Arnette, make for an outstanding show. A late scene of an on-camera debate between the Coulter character, Virginia (played by Jaime Roberts) and Suzanne (Alyssa Keene) really crackled.

Great Expectations at Book-It. Kevin McKeon directed this wonderful adaptation of the Dickens book, starring Lee Osorio as Pip and our good friend Mike Dooly as Joe.

Janiva Magness at Jazz Alley. We worked some music into the first quarter, as chart-topping blues artist Janiva Magness played the Alley on March 1. Magness does a great live show. Check out our reviews from last year's performaces in February and April.

The Threepenny Opera by Seattle Shakes at Intiman. A big cast, marvelous costumes, and a bigger house over at Intiman ultimately led to a pretty disappointing and overlong production.

The Brothers Size at Seattle Rep. My Sweetie, the official scorer, didn't seem all that impressed by this story of brotherly love, but Tarell McCraney's script and story moved me. Directed by Juliette Carrillo and set, essentially, on a big pile of old tires, it was a grand tale of brothers who don't have much but each other.

The K of D at Seattle Rep. We spent a lot of time at the Rep, which is wrapping up a pretty good season. This time my Sweetie really liked the production. I, while impressed with actress Renata Friedman's ability to carry this one-woman show and portray about 250 characters seamlessly, the story really didn't grab me all that much.

Ann Flannigan was great as Norma, the bossy and bitchy
sister who is just trying to keep the family together. I'm sure
all of the characters wanted to kill her! Photo by TorStudios.

The Last Schwartz at Harlequin Productions. This Olympia theater is doing some great work these days, and for the second straight year staged a show by Deborah Zoe Laufer, playwright of End Days. Schwartz featured a super strong cast, with great performances from my former colleague Ann Flannigan as Norma, the de facto momma of a somewhat disfunctional family, Scott C. Brown as brother Herb, who just wants the coffee table, and Alison Monda as Kia, outrageous model girlfriend of brother Gene.

Emilie at ArtsWest. An encore performance. I'd seen the play one evening when my Sweetie was out of town and was sure she'd like it, so went again. She did.

Duel of the Linguist Mages at Annex Theatre. Local playwright Scotto Moore wrote and directed this interesting sci-fi play featuring local favorites Jen Moon, James Weidman, and Curtis Eastwood. Moore's work is out there, and Mages is no exception, with a fascinating plot featuring researchers hacking language to control everything.

OK, there. You're up to date.

Big changes at Seattle Shakes

2011-03-10T18:54:00.000-08:00

Seattle Shakespeare Company has just taken a hell of a one-two punch. A week ago the company sent out word that John Bradshaw, its managing director since 2004, was stepping down to raise funds for a favorite nonprofit. Today comes news that Stephanie Shine, who has been the company's artistic director for 13 years, will be leaving at the end of June. They're going to have to completely re-work their masthead!

Stephanie Shine, artistic director at
Seattle Shakespeare Company for the
past 13 years, announced her departure
just a week after word came out that
managing director John Bradshaw also
was leaving.

When the top leadership depart in quick succession the knee-jerk reaction is to think "sinking ship." But its nearly impossible to believe that this is the case at Seattle Shakes. The word on the street, and on the Facebooks, is that the company is well into the black, having just concluded a most successful run of The Threepenny Opera, directed by Shine. My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I weren't exactly wild about the show, but we went, and so did a lot of other folks. And we have absolutely loved a number of their productions in recent years, including Hamlet and Wittenberg earlier this season, the fantastic Electra in 2009-10, and superb stagings of The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, and The Servant of Two Masters in 2008-09. Balagan and Seattle Shakespeare Company are the two theatre groups in town to which we hold season subscriptions.

Phil Miller, the chair of the board of directors for Seattle Shakes, wrote about the future in a letter sent today to the company's supporters:

Seattle Shakespeare Company's Board of Directors is re-evaluating the Company's leadership and internal organizational structure. We plan to move forward towards a permanent plan that will be in place by the start of the Company's new fiscal year on July 1, 2011. We have a number of exciting options on the table and are thrilled by the possibilities. It is too soon to name names, but you can expect to hear details that will inspire your interest in our theatre and confirm your confidence in the financial stability and management of Seattle Shakespeare Company.

Miller added that he expects Shine to continue to be involved with Seattle Shakes as an actor and director.

Interesting times. We hope they get someone strong to steer their ship through this tempest. They have four big shoes to fill.

Dr. Horrible returns in all its horribality

2011-01-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

Balagan Theatre sold every last ticket to its production of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog during a run in August and September last year that proved to be the company's final show in its Capitol Hill basement. Dr. Horrible is back, bigger and better than ever, for a three-week run directed by Kate Jaeger and on stage in the Allen Theatre at ACT.

Annie Jantzer returns as Penny in Balagan
Theatre's production of Dr. Horrible's
Sing-Along Blog running at ACT through
Feb. 12.

In addition to Jaeger, there are a few other high-profile changes with the new staging. William A. Williams, who had an ensemble part in last year's run, stepped into the title role admirably. Erik Ankrim, who directed last year's show along with M. Elizabeth Eller, in addition to playing the lead, was unable to participate this time. Evan Woltz, a favorite from Balagan's 2009 production of The Full Monty, joined the cast, as did Bobby Temple, who also was the dance captain for Dr. Horrible. Maybe the biggest change was the venue. ACT's spacious Allen Theatre allowed for some bigger and badder production values and a much greater scale than the old basement allowed.

Jake Groshong and Annie Jantzer returned in their major roles of Captain Hammer and Penny, joining Williams in a fiendish and evil love triangle. The trio are marvelous.

Don't just take my word for it. SeattlePI.com made Dr. H one of its top eight things to do in Seattle this weekend. Also check out the cast doing a number from the show on the KING-TV program New Day NW.

The full house at ACT seemed to enjoy the opening night of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and sent cast and crew off with a standing ovation. Let the full house be a warning to you, though: Tickets are going fast, so you'd better hop on the ACT website PDQ to order tickets. The show runs through Feb. 12.

Full disclosure: Weisenheimer is the president of the board at Balagan, but it doesn't mean I'm biased!

ArtsWest comes up with the right formula with Emilie

2011-01-27T19:58:00.000-08:00

Voltaire (Nick DeSantis) sneaks
a peck from Emilie (Kate Witt)
during Emilie by Lauren
Gunderson, running through
Feb. 20 at ArtsWest. Photo:
Michael Brunk, ArtsWest.

After the Seattle opening of Emilie Wednesday evening playwright Lauren Gunderson enthused that it was like meeting her own characters for the first time, such was her enthusiasm for the production created by director Susanna Wilson and cast at ArtsWest in West Seattle.

Emilie is the story of Emilie du Châtelet, early 18th century French mathematician and physicist who came up with the notion, "force vive", that kinetic energy was proportional not to the velocity of an object, as believed by Newton, but to the square of its velocity. She also translated, and upgraded, Newton's Principia Mathematica into French, and that translation is still the standard in the language today.

If that sounds like a boring premise for a play, well, you're wrong. Plus it's also about battles between head and heart, of women in science, and a dandy verbal duel between Emilie, played by Kate Witt, and her lover, the pompous horse's ass and usually wrong Voltaire (Nick DeSantis).

Witt's Emilie is reincarnated to tell her life story, in which young Emilie is played by the talented and fetching Sara Coates. (I expect Voltaire may have written that if Sara Coates didn't exist we would have to invent her. But I digress.) Jason Marr is wonderful as a number of men, including Emilie's husband, a future lover, and Sir Isaac Newton. Jody McCoy plays a variety of women, including Emilie's ever-so-proper mother.

A randy Voltaire (Nick DeSantis)
gets it on with living Emilie (Sara
Coates), but it's narrator Emilie
(Kate Witt) who really makes the
sparks fly. Photo: Michael Brunk,
ArtsWest.

Coates gets the kissing scenes because narrator/Emilie Witt gets zapped with electricity and the lights go out if she actually comes into contact with the figures from her past. It underscores the isolation she feels as she toils away in a scientific world that very much belongs to the men.

Witt is fabulous and owns the stage, which is literally her blackboard. Director Wilson and designer Dan Schuy came up with a set that is mostly chalkboard paint, and Emilie scribbles her formulae and diagrams all over the place, as well as her running tally of the good points of love and philosophy. Emilie, a larger-than-life force, wins at everything, including cards. Though for a while there she's not so sure she'll win at love.

The end was surprisingly moving. Emilie gets pregnant at 42, and it becomes a race between the very probably deadly childbirth and finishing her translation of Newton.

In an interesting touch, Wilson has Witt remain on stage during the intermission, continuing her studies and making notes and diagrams on the chalkboards. Most of the opening-night audience missed it, but I missed intermission; it was too interesting to watch!

Emilie has crackling dialog and vivid characters, and it's a fabulous story. Don't miss it. It runs at ArtsWest through Feb. 20.

Local artist's work on exhibit in Tacoma

2011-01-23T16:36:00.000-08:00

Mindi Katzman's "Preaching to the Choir,"
encaustic on paper on board, 2010, depicts
a scene that will be familiar to West Seattle
residents. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

I dropped by Tacoma's Brick House Gallery, operated by my friend Peter MacDonald, last Thursday to check out the art of Mindi Katzman. Though I'd never seen her work before, there was something immediately familiar. West Seattle residents will certainly recognize Katzman's paintings that feature iconic totem poles from around the neighborhood, as well as another that includes the Alki Statue of Liberty, a work that is featured on her business cards and the home page of her website.

In addition to those, another painting of a Puget Sound scene in the show, titled "Another Point of View," seemed like a familiar sight. As it turned out, the landscape was painted from a viewpoint at the end of Waite Street, just a short walk away from Weisenheimer world headquarters.

Our cell-phone photos don't do the work justice. Katzman works with encaustic, applying colored wax to the surface. Marvelous, vibrant colors and an interesting texture result. Many of her paintings feature birds who appear as curious about the scenes depicted as do we, the gallery patrons. Katzman also does some marvelous painted metal sculptures depicting tropical locales. One that had several beds of calla lilies on it particularly caught my eye; don't tell my mom, who used to have a bunch of calla lilies in the back yard, but my sister and I used to blow them up with firecrackers.

Katzman's "Road's End" depicts a
scene from a Waite Street viewpoint
not far from Weisenheimer world
headquarters. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Katzman is a delightful sort and we hit it off well. It helped, I'm sure, that she and her husband Michael Dupille, who also played guitar during the reception Thursday, had just returned to the Northwest from a visit to Kitt Peak Observatory near Tucson. Weisenheimer is author of the Seattle Astronomy blog, so we had art and the cosmos as common interests. She seemed interested in our post about the photography of Roger Ressmeyer, now on exhibit at ArtsWest gallery, and hoped to get over to see it before that show closes at the end of the month.

The Katzman exhibit is a celebratory one for the Brick House, which has been open for about a year now. Congrats to MacDonald on the first anniversary and on another excellent show.

You can see more of Katzman's work on her website, and on that of the Brick House Gallery.

14/48: Good for the soul; now how do we feed it until July?

2011-01-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday afternoon is kind of a downer. 14/48, the world's quickest theatre festival, is over. It won't be back until July.

In the space of nine days the festival gave us 28 world-premiere one-act plays. That's a festival worth celebrating!

This second weekend of the festival was a little uneven. Friday night's shows in general weren't all that memorable. Perhaps a difficult theme, "Worse Than Death," had something to do with that. Most of the playwrights went TO death, or beyond it, or to some alternate place of existence such as prison, heaven, or someplace on the other side of the Large Hadron Collider.

There were a few bright spots. In Force Quit, written by Wayne Rawley and directed by Annie Lareau, Keith Dahlgren is delightful as a sadistic IT support guy who tortures poor Brian D. Simmons, who is going to lose his job if Dahlgren can't find a lost file, or if he lets management know about the interesting websites Simmons has visited on company time. Susanna Burney and Teru McDonald were hilarious as two workers trying to advance their careers at the donut shop by winning the favors of the manager (Evan Mosher) in All of the Holes, written by Kelleen Conway-Blanchard and directed by Bret Fetzer. Burney, her bosom smeared with jelly donut filling, wins.

Bridezilla and the Monster Dimension, written by Matt Smith and directed by Greg Carter, was a wild circus that had one great pun that got a belly laugh out of me. The troupe is on the way to a wedding in the Large Hadron Collider, for which the groom said the cost was "astronomical." I thought it was really funny, and then the bride corrected him, saying the collider didn't have anything to do with astronomy. Personally, I'd say she's wrong. If sorting out the relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity isn't about astronomy, what is?

Saturday night was much better, with a theme of "Cheaters Never Prosper" resulting in some funny plays. In Severance Pay by Rawley and directed by Fetzer, Trick Danneker and Jaime Roberts convince Shawn Belyea to let them chop off the tip of his little finger, part of their dubious plot to bring down the fast food industry. Revenge of the Goldfish, by Brandon J. Simmons and directed by Greg Carter, was a hilarious self-referential play about the theater industry, in which the audience, McDonald, winds up strangling the playwright, Simmons, for turning out crap. (Though my Sweetie, the official scorer, says self-referential humor is cheating and cheaters never prosper.) Larson vs. Whammy, by Celene Ramadan and directed by Lareau, was a riot as Don Darryl Rivera figured out how to beat the game show "Press Your Luck," then lost his fortune and was forever haunted by Whammies. One of the whammies sat on my knee, too.

Boombas, written by Elizabeth Heffron and directed by Brian Faker, was marvelous, as cheating spouse Dahlgren faces off against his wife (Alyssa Bostwick), their shrink (Burney) and his mistress (Annette Auger), a Latvian who does him "twice a veek." Once they determine that Dahlgren's problem is that his wife's boombas aren't "pert" any more, all three women tear off theirs, leaving all six on the stage and creating a certain amount of freedom.

I couldn't find any photos on line from this weekend's 14/48
plays, so here's a shot of Lisa Viertel from the 2009
production of Penguins at Annex Theatre.

My absolute favorite of the weekend was Gertrude and Tonya Watch the Twitter, written by Smith and directed by Richard Ziman. In the show Lisa Viertel and Deniece Bleha are two old bats at the retirement center sparring over the rights to date the most eligible bachelor in the joint, so deemed because he still has his hearing. Viertel is a riot as an obscenity-spewing old woman in a wheelchair. She and Bleha also squabble about whether they should see a movie; Viertel prefers to watch her Twitter feed, because it's full of celebrities talking to each other. "Isn't that what a movie is?" asks Bleha. The two end up in a knock-down-drag-out fight, in which Bleha, who uses a cane, has an advantage over the wheelchair-using Viertel. Naturally, they finish on the floor in a lip lock. It doesn't sound so hilarious as I describe it, but it worked, and Viertel in particular is a crazy funny actor. She was, by the way, chosen this weekend for the Mazen Award for veteran 14/48 participants for their contribution to the spirit of risk taking and camaraderie embodied in the festival's process. Well deserved!

This show also featured an example of why my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I often urge theatre folks to eschew whiz-bang techie stuff and let the text and the actors carry the day. The show featured the actual tweets from the celebrities projected on the back wall. However, in the 8 p.m. show the projection didn't work, and all we saw up there was the "no signal" test pattern. They'd ironed the bugs out by the 10:30 show, but I thought it distracted from the great acting of Viertel and Bleha, and didn't really add anything. When Viertel, looking at her phone, growls, "Britney, you crazy whore," you don't have to see an actual tweet to know it's funny!

Many thanks to everyone involved in 14/48. Even if the plays don't always work, it's always a great time. We can't wait until July!

New Weisenheimer blog on astronomy

2011-01-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

Poster for the exhibit The Beginning of Totality, photos by
Roger Ressmeyer. Image courtesy ArtsWest.

Weisenheimer launched a new, separate blog about astronomy recently. After a little over a year of writing about local astronomy for Examiner.com, I decided to start SeattleAstronomy.com. Having my own site gives me a lot more editorial control over the look and content of the site. While it's titled "Seattle Astronomy", my aim is to cover space and astronomy news and events from Seattle and the Northwest.

Every once in a while my interests in astronomy and other topics intersect. It happened this week, and in this case it's art, photography, and astronomy. There's a great new exhibit at ArtsWest Gallery in West Seattle called The Beginning of Totality. It features the work of renowned photographer Roger Ressmeyer, who gained some fame as a celebrity photographer beginning in the mid-'70s, but who later turned his camera lenses skyward to shoot a different sort of star.

Check out my review of The Beginning of Totality, and get out to ArtsWest for the exhibit, which runs through the end of the month.

14/48 : Good for the soul

2011-01-11T01:47:00.000-08:00

Photos: Michelle Bates

Before Friday, it had been 42 days since we'd seen a play. That's too long. The first weekend of this January's 14/48, The World's Quickest Theater Festival, hosted at ACT, came just in time. And was it ever good for the soul.

Friday's theme was "It's All Part of the Plan." My first thought was, oh good, lots of plays about fundamentalists. And indeed we had a couple. In one of our favorites of the evening, Planning for Disaster, written by Maria Glanz and directed by K. Brian Neel, Megan Ahiers and James Weidman delight as a couple who come face to face with god, are not smote, come face to face with each other, and are smitten. Ahiers is hilarious as the hausfrau who cracks a bit under the stress of a false alarm and blurts out lots of deliciously naughty words and wants.


Terri Weagant and Sara Mountjoy-Pepka

The highlight of the weekend was Exactly What You Would Do, a beautiful love story written by Scotto Moore, directed by Ryan Higgins, and superbly acted by Terri Weagant and Sara Mountjoy-Pepka playing a futuristic, head-over-heels-in-love engaged couple. Mountjoy-Pepka's character comes home to her fiancée with some startling news from work. She's accepted an assignment as chief medical officer to a planet 15 light years away. What begins as a rather typical argument about life and wedding and career plans quickly becomes difficult as we discover along with Weagant's character that her fiancée can be cloned. That, in fact, she already has. That, in fact, she has already left on her assignment—making the woman who came home that night the clone. In the end, Weagant's character accepts her cloned fiancée, recognizing, and telling her—that's exactly what you would do. This was one of the times when it really paid to see both the 8:00 and the 10:30 shows; at the closing night show we appreciated all the nuances of the performances even more.

Workin' Girls, by Scot Augustson and directed by R. Hamilton Wright, was perfectly cast by the ice cream cone gods of 14/48 and brilliantly set in the 40s. Pretty boys Jason Harber and Shawn Law were a hoot as mannequins-turned-lotharios, Jennifer Jasper was a riot with sidekick Aly Bedford as dreamers with imaginations so much bigger than the Wichita Woolworth, and Roy Stanton turned in a series of perfect villains, from uptight store manager to Nazi to Indiana Jones' evil twin. Great fun.

The theme for Saturday night was "Bedtime Stories." Friday night after the show some of us were speculating whether we'd get dirty, or creepy, or silly plays. It turns out that given the theme "Bedtime Stories," 5 out of 7 playwrights will write about grief and loss, loneliness and separation. Usually I laugh all the way through a night of 14/48; Saturday I went home with that vague hangovery headache you get from crying; and I wouldn't have missed a moment of it.

The night opened with The Story of Us, by Patrick Scott and directed by Erin Kraft. Shawn Law is one of those actors who can do vulnerable to turn your heart inside out (Hamlet), and he and the ensemble of Amy Love, Jason Harber, and Andrew Litzky turned in gutsy, heartfelt performances in this touching, funny, wrenching story of a veteran's instructions to his combat buddies to enact "the story of us" for his widow.

The Way It Was, by Brendan Healy and directed by R. Hamilton Wright, was an equally touching story of a man struggling to say goodbye to the woman he loves, on life support after an accident. Megan Ahiers and Joseph P. McCarthy played it with frank emotion and no sentimentality, so it packed a wallop even as their characters' quirkiness and honesty made us laugh.

The Olive Bed by David Drummond and directed by Jennifer Jasper was a delightful retelling of Odysseus (Mark Boeker) coming home to Penelope (Kate Jaeger), and Penelope testing him after 20 years of separation; Marcy Rodenborn provided comic relief, hilarious as the exasperated Eurycleia.

Cover Me by Scot Augustson and directed by Andy Jensen was a story of lives that intertwine after each is bereaved by unexpected loss from tragedies that strike young. Bravely performed by Ashley Bagwell, Terri Weagant, James Weidman, Aly Bedford, and Morgan Rowe.

Llysa Holland

After all that, it was a relief to get a funny play to close the night; Coming to a Conclusion by Scotto Moore and directed by Alan Bryce. Orgasms are funny, and so are Orgasm Machines that come with a manual as big as a volume of the encyclopedia. Five very fine actors—Charles Leggett, Patrick Lennon, Daniel Christensen, Heather Gautschi, and Llysa Holland—were game and enthusiastic and the ACT lobby furniture fashioned into a bed held up admirably. Yet even this play ended on a pensive note, as the two couples declined a perpetual, group, machine-induced orgasm in favor of keeping their individual identities, abandoning the toy in favor of sex and companionship with their lovers, while the themes of isolation and loneliness emerged again for the single character, who declined an invitation to get a burger with her friends and is left alone with five Orgasm Machines in a sound-proofed room.

The band is always one of the best things about 14/48. They write, adapt, and arrange songs and transitions and effects for all seven plays. They perform and interact and react to what is happening on stage. Live, original music and talented musicians as inseparable part of the theater-making. It should be like that more often. The cello was a wonderful addition. Yes, Alyssa Keene, Annie Jantzer, and Heather Mullin fronting the band really was like the sirens scene from O Brother Where Art Thou, whether they were in their plunging red dresses (Friday night), jammies (Saturday first act), or negligees (Saturday second act). The guys looked good too: Alan Echison, drums; Dave Pascal, bass; Nate Bogopolsky, guitar; Justin Huertas, cello; and David Anthony Lewis, keyboards.

We were delighted to read on the blog Friday that Alyssa Keene had won the Mazen Award for the weekend. Well deserved. We love her singing and acting, and are always glad to see her name on the bill for the 14/48 band.

Thanks to the bloggers for helping make the hours go by on Friday and Saturday before curtain: José Amador, Holly Arsenault, and Laurie Rose; and to Michelle Bates for all the great pics. See 'em all at the 14/48 Facebook page.

Don't call me Shirley

2010-11-29T00:48:00.000-08:00

I'm taking mortality much more personally these days.

I don't think it really has much to do with being over 50. On the whole, I like being my present age way more than I've liked any other age, especially considering the alternative. Maybe part of it is that I already know the way I'll shuffle off this mortal coil—broken neck, tripped on stairs by cats—I just don't know when. For whatever reason, it hits harder when someone else runs up the curtain.

I spent much of Thanksgiving thinking about the departed. My dad has been gone for 10 years now, and I miss him badly. But I was more in mind of a couple of more recent passages.

When looking for a wine to go with Thanksgiving dinner I came across a 2005 Burgundy we'd purchased through the collector's club at West Seattle Wine Cellars. I looked up the notes on the wine from long-time owner Bear Silverstein, which said to keep our mitts off of it for a few years. Always obedient, we stashed it in our own cellar. Bear was right, as usual. It was great this weekend. Bear had been ill for several years, and died in January. But he still brings joy to all of us West Seattle Winos and even sober people who were touched by his generosity and gentle, kind spirit. Thanks, Bear!

George Shangrow. Photo: OSSCS.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, put a bunch of classical music on our Sonos shuffle for the day. One of the tunes that came up at random was the "Amen" from Handel's Messiah, a recording by Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers, led by George Shangrow. I think the Amen, as envisioned by Shangrow, is one of the most beautiful recordings ever made. Most conductors zip through it, but Shangrow reasoned that Handel wouldn't have written this three+ hour masterpiece and then rushed through the end. Shangrow's version as done by the group is meticulous and joyous and soaring, a fitting exclamation point to a marvelous composition.

Shangrow was killed in a car crash this summer near Winthrop, but continues to bring joy to many who knew his music. Thanks, George!

Long-time Mariners' announcer Dave Niehaus died a couple of weeks ago. We managed to get his narration of Peter and the Wolf to come up on the system this weekend. I expect my Sweetie rigged it so that would happen. It's funny, when we first heard that recording, in the car on the radio, we couldn't place the voice. He wasn't doing baseball! Thanks, Dave, for making Mariners baseball seem interesting when it usually just sucks.

Now today comes the news that the great actor Leslie Nielsen passed away at age 84. The Police Squad movies were a scream; you had to love Nielsen's umpire dance, and appreciate that he prevented Reggie Jackson from killing the Queen. But I especially loved him in Airplane!, which included two of my all-time favorite jokes. I love the bit where Nielsen's Dr. Rumack explains that people need to go to the hospital. Flight attendant Elaine asks, "The hospital? What is it?" Rumack responds, "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important now." The other is the great "Surely, you can't be serious." "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley" routine. I spend most of my waking hours looking for a way to slip one of those in during the day's discourse. I wish I knew more people named Shirley. I love the Shirley joke so much that my Sweetie and I made it, along with the Marx Brothers' rendition of "Everyone Says I Love You", part of a video we made for a wedding shower back in the olden days. We used to get all of our video on VHS back then, and we LIKED it that way! Gotta get those converted.

Anyway, thanks, Leslie! I'll be doing your jokes and thinking of you right up until the time some cat sends me on a fatal tumble down the stairs.

Hamlet remains undecided

2010-11-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

Two fictional characters and a renowned theologian walk into a bar. Two acts later, despite much witticism, nothing is decided, though some thought is provoked, by the Seattle Shakespeare Company production of Wittenberg by David Davalos, directed by Rita Giomi.

Luther (Michael Patten), Hamlet (Connor Toms), and Faustus
(Chad Kelderman) in Seattle Shakespeare Company's production
of Wittenberg by David Davalos. Photo by John Ulman.

The story of the show is that Martin Luther, instigator of the protestant reformation, and Dr. John Faustus, fictional seller of his soul to the devil, are on the faculty of the University of Wittenberg, and Hamlet is a senior there though, not surprisingly, he still hasn't settled on a major. Luther (Michael Patten) and Faustus (Chad Kelderman) spar over the age-old debate of faith versus reason, their discussion spurred in part by recent writing by Polish scholar Nick Copernicus that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of it all. Hamlet (Connor Toms), true to form, tries to see both sides and is indeed helped by both. As it turns out, Luther's 95 theses were written in response to something of a bar bet. Faustus challenged Luther to come up with 100 things wrong with the church.

It seemed like Hamlet was about to get all of the answers when word came from Denmark that his father was dead, and he had to skedaddle for Elsinore.

It's a pretty damn smart play, though by coincidence a friend who is a Lutheran parson was at the same performance we attended and had a few quibbles with Davalos' version of Luther's theology. That aside, Davalos has clearly seen the inside of a church and a theater, and weaves scores of Hamlet references into the text. There must have been eight or 10 takes on the to-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy alone.

A few quibbles with the performances. This is a heavily wordy play, and there were a few obvious stumbles along the way. And an otherwise wonderful scene, in which Hamlet plays tennis with invisible off-stage foe Laertes, fell a bit short when Toms' swings got out of sync with the sound effect of racket smacking invisible ball. My Sweetie, the official scorer, missed most of that scene, as spectators Faustus and his floozy Helen (Michelle Chiachiere, who was wonderful as all the women in the show, from barmaid to Holy Mother) were essentially seated in her lap on the front-row aisle for the match. She did, however, get a close look at the costumes!

All in all, though, this is a marvelous play and a great partner to the other production Seattle Shakes is running at present, a straight-up Hamlet that is spectacular.

Go see. Both run through Dec. 5. There's great stuff happening at Seattle Shakes.

Dial M for Metro Mayhem

2010-11-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

This is the tale of the sixteenth of an inch of snow that paralyzed a city, one man's quest to return home, and the Twitter conversation and now-legendary hashtag, #snOMG, that immortalized the event forever.

It all happened November 22, 2010 in the city of Seattle, Washington, once a virtual oasis of moderate, maritime climate, but now a desolate arctic wasteland. A sixteenth of an inch of snow was all it took to gridlock the metropolis and turn the city streets into a frigid nightmare. This is my story.

This was the scene from outside my office at about 2:30 p.m. on the fateful day. The streets were relatively bare, and mainly just wet. But snow had started to fall, mostly obscuring the Space Needle. The National Weather Service had been warning about snow and a cold blast for several days. A TV truck was in my West Seattle neighborhood that morning, waiting for something, anything, to spin out and crash. Alas, nothing. The morning commute went off without a hitch.

But in mid-afternoon things started to go sideways. Schools closed early. People started heading for home. At Independent Colleges of Washington, we've tied our weather closure schedule to that of Seattle University. If SU shuts down, so do we.

Shortly after I snapped this photo, word went up on the Seattle U website that they were closing up shop at three. Vamoose, they said, and so did we. Most of my colleagues had enough sense to make a bee-line for home. I, on the other hand, had an appointment for a haircut at 4:30 p.m. with Julie down at the 4th & Madison Capelli's. I figured I'd head on down and see what was up. Maybe they'd be closed, too, or maybe some snow chickens would have canceled out, and I could get an early ear-lowering and be on my way. Sure enough, Julie's 3:30 was a no-show, I slipped into the chair, and by 4:15 I pulled my wool cap down over my fresh haircut, smooshed it down, and headed down to the bus stop at First and Marion.

It was here that it became apparent that there was trouble afoot. Traffic wasn't much moving, and a police car was blocking the Columbia Street on-ramp to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was closed due to excess slipperiness. Any West Seattle-bound buses would have to trundle down First Avenue with everyone else.

If there were any West Seattle-bound buses.

4:48 p.m. My Sweetie, the official scorer, sent me a text message that she was worried, mainly due to all of the stories of mayhem she's reading on the Internets, including the local news source West Seattle Blog. I text back not to worry, that I was at the bus stop, and that a route 21 was approaching. I decided to pass that one up and wait for one that might bring me a little closer to home.

5:03 p.m. Sweetie texts: "I'm really worried. Maybe u should find some place warm to hang out for a while? Apparently no WS buses are getting through." Don't worry, I replied.

5:51 p.m. "Just boarded the 57," I texted. "It's much warmer than the street corner." It was a long wait, but I could still feel my toes. Later I learned much of Sweetie's worry-wartiness was because she didn't realize I was wearing wool socks and sensible show footwear.

6:47 p.m. Sweetie texts that lots of people are trying to walk home to West Seattle. My response: "It's warm on the bus. Almost to the ballpark." This after nearly an hour on board.

8:08 p.m.

After a little over two hours on the bus, our driver took a vote on whether it would be OK to pull over across from Krispy Kreme and dash over there for a bio break. Who knows how long he had been on the bus at this point? The proposal was approved, a good half of the riders, and the driver, dashed over to pee, and several came back with donuts and coffee. The break lasted about 20 or 25 minutes. I don't think we lost a lot of ground to others who stayed in their vehicles. I'm doing fine, despite throwing extra r's onto Krispy Kremer.

9:14 p.m. "Where u at?" Sweetie texts. "Home Depot. But moving more quickly, not that that would take much." I tweeted about the milestone, too. Three hours, 20 minutes, nearly two miles covered. Being at Home Depot, I wondered if we needed any covers for our outdoor water faucets, or if they're hopelessly frozen already.

Indeed. Plus, unfortunately we started to get further and further away from our intended destination. Seeing a big, non-moving line of traffic on the detour to the West Seattle low bridge, and not knowing if we could traverse the bridge should we ever get to it, our driver opted to plow on down First Avenue, past Spokane Street, destination, unknown.

10:16 p.m.

The good thing was, traffic wasn't so heavy down there. But we weren't sure there was a plan. Orionp thought the road trip aspect was intriguing, and I responded that I hoped the driver was headed for Cabo. Sweetie texted "Where u at?" My response: "No idea anymore. Somewhere on First Avenue South of Spokane."

Interestingly enough, we moved well enough on First for a while until we reached a bottleneck approaching the First South Bridge. Once through the bottleneck, though, something amazing happened. We zipped across the bridge, swung back northbound and rolled up West Marginal Way at a high rate of speed (something topping 20 mph, I think), slipped into West Seattle and shot up Avalon Way. There was one last scary moment; a brief bottleneck forced us to stop halfway up Avalon. Dang! We're on a hill! So close and now we're doomed! Fortunately, the bus was chained up and handled the hill with no problem. We dropped off some folks at the Alaska Junction, then made a few more stops along California Avenue SW until we got to Admiral Way. I hopped off, went to Metropolitan Market, picked up the provisions I'd been expected to bring home around six, and walked the last half mile down the hill and home. By the lack of footprints in the snow, I was the only idiot who had walked by in some time.

11:16 p.m. Made it! A bus trip (blue line in the map) that was expected to be about five miles and maybe 20-25 minutes wound up being 11.5 miles (orange line) and taking more than five hours. The strange part was the fact that the trip down First Avenue took the bulk of the time. Though I didn't time it precisely, I think that once we made the turn and headed back north along West Marginal, it didn't take much more than half an hour or 40 minutes to get all the way to Admiral. Throw in a little grocery shopping and a 10-minute walk home, and you've got about a 5 hour, 15 minute commute.

Hats off to our driver, who was great, and all of the passengers, who were mostly in good humor and happy to be warm.

With the advance warning we had for this storm, it doesn't seem it should have been such a disaster. Yet a couple of facts remain. Seattle is not ready for winter weather, and a significant number of Seattle people have no idea how to drive in icy conditions. Until they promise to stay home, we should just button up the city until it all blows over.

My, oh my

2010-11-10T22:05:00.000-08:00

The no-crying-in-baseball rule has been suspended until further notice. Dave Niehaus, voice of the Seattle Mariners since their inception in 1977, died today of a heart attack at the age of 75.

Dave Niehaus in the Kingdome broadcast booth.

I could not have imagined what a sock in the gut that news would turn out to be. Nor could I have imagined, in our everyone-is-a-journalist world, that I'd first learn of the news through a Facebook note from the United States' alternate representative to the United Nations, a guy who used to live around the corner from us and was, in headier times, mayor of Seattle.

This was my third weepy Mariner moment. The first, and hardest, was at what was correctly assumed to be the last game for the great Alvin Davis as a Mariner in 1991. (Yes, I've been flaunting the no-crying rule for a couple of decades.) The second, Edgar's last game. Niehaus' passing is really tough, though, because mortality seems so gawdawful permanent.

On the surface it seems a little strange to get all worked up over the passing of someone you don't know. I actually met Niehaus a time or two, in a pass-the-mustard (and rye bread) sort of way, a few lifetimes ago when I was a cub radio reporter and was at virtually every M's home game in the mid-80s. We would occasionally rub shoulders in the press box. Then again, it also seems strange to say you don't know a guy who turned up in your house, your car, or your back yard every night between April and October for 34 years.

With the exception of the aberrant years from 1995 until about 2002, the Mariners have always sucked. In the early days, while still in college, my friends and I formed the Dave Niehaus Fan Club. We had a big "My Oh My" sign, my friend Chuck played the "charge" call on his trumpet, and the broadcast team talked on-air about how Dave must have paid some college kids in the right field bleachers to form a fan club. (There was little to cheer or broadcast about between Rupe Jones and Ken Griffey, Jr.) So we latched on to the king of rye bread, mustard, grand salami time, fly away, and my-oh-my.

But oh, that glorious year of 1995. We nearly missed it entirely. My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I were celebrating our first anniversary in 1994 and on vacation in California's Bay Area, with tickets to Giants and A's games, when Major League Baseball went on strike. We found that we could have fun in San Francisco without baseball. So in '95 we said the hell with 'em, and didn't go to a single game. That is, not until the M's went on their improbable run. We started to go to games in August, and even when we didn't go, on walks around the neighborhood we'd hear the voice of Dave Niehaus coming from radios on every porch, in every back yard, in every car. Refuse to Lose fever was with the entire city right up to the all-time pinnacle of Mariners baseball: the double. The M's could win the World Series 10 years in a row, and it wouldn't be as good as that amazing three days of baseball in a big concrete garage.

This year was the first since 1976 that I did not attend a single Mariners game. We gave up our cable TV several years ago, upon the realization that mostly what we watched was M's baseball, and that this was too painful to pay for. This summer we seldom even listened on the radio after June or so as the club worked to get its photo placed into the dictionary next to the definition of "pathetic." It is with a tinge of regret that I missed much of Dave's last season, even though it seemed, in the last few years, he wasn't really watching the games closely any more. But, given the team he had to cover, who could blame him?

As I think of Dave Niehaus and his untimely death, I think of a great song by Steve Goodman called "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request." I modify one of the lines of the song for what could be the dying M's announcer's last request:

"I've got season's tickets to watch the Angels now, and that's just what I'm going to do. But you, the living, you're stuck here with the M's, so it's me who should feel sorry for you."

Rest in peace, Dave Niehaus. Thanks for bringing hope and optimism and excitement and tall tales to our summers.

Pass the yellow pages

2010-11-09T00:37:00.000-08:00

"I'd pay to watch those guys read the phone book."

That's our code for seeing really great performers in a so-so production, and I found myself thinking of looking up a few numbers after seeing Seattle Rep's October production of Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage. Director Wilson Milam landed a super cast for this show—Hans Altwies, Denis Arndt, Bhama Roget, and Amy Thone—but in the end it didn't add up to much.

L-R: Hans Altwies, Denis Arndt, and Bhama Roget in Seattle
Rep's production of God of Carnage. Photo: Chris Bennion.

Arndt and Roget's kid had whacked Altwies and Thone's kid in the face with a stick and knocked out some teeth. The play is the parents' discussion of what they're going to do about this playground altercation. You just know it's not going to go well. They're all pretty much irredeemable, and the booze doesn't help. But they all have their venomous strengths. Roget proves great at theatrical projectile vomiting, and Altwies proved his comic chops cleaning it up. Arndt is an attorney for a drug company, and his cell phone buzzes constantly. The relationships head straight down the drain.

Still during it all I couldn't help thinking about Arndt in a much better play on the same subject, when he teamed up with Elizabeth Huddle under the direction of Warner Shook for a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Intiman in 1994. Sixteen years later the spark and fire of that great show is vivid in my memory. By comparison, God of Carnage was a soggy phone book left out in the rain.

I'm not sure where to lay blame. Reza is all the rage these days. Was it her play? Christopher Hampton's translation? Milam's direction? (He really nailed Glengarry Glen Ross earlier this year, and I notice our Weisenheimer review has a phone book reference in it!)

I love these actors, so let's go get them some better material.

GreenStage Macbeth is a fun splatter-fest

2010-11-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

GreenStage is really onto something with its "hard bard" indoor shows for Halloween. Last year's production of Titus Andronicus was a laugh riot drenched in theater gore. This year's Macbeth, directed by Ken Holmes, wasn't quite so bloody as Titus, but there were still plenty of gashes and gags to keep the audience in stitches.

Amelia Meckler, left, and Ryan Spickard as Lady Macbeth
and Macbeth. Photo: GreenStage.

Ryan Spickard and Amelia Meckler were marvelous as Macbeth and Lady M. Though one had to feel a bit for Spickard, who was often upstaged by the antics of the rest of the cast. He was doing a pretty straight Macbeth, or at least as straight as could be given the circumstances, while everyone else really hammed it up with over-the-top performances.

Every once in a while we lament that some folks take their Shakespeare way too seriously. GreenStage does not have that problem! Holmes and company are skilled at re-imagining these plays as so violent they become humorous, and finding countless little touches in the text that take on a whole new meaning given their interpretations. The Banquo (Sam Hagen) haunting-the-king scene was wickedly funny. My favorite touch: having the "minor" thanes do all of their lines as a barbershop quartet. Inspired! They're not making fun of the plays at all, just pushing them to their limits. They're smart interpretations that tell the stories incredibly well.

GreenStage plans to produce Antony & Cleopatra and The Tempest for their outdoor season next summer. We hope they'll be back with another bloody good hard Bard show next fall.

Hamlet at Seattle Shakes: Wow. Just. Wow.

2010-11-07T16:33:00.000-08:00

Hamlet must be one of the most produced plays in theater. I bet I've seen a couple of dozen productions on stage and screen, from Laurence Olivier to Mel Gibson to Kenneth Branagh to Shawn Law in 2008 with GreenStage to a stirring performance by Dan Donohue at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year. But even though (spoiler alert!) everyone dies, I can't remember crying at the end of Hamlet until Mike Dooly's Horatio bade "Goodnight, sweet prince" in a cracking voice during the final scene of Seattle Shakespeare Company's production last Friday.

"Goodnight, sweet prince." Mike Dooly
(right) as Horatio bids adieu to Darragh
Kennan's Hamlet in the Seattle Shakespeare
Company production. Photo: John Ulman.

Director John Langs has molded a triumphant Hamlet out of an amazing cast that starts with Darragh Kennan in the title role. Many a director has fallen to the temptation to make the Melancholy Dane a prince paralyzed by grief and indecision. Kennan, however, plays a sharp Hamlet who mourns his father, yes, but is smart and funny and altogether with it throughout. Local treasures Charles Leggett (ghost, gravedigger) and David Pichette (Polonius) are fabulous. Richard Ziman is cold and calculating as King Claudius. Law is Laertes this time and delights, especially in the closing-scene swordplay. Brenda Joyner is sassy but obedient Ophelia, at least until her father dies and she goes off the deep end herself. Dooly, of course, is a favorite on these pages. After the show he told us that during previews they were having trouble making the audience care about the outcome. This is no longer a problem! Kudos, really, to Langs and the whole cast. The performances were solid throughout and the results spectacular.

The set was fairly minimal. A couple of castle walls and two low tables that could be anything from a bed to a grave were about all that was needed. Langs came up with an interesting way to keep the ghostly King Hamlet present throughout the play.

It's always interesting to see the same play performed by different companies during the same year. We had just seen a marvelous production of Hamlet in September at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Donohue was great and Hamlet may rank as OSF's best this year, and while we haven't written most of our Ashland reviews yet (we've been busy!) I would venture to say that the Seattle Shakes version was a touch better! That may be fodder for a whole other post once (if!) we get the OSF Hamlet review written. In the meantime, while OSF has wrapped for the season, you have almost another month to see Hamlet at Seattle Shakespeare Company, where it plays through Dec. 5. I recommend it highly.

Boho's last brunch

2010-11-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

Our weekend routine has been utterly disrupted with the disappointing news that today was the last day for Sunday brunch at The Bohemian in West Seattle.

We wrote back in June that the Boho's marvelous brunch had become a weekly routine, and it had continued to be so. We'd missed on a few occasions in September and October, mostly because of travel, but when we're in town my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I almost always go there.

That is, we almost always went.

Chef Jason told us today that brunch in West Seattle has become a pretty competitive game. They gave theirs nearly two years, but never were able to achieve the brunch customer base they needed to make it pay off. So, after agonizing over the decision for several months, he says they're throwing in the towel on Sunday brunch in order to focus on their dinner service.

Go see them. In addition to marvelous food and drink, the Bohemian supports local artists and musicians, too. Good food, great folks, and a nice spot. Thanks for brightening our Sundays for the last year or more. We'll see you around in the evenings.

OSF: Henry IV, Part One is a delight

2010-09-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

After seeing a marvelous production of Henry IV, Part One at Oregon Shakespeare Festival my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I got to wondering why the Bard’s history plays don’t seem to get the play that some of the others do.

Not one of the history plays is in the top 10 most-produced shows at OSF. This year is the 75th anniversary of the festival, and its two most-produced plays are Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, both of which were produced both this season and in the festival’s first year, 1935. The all-time top 10:

Twelfth Night, 16 times
Merchant, 14
As You Like It, 14
The Taming of the Shrew, 13
Romeo and Juliet, 12
Much Ado About Nothing, 12
Hamlet, 11
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 11
The Comedy of Errors, 11
Othello, 10

(See a full rundown of the history of OSF productions.)

Prince Hal (John Tufts, top) comforts a
dying Hotspur (Kevin Kenerly) in Oregon
Shakespeare Festival's production of
Henry IV, Part One. Photo: Jenny Graham.

This year marks just the seventh time that OSF has produced Henry IV, Part One. Part of the reason may be that they’ve almost always produced part one, part two, and Henry V in consecutive years in order to tell the full story of Prince Hal. The first time they produced it was in 1950, and they’ve done it about every 10 years since. Perhaps history is too much work for some playgoers. Part of it may be box office, too. A friend who works for the festival says Henry is lagging behind some of the other offerings in ticket sales.

This is a pity, as it is an excellent production, directed by Penny Metropulos and packed with some of Ashland’s top talents.

The story isn’t all that complicated. Prince Hal, slacker son of the king, would rather spend his time at the pub than at court. In the end, though, he steps up his game and helps pops quell the rebellion.

We’re especially excited about John Tufts, who was so great in last year’s Equivocation, played Romeo a couple of years ago, and will, we presume, play Prince Hal again next year in Part Two and in 2012 in Henry V. David Kelly is hilarious as Sir John Falstaff, James Newcomb fiendish as Earl of Worcester, and Kevin Kennerly fantastic as Henry “Hotspur” Percy.

A special tip of the cap, too, to U. Jonathan Toppo, who played Sir Walter Blunt and also was the fight director for the production. This was one of the most physical productions we’ve seen, concluding with several lengthy and realistic swordfights. It’s a wonder nobody gets chopped up! The choreography of these stage fights is meticulous and precise, and the battles were a joy to watch.

Hurry up if you want to see this great production. Henry IV, Part One runs through October 9 at OSF’s Elizabethan Stage. It might be a decade until your next chance.

Much Ado About Nothing from Wooden O

2010-09-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Beatrice and Benedick are two of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare, and definitely my favorite couple, and it was an absolute treat to see real-life married couple Amy Thone and Hans Altwies in the roles this summer at Wooden O's outdoor production smartly directed by Sheila Daniels. We loved it so much we saw it twice.

Photo: John Ulman

Daniels set the play down in the bayou, with everyone in gauzy white cotton and linen, and traditional foot-stomping music and dancing and singing ably performed by the live musicians and cast. It was hard not to join in!

Daniels took a fresh romp through the play's high-jinks and physical comedy. There were some delightful images as Benedick got tangled up in a line of laundry. And Beatrice became part of the furniture as she "hid," a compromising position which Hero took advantage of to deliver a sound spanking. Benedick wasn't obvious at all hiding beneath an upturned boat.

My only quibble is the decision to eliminate the uncle and replace him with Beatrice in the confrontation scene with Don Pedro and Claudio. While Beatrice is certainly spunky enough to take them on, it doesn't fit with what comes before and after, and I found it jarring.

Otherwise, it was a fresh, hilarious, delightful approach to this timeless comedy, with a uniformly strong cast, anchored by Altwies and Thone. I wonder if the setting was chosen for Altwies; he has a languid, fluid, graceful physicality that made me almost feel the heat and humidity. Thone wrung the most out of every pregnant line and significant look. And their chemistry crackled.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog a smash hit at Balagan Theatre

2010-09-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was a smash hit this summer at Balagan Theatre. A three-week run starting Aug. 20 completely sold out, as did an extended series of late-night performances, including two this weekend that had to be canceled because of illness.

Weisenheimer admits to a growing chasm of cultural literacy. While most everyone about was all ga-ga about the prospect of Dr. Horrible on stage, I had no idea what anybody was talking about. If you were with me in that boat, it turns out the original Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was created in 2008 as an Internet flick. Joss Whedon, creator of the television version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer among other hits, his brothers Zack and Jed, and actress Maurissa Tancharoen wrote it during the WGA writer's strike. The film starred Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. You can find the videos all over the 'net these days.

The Balagan version was directed by Eric Ankrim, who also played the title role. Jake Groshong played Captain Hammer, and Annie Jantzer starred as Penny, their mutual love interest. All three were fabulous, as were the entire cast.

Jake Groshong as Capt. Hammer throttles
Eric Ankrim as Dr. Horrible in Balagan
Theatre's production of Dr. Horrible's
Sing-Along Blog.
Photo: Tartan Photography.

Despite the fact that the original was an Internet sensation, the Balagan team was able to resist the temptation to go too wild with technology in the play, though the webcam and projection screen were inspired centerpieces to the relatively spare set. They also added some new musical numbers to the show, which those familiar with the originals say are faithful to the style of the online version.

Weisenheimer made a cameo appearance as "the mayor" on the opening night of the run, which was coincidentally my birthday. Fortunately, this had little negative impact on future ticket sales.

If you missed it, don't be too sad. It's likely Balagan will bring it back at a new location soon. Stay tuned to the theater's website or the Dr. H Facebook page for news.

We're back!

2010-09-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been nearly three months since my last blog post.

Though I must say I have not been swamped with concerned messages from people wondering where I've been.

We've sort of been at the theatre. My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I have seen 37 plays since our last post on July 9. The number is a bit inflated by counting 21 plays at three nights of the 14/48 festival all individually, but that still means we've been out to 19 separate events, including eight this week from where we sit in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

What has happened since I last wrote? I've done numerous posts for my Seattle Astronomy Examiner column for Examiner.com. Thank you, loyal readers of same, those few of you out there. Examiner has been going through a site redesign that still has some bugs in it, but a number of annoying things appear to be fixed, including an RSS feed that insisted on digging up old posts from the past and sending you dead URLs for them. Consider subscribing if you're interested in things celestial. I've also been writing a lot for Arches magazine at University of Puget Sound, doing book reviews and the occasional feature article. The Mariners have dropped an additional 11 games in the standings, are now 28 games out of first, will finish with the second-worst record in baseball, and stand an excellent chance of losing 100 games again. Oh, and I discovered a typo in that July 9 post. Corrected. Ten weeks should be sufficient for proofreading.

Theatre highlights:

Seattle Outdoor Theatre Festival. Much Ado About Nothing was a highlight.

Ruined at Intiman Theatre. New executive director Kate Whoriskey brought her acclaimed New York production to Seattle, adding a couple of locals to the cast, and it was a triumph. It was a great start for Whoriskey and gives us hope for Intiman, which we hadn't much liked in the last several years under Bart Sher.

The 14/48 Festival played at Theatre Off Jackson, and was fun as always. One that was particularly memorable was Dorkfest, a play that hit a little too close to home about three dorks getting together to play board games. Brandon Whitehead and Seanjohn Walsh fell into a giggle-loop, ala Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, and couldn't stop laughing. Neither could we.

The Glass Menagerie at Jewel Box Theatre in Poulsbo. Our friend Gary McVey is the board chair for JBT, and we saw a delightful show in their marvelous theater.

Charles Leggett and R. Hamilton Wright were great in Yankee Tavern at ACT. The show full of 9/11 conspiracy theories was engaging, and those two are treasures.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was a smash hit at Balagan Theatre, selling out all performances, and some late-night shows during an extension. Balagan is being booted from its noodle-house-basement space, but look for the theatre, and Dr. Horrible, to surface again very soon.

Reviews of OSF plays should be posted by Thanksgiving on a blog near you.

Auf wiedersehen, Cliff Lee

2010-07-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

Back in December when the Seattle Mariners landed Cliff Lee, about all Weisenheimer could say was, "Damn!" Now that Lee has been shipped off to the Texas Rangers for four prospects my reaction is pretty much the same, except it doesn't have the exclamation point.

I was excited about Lee, and the prospect of him teaming with Felix Hernandez as a potent 1-2 punch in the rotation. But even in that December post I rang some warning bells:

There's still the small matter of the offense. Right now we have really no idea who is going to play LF or 1B, and if you go into the season with Jose Lopez penciled in as your cleanup hitter, then that's not a happy recipe for success. Opening day, however, is still nearly four months away. I have a feeling Jack Zduriencik may know what he's doing.

Ex-Mariner Cliff Lee. AP photo.

Well, maybe not. Z did not go out and get any bats, starting the season with ancient Mariners Griffey and Sweeney on the roster. My Sweetie, the official scorer, will back me up on this: At the start of the season I predicted the M's would be 10 games back of first by the first of May. I admit I was wrong. It took nearly until the first of June for them to be 10 games back, and now, with the All-Star game (it counts, you know) at hand. They're about to drop to 17 games back.

Trading Lee makes some sense on a couple of levels. It's a reasonable presumption that, at this point, it's not likely that the M's would have been able to lock up Lee on a long-term contract. (We'll ignore, for today, the differing versions of how hard they tried to do so this spring when the notion was much more plausible.) We won't know for sure for at least three or four years, but the package of prospects they received for Lee today seems much better than the package they gave up to get him seven months ago.

Here's the thing: I am sick and tired of the Mariners always being a seller.

Who have been the marquee acquisitions for the M's over the years? Richie Zisk? Kevin Mitchell? Pete O'Brien? Willie Horton? Gaylord Perry? Sheesh, in the magical year of 2001, when it was clear they would make some noise, who was the big help they brought in to help in July? Doug Creek.

The thing about Smoak, for those of you who have been bemoaning Casey Kotchman all season long, is that Smoak is about the same guy. Numbers this year for Kotchman: .212 BA, 6 HR, 28 RBI, .648 OPS. For Smoak: .208-8-34-.670. Smoak is 23 years old, Kotch 27, which is not a trivial difference. And even though he's a switch hitter, Smoak hasn't had much luck against left-handed pitching so far. And you know what? If Smoak turns out to be the real deal, round about 2014 they'll trade him to the Yankees rather than lose him to free agency, because we can't afford good players, even with a taxpayer-funded stadium full of poutine.

Well. I'm hoping I get to see some games in Great Falls and Helena this year.

Six best Woody Allen flicks

2010-07-08T01:34:00.000-07:00

Apparently a week or so ago Woody Allen did an interview with The Times of London in which he listed his six favorite Woody Allen films. They are:

Purple Rose of Cairo
Match Point
Bullets Over Broadway
Zelig
Husbands and Wives
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

In Zelig Leonard Zelig (Allen, left) tries
to convince Psychologist Dr. Eudora
Fletcher (Mia Farrow) that he, too, is a
shrink and must leave because he has to
teach a course on masturbation. "If I'm
not there," he says, "they start without me."

I first found out about the story today on one of my favorite blogs, By Ken Levine. Levine disagrees with Allen's assessment. So does Vanity Fair. So does The Slog. It could be that Allen was pulling The Times' collective leg. It could be that he knew he could drum up some publicity because any numbskull or Weisenheimer with a blog would be willing to write up the correct list. It's also not clear if Allen was listing his favorite movies or the ones he thought were the best. And its impossible to find out, because you have to pay to read the paper's stuff on its website. Clearly, they didn't get the memo that said Internet content is supposed to be free, free, free.

I think all of the films on Allen's list are good, though I can't judge Vicky Christina Barcelona, which I haven't yet seen. I'm sure my Sweetie, the official scorer and keeper of the Netflix queue, will allow it into the house, especially since Queen Elizabeth is in it. Yet, I don't agree with Allen, either. Here is the Weisenheimer list of favorite Woody movies:

Manhattan
Annie Hall
Bullets Over Broadway
Zelig
Play It Again, Sam
Sleeper

If I were making a list of best Woody movies, I'd probably bump the "earlier, funny" movies, Sam and Sleeper, in favor of Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Interestingly, much of the disagreement among the various lists reveals a rift between those who love the earlier, funny movies and those who don't. Allen made a whole damn movie about the question 30 years ago, Stardust Memories, which barely misses my list. It's great because it's hilarious and because Charlotte Rampling is Hawt with a capital H. Everyone Says I Love You, Radio Days, Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask are all high on the honorable mention list.

I love the earlier, funny ones, too, but think Allen's later work has better-developed characters, better plots, and is more beautifully photographed. They're better technically, and they're still very funny.

Omar Torrez: Virtuoso World Traveler

2010-07-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

I don't often write about our music outings because words fail me. My overly verbal brain doesn't seem to process music into words, and that's ok. Music is a respite from words, words, more words.

But the Weisenheimer has been stacked up with book reviews and astronomy events to write about, and we're still talking about our wonderful evening at the Omar Torrez (in photo by Darien Davis) show at the Triple Door a few weeks ago; it wouldn't do to allow it to go unrecorded here in our digital scrapbook. So I'll grope around for some words....

I knew nothing about Torrez except that he plays guitar, and I hadn't heard any of his music--sadly. Torrez is the son of a friend and former co-worker of the Wisey's from his radio days who let us know about the show. I tagged along because the Weisenheimer plans all our dates and when he says "try it, it'll be fun," I go along. That pretty much sums up our courtship and a long and successful relationship since.

From the opening chords I sat up a little straighter, and then I relaxed and for the rest of the evening all my jiggly parts were jiggling. As much as I was enjoying the rockin' and rollin' and charming storytelling and tight band, I did find myself thinking "Hey, I thought this guy was supposed to be a guitar player." Well. I enjoyed the second half of the set even more than the first. I understand Torrez has been described as the Latin Jimi Hendrix. Works for me. He also put us in mind of Santana, Andres Segovia, and Jimmy Nolen. His guitar solos were all over the map, or at least the warmer climes--the American South including Texas, New Orleans, and the Delta; Mexico; Brazil; Jamaica; and Spain. I'm pretty sure Torrez can do anything that can be done with a guitar. The combination of roots rock/blues and flamenco was an especially tasty one. We've since purchased his CD Corazon de Perro and we listen to it a lot.

So there you go. We liked it. We're looking forward to the next time Omar comes back through town; we won't miss it!

Good Old Funky Music

2010-06-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, the Weisenheimer and I have been married for nearly 17 years now, and we're entering a delicate negotiation in our relationship. It involves a lot of talk, quite a bit of argument, and a considerable amount of dancing. We're talking about compiling our top 100 tracks lists.

100 tracks fills up quickly. The first question is what genres are included. We agreed no classical and no Christmas. Which saves us arguing over movie music like John Williams and Gustav Holst, or filling up 75 slots with Johann Sebastian Bach and another 75 with Russian composers (Sweetie only) and using up slots on the entire Julie Andrews Firestone Christmas album, and deciding which version of Carol of the Bells (Leonard Bernstein or Trans-Siberian Orchestra?) and whether to include the little drummer boy duet with Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

We also decided vocals only. This cut deep. On the one hand, it means none of the Weisenheimer's Miles Davis, hooray. (I realize I just lost the respect of many of our friends, most of whom have excellent taste). But it's a trade-off, so it's fair - it also means none of my bluegrass guitar and fiddle. (I realize I just lost the respect of even more of our friends, most of whom have excellent taste). And no Bach chorales on the pipe organ. (I realize I just redeemed myself with a vanishingly small group of friends who are current- and ex-Lutherans, with no accounting for taste).

We're trying to decide what the right number is. Maybe we should do 250 or 500 tracks. I mean, with only 100 slots, half of those could be taken up by Ray Charles. Maybe certain artists can just be given one spot for their whole library...like Ray, Elvis, Beatles, Temptations, Ella Fitzgerald. Or maybe whole albums could get one spot, like Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon or Eliminator or Achtung Baby or Pearl or Thriller or Purple Rain or Born to Run or Physical Graffiti or Folsom Prison or Dixie Chicken or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or Absolute Torch and Twang or Avalon or Blood on the Tracks or Grease or Darkness on the Edge of Town or Document or Girls Go Wild or Heartattack and Vine or How Will The Wolf Survive or Once Upon A Time or Monty Python Sings. And once we get through our top artists and albums, how do we make sure we have a slot for Eli's Coming? This isn't going to be easy....

The Weisenheimer asked what happens if our individual top 100 lists turn out to be exactly the same. I replied that in that case, we've become hopelessly boring and need to go to our threesome lists to spice things up. He can invite Salma Hayek if I get to invite Terri Weagant.

I asked what happens if we have to get divorced after sharing our top 100 lists with each other. And the Wisey replied, in that case, let's run away and elope this time. OK!

I see real potential in this exercise for taking our relationship to the next level. For years we've argued about the best and worst US presidents. All the Weisenheimer has to do is say "Lyndon B. Johnson" and I get all riled up and the only way we can resolve it is to go to bed. With any luck this list will work the same way.

Should be fun, Wisey. The beat goes on.

Cider House Rules a triumph at Book-It

2010-06-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

A compelling tale, a stunning cast, and marvelous direction add up to some fantastic theater at Book-It, which is returning to its beginnings with a production of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, directed by Jane Jones. The Book-It script was adapted by Peter Parnell from Irving's novel, and this direction is based on the original by Tom Hulce and Jones from 1996. The current production covers part one, and part two is coming from Book-It in September.

When we call the cast "stunning" we mean it. There's not a weak performance from Bayley to Wright. Three performances stand out in particular:

Peter Crook as Dr. Wilbur Larch. We've been wild about Crook since we first saw him eons ago in Lonely Planet, the first production ever staged at ArtsWest. He's a commanding presence as Dr. Larch, even as his confidence in the high calling of his work is challenged, as his ether addiction escalates, and his protege bolts for greener orchards.
Connor Toms as Homer Wells. Toms is rapidly becoming a favorite, with super performances recently in Two Gents at Seattle Shakes and at January's 14/48 Festival. Toms displays great range as he plays Homer literally from birth--he springs fully grown from under the clinic table on which his mother is in labor--to age 20-ish when, questioning his role at St. Clouds, he bolts, for a couple of days, with Wally and Candy.
Terri Weagant as Melony. Weagant is an F5 tornado as the incredibly angry young woman with a thing for Homer. She absolutely owns the stage whenever she's on it, or even above it looking out her window at the orphanage. Weagant received a Wisey nomination for best actress for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe last August at Balagan Theatre.

Props to director Jones for keeping the action on stage moving at a usually frantic pace, with astonishing choreography that has folks moving from office to clinic to sleeping quarters to train station to abandoned logging barracks to the coast all on a spartan set. The production also includes countless little moments that display marvelous thought and attention to detail, and add some levity to what becomes a pretty heavy discussion on birth, abortion, adoption, and morality and happiness.

We're coming up on the midway point in 2010. My Sweetie, the official scorer, and I have seen nearly 50 plays (counting the 28 one-acts of 14/48 individually) and The Cider House Rules ranks among the best of them. Get out to see it at Book-It through July 11, and catch part two in September.

Our Sunday ritual at the "Boho"

2010-06-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for Weisenheimer and my Sweetie, the official scorer, on Sunday mornings, you'll find us at The Bohemian. We've been having Sunday brunch there weekly for at least six months, and the Boho is the bomb! It's got it all: Great food, outstanding soundtrack, fun art from local artists, and support for local musicians. They're coming up on two years in business in West Seattle.

The Bohemian is at 3405 California
Avenue SW in West Seattle. We have
Sunday brunch there virtually every
week. We may be in a rut, but it's a
damn fine rut!

For my Sweetie, it all starts with the decaf Americano. She says the Bohemian has the best espresso in town. Being a regular Joe, I just have regular drip, and it's super fine. The menu hasn't changed a whit, though upon opening it I always observe that "they've switched to the spring menu!" Weisenheimer's favorites include the "salmon duo," a bagel with chevre, lox, smoked salmon, and all the fixin's; the "cast iron" breakfast, a scramble with potatoes, spinach, and choices of meat and cheese; dang fine crepes (I had the crab crepes this morning and they were de-lish); and house-made granola. Sweetie has been ordering the benedicts often of late, though she's also gone with the crepes, cast iron, or stuffed French toast.

The Bohemian is run by a couple of brothers. Eirik is the front-of-house guy and mixologist, while Jason, who used to be a chef for Paul Allen, we're told, mans the kitchen. Eirik knows our java order, just as Sarah, the bartender at Jak's, knows our drink order (Maker's Mark Manhattan for Sweetie, Hendrick's martini for Weisenheimer.)

Kudos to whomever picks the soundtrack at The Bohemian. It's never the same and always fabulous. You have a good chance to hear the Temptations, Billie Holiday, Miles, and Motown classics. This morning, for example, we heard "Lady Marmalade" by LaBelle, as well as a really fine cover of the Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway hit "Where is the Love?" by Jesse Campbell and Trina Barnette. I figured it was a "new" recording, and it turns out it was done in 1995, part of the soundtrack for the flick Dead Presidents. I had never heard the song or heard of the movie before. As opposite of the Mariel Hemingway character in Woody Allen's film Manhattan, it may be that I'm becoming unaware of any musical act POST-Paul McCartney.

Anyway, the Boho has marvelous food, good coffee, a kick-ass Bloody Mary, great taste in music, and is a nice 20-minute walk from our house, just the right amount to get the blood pumping on Sunday morning. They won second place in the West Seattle Herald's "best brunch" vote, in which Salty's came first. This is sort of like the ridiculous Seattle Weekly polls in which the mundane Pagliacci's wins best pizza year after year. The Bohemian puts on an amazing brunch in a great place, and we always get out of there for less than $40. See you there next Sunday!

Good wine, good cause at E.B. Foote

2010-06-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Burien, Washington isn't the first town one thinks of when one considers wine making and tasting. But when our friends Noel and Charlene invited us to a tasting at E.B. Foote winery in Burien, having won the same in a charity auction, my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I were game. We came away impressed, and with a case of nice juice.

You probably haven't seen E.B. Foote at your local wine shop or on a restaurant wine list. They only make about 2,000 cases of wine each year, and while a few bottles do go out to local eateries, the majority of sales are right out of their basement facility in Burien. They do online sales as well, and can ship to Washington addresses.

The label of Remembrance
features a photo of Rich
Higginbotham, former co-
owner of E.B. Foote who died
of Alzheimer's in 2008. Half
of the proceeds from sales of
Remembrance go to Alz-
heimer's research.

E.B. Foote makes mostly red wines from grapes grown in and shipped to Burien from the Columbia Valley. One of the white exceptions is "Sweet Sherill," a chardonnay with 2.5 percent residual sugar. Named after E.B. Foote owner and winemaker Sherill Miller. A sweet chardonnay was not planned, just a botched batch, but it caught on and has been a perennial favorite.

We were more attracted to the reds we tasted, particularly the 2006 "Perfect a Trois," a blend of 65 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 25 percent Merlot, and 10 percent Cab Franc. Yummy. The 2007 vintage, with a touch more Merlot and a bit less Cab, is called "Remembrance" in honor of Miller's husband, business partner, and co-winemaker Rich Higginbotham, who died of Alzheimer's Disease in 2008. Miller now donates half of all proceeds from Remembrance to Alzheimer's research at the UW. Her story was touching as she told it during a run-down of the wines featured at the tasting.

Also yummy were ETC, a five-red blend that is 63 percent Zinfandel; Rainy Day Red, a blend that's 86 percent Syrah and 14 percent Cab; a delightful, tasty Merlot; and Northwest Duet, a Cab/Merlot blend.

All of E.B. Foote's offerings are under $20. The winery's motto is, "Producing quality wines at an affordable price, because it's not about what it costs, it's about how it tastes." Miller, her small staff, and an army of volunteers deliver on that mission. E.B. Foote also hosts jazz shows and theater events, both paired with wine tasting as well. Check 'em out.

The Vaudevillians get their own gig

2010-05-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

Dr. Dan Von Dandy, left, and Miss Kitty Witless
are the Vaudevillians, doing their first full-length
concert in 90 years through next weekend at
Balagan Theatre.

The Vaudevillians have been regulars at the monthly late-night theater mash-up Schmorgasborg at Balagan Theatre ever since the thing started nearly two years ago. Now the thawed-out pair from the 1920s is playing their own late-night gig--their first full-length concert in over 90 years--at Balagan through next weekend. There are only three performances left, tonight and next Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5.

The Vaudevillians--The Hottest Act Ever Frozen Alive--are Dr. Dan Von Dandy and his lovely wife, Miss Kitty Witless. Buried in an avalanche during a tour of Antarctica, they survived through a fluke of chemistry and were recently thawed out because of global warming. The travesty is that they came back to the United States to find that modern acts had covered their hit tunes, without giving them any credit. The Vaudevillians thus perform these "modern" hits in the way they were originally intended to be heard.

Their top tunes include "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Drop it Like it's Hot." Weisenheimer's personal favorite in the Vaudevillian catalog is "Piece of my Heart", made into a hit by Janis Joplin and also covered by the likes of Sammy Hagar, Mellissa Etheridge, and Faith Hill.

Even though they were frozen all those years, Von Dandy and Witless bicker on stage a lot about sex, drugs, and who gets all the credit. Witless, too, is a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. That's part of the excitement.

Miss Kitty, aka Jerick Hoffer, recently appeared in Henry V at Seattle Shakespeare Company. Dan Von Dandy, also known as Richard Andriessen, played piano at Balagan's recent Casino Night fundraiser, but it was hard to recognize him without the frostbite.

As noted, they have been regulars at Schmorgasborg, at which they typically do one or two numbers. Weisenheimer was a little concerned that a full-length concert, with intermission, might be a little too much Vaudevillian. Gladly, there was a perfect mix of music, banter, and other schtick to make it a most entertaining evening. Catch 'em if you can. Whatta say, Kitty? Meow!!

Big laughs at Schmee's Silverstein feast

2010-05-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

A talented cast and some bawdy material added up to a fun evening of laughs at the Theater Schmeater production of An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, directed by Julia Griffin.

All 10 one-act plays on the evening were gems:

The auctioneer (Ashley Bagwell) ogles the goods (Alyssa Keene)
in "Going Once", one of 10 one-act plays in An Adult Evening of
Shel Silverstein. It plays at Theater Schmeater through
June 12. Photo by Regan MacStravic.

Jen and Sherwin play a high-stakes game of who-do-you-save? in "The Lifeboat is Sinking." A forceful Lisa Viertel ultimately convinces Matthew Middleton that it's his mother that needs to be tossed into the drink to save the rest of the family.

"Smile" is a great one, in which Gibby (Middleton) is harshly interrogated by Snooky (Ashley Bagwell), Bender (Alyssa Keene), and Jimbo (Sara Coates). They take Gibby out back and do him in for designing the smiley face and coming up with a variety of grievous pop-culture catch phrases over the years.

Viertel is again brilliant as Georgia, the proprietor of "Watch and Dry," a laundry facility in which nothing gets clean, much to the dismay of Marianne (Megan Ahiers). Marianne is about to turn in Georgia to the Better Business Bureau, only to learn that Georgia really has gone through Marianne's dirty laundry to learn things about her that the authorities would be most interested in. Life lessons, just $2.50 per load.

"Thinking Up a New Name for the Act" is a play with only three words--meat and potatoes--yet the entire domestic scene, murder, trial, and execution are easy to follow. Coates swings a mean frying pan.

Bagwell is at the center of two sex-for-sale segments. He auctions off Keene like a horse in "Going Once."

In "Buy One, Get one Free,"
Bagwell plays Lee,
potential John to hookers Merrilee and Sherilee.
The sketch is funny, you see
Because each line ends in rhyme with tee-hee!

Keene and Ahiers are the two-for floozies.

Michael D. Blum turns in one of the best man-plays-dog performances ever. This time he's a talking dog, Barney, who can't seem to convince his human, down-and-out blues singer Blind Willie (John Q. Smith) that a talking dog would be a more profitable act than blues singer in a deserted alley.

Blum and Viertel also are great in "Bus Stop", in which Blum carries a sign that is modified to read "Bust Stop" and the two of them lustily think up all the alternate names they can for hooters and Johnsons.

Coates is hilarious as a bag lady in the making in "One Tennis Shoe." Finally, Smith and Ahiers are fabulous in "The Best Daddy." This is the one of the plays my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I had seen before. It was part of the first Death/Sex production at Balagan Theatre back in February of 2009.

Hey, I mentioned them all! This is great material and the cast is truly outstanding. An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein at Theater Schmeater is a lot of fun. It runs through June 12, but tickets have been going rapidly, so order yours early.

Oedipus: you'll shoot your eye out!

2010-05-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer is somewhat averse to Greek tragedy. I can trace this aversion to the genre directly back to a particularly dreadful 1992 production of Jean Anouilh's adaptation of Antigone put on by Intiman Theatre. That afternoon may have been the longest month I ever spent in a theater.

Recent events have me considering giving Sophocles a second chance. Seattle Shakespeare Company did a kick-ass production of Electra back in February. Now Balagan Theatre has come along with its own adaptation of Oedipus, a company-written script conceived and created by Jake Groshong, Ryan Higgins, and Lenore Bensinger and directed by Groshong and Higgins.

The creators take their inspiration from Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. While it isn't exactly The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) in terms of cramming 37 plays into one performance, there's considerable upside to boiling the Oedipus story down to 90 minutes with no intermission. I have to admit that, knowing the creators as I do (Weisenheimer is president of the board at Balagan, but it doesn't mean I'm biased) I came in expecting something a bit more over the top. Instead they hit us with some straight-up theater.

Highlights were captivating performances by Ryan Fields in the title role and Patrick Bentley as Creon. The scene in which Fields as Oedipus beds his wife/mother Jocasta, played by Joanna Horowitz, was fascinating, touching, and tender, a great example of the company's ability to re-think some pretty challenging material.

If we have a criticism of the show it is that the women of Thebes--Tiresias, Antigone, and Ismene, played by the talented trio of Sharon Barto, Annie Jantzer, and Allison Strickland, respectively--don't have nearly so much to do as do the guys. Antigone spends years leading her dad, Oedipus, around after he's had his eyes plucked out. Does it suck to be Antigone? Yes. My Sweetie, the official scorer, keeps expressing an interest in meeting Sophocles' mother. I'm not sure I'm willing to burn an evening on her, but you can see her influence, through her son's handiwork, at Balagan through June 5.

Annex scores with two nice shows

2010-05-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

With all of the theater my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I see it's pretty amazing that we had never taken in a show at Annex Theatre--until this month, when we saw two in six days. Both were outstanding.

L-R Jennifer Pratt as Annique, Jade
Justad as Veronica, and Daniel Chris-
tensen as Micky in Scotto Moore's play
When I Come to My Senses I'm Alive.
Photo: Ben Laurance.

Back on May 14 we saw When I Come to My Senses I'm Alive by local playwright Scotto Moore and directed by Kristina Sutherland. Expectations were high. Moore penned two of our favorites of the January 14/48 festival, and the cast included a couple of Balagan friends, LaChrista Borgers and Curtis Eastwood.

Senses did not disappoint. Moore's sci-fi script explored the notion of human emotions that can be downloaded and enjoyed vicariously, and a super malevolent intelligence that evolved when the system got hacked. Jennifer Pratt was excellent as Annique Farrar, the inventor of the emotion-sharing helmets, Eastwood was delightful as the sleazy TV network exec who wanted to steal it all, and Jade Justad was cool and calculating as the dangerous Veronica Bilious, spy, hacker, and hit-woman extraordinaire.

Kudos to set designer David Gignac, who came up with a big swinging wall that made it easy to switch between Annique's basement, where all the computing takes place, and the TV network offices and other scenes of the show.

We're really enjoying Moore's plays and hope to see more of them.

A few days later we took in José Amador's one-man show El Hijo Prodigo (The Prodigal Son), directed by Mark Fullerton. It's the tale of a man's trip back to his native Puerto Rico after more than two decades off the island. Amador is a marvelous story teller, and his narrative is at turns funny, haunting, gut-wrenching, and touching. Weisenheimer got especially weepy around the end, partly because Pops Weisenheimer passed away in the same year as Padre Amador.

José's performance was a bit on the spotty side, as there were a couple of occasions when he had to struggle to recall his lines. The performance we saw was the last of a run of several weeks, and besides, mastering what is, in effect, a 90-minute monologue must be one heck of a challenge. The story is entirely compelling. We'd love to see Amador continue to refine El Hijo Prodigo, and perhaps add other actors. We imagine it would be fun to meet some of the characters he told us about.

Sadly, both shows have closed. If you missed them, you missed some good stuff. And kudos to Annex for producing almost exclusively new works.

Unlucky M's

2010-05-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer is an admitted baseball stathead.

M's cleanup hitter José Lopez is slugging .278 and his OPS is
.527. Couple of flares drop in for him, he's right back in the
groove. Seattle Times photo by Rod Mar.

As a long-time participant in baseball simulation leagues involving the dice-based board game APBA and then, later, computers, statistical analysis of the game has been a big part of enjoyment of that hobby. I went off the deep end when Bill James was doing his Baseball Abstract in the early '80s. I've given up the sims; this is the first year since 1973 that I haven't been in some sort of baseball replay league. (I retired to devote more time to writing Weisenheimer, Seattle Astronomy Examiner, book reviews for Arches magazine, and to be be board chair at Balagan Theatre. I may be doing something else I can't remember right now.) But I still follow the M's and the Cardinals, and read blogs such as U.S.S. Mariner and Lookout Landing. Both sites are stuffed to the brim with FIPs and wOBAs and wOBArs and BABIPs and UZRs and a bunch of other newfangled statistics that tell us more about players than batting average and ERA.

Thus I read with interest a post yesterday on LL that said, in essence, that the Mariner offense is simply snakebit. Quoting:

We say it every day, this offense isn't this bad. They're getting unlucky. They're getting really freaking unlucky.

This put me in mind of "Bobby," a character in the great film Bull Durham who gets released from A-ball because he can't hit. "Skip," he protests, "I know I'm in a goddamn slump, but I hit the ball hard today. Couple flares drop in for me, I'm right back in the groove."

Sorry. The organization wants to make a change.

I decided to do my own statistical analysis. Even after today's huge five-run outburst (in a loss) the M's have scored just 130 runs in 39 games, a measly 3.33 runs per game. Only the pathetic Houston Astros have scored fewer in all of baseball. Fifteen of the 16 teams in the National League have scored more runs, and they make the pitchers bat over there! (Our DHs hit very much like pitchers, but that's another story.) The Mariners have 21 home runs, again 29th in baseball, ahead of only Houston. And three of those are by Mike Sweeney, so they shouldn't really count. Here's why:

Weisenheimer is convinced that Sweeney is a practical joke played on the M's by the rest of the league. During spring training they said, hey, let's throw a bunch of meatballs to Sweeney, and if he hits .847 or something in March the Mariners might think he's still got it and actually keep him on the roster. IT WORKED! So, mid-May arrives and Sweeney is batting about .172 with no homers and about two RBI. The Internets are calling for his head on a platter, so the league answered with more meatballs, and Sweeney homered in three consecutive games! He can go to lunch on those meatballs for another couple of months. Sweeney is now batting .242 with three home runs and seven RBI. (I know, the Lookout Landing folks would chide me for using these counting stats, but what the heck.) To top it all off, jogging around the bases after those home runs caused Sweeney to get a sore back, and he hasn't been able to play since the big power surge.

In short, Weisenheimer contends the Mariners are not unlucky on offense. They flat out stink. If not for Ichiro and Gutierrez, this might well be the stinkiest Mariner offense of all time. And I'm old enough to have seen some really smelly lineups. I remember Scrap Iron Stinson behind the plate, Dan "Old Whitey" Meyer down at first, Lenny Randle down at third, Pee Wee Briley in left. I saw Mario Mendoza, namesake of the Mendoza Line, play shortstop for a couple of years. (Mendoza actually hit .245, with an OPS of .596, in 1980, so I guess you could say he "erupted" the same year as Mt. St. Helens.) If Mendoza were on this year's team he'd be batting fifth.

The M's are 14-25. If Joe Riggins, the manager in Bull Durham, were here, he'd shake his head, mutter "How'd we ever win 14," and stomp off in a glorious stream of expletives.

Too many good choices

2010-05-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I'm all that crazy about "Internet democracy." Surveys, petitions, and straw polls taken over the 'net must certainly be skewed as all get-out. Yet it seems we're stuck with them.

A fascinating on-line vote that's going on right now is giving me fits because there are too many good candidates, and there's some significant cash to be had by the winner.

Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at the
University of Washington needs a new
roof. You can help! UW photo.

My friend Clarence, who recently became the CEO of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington, tipped me off first with a Facebook note requesting a vote for the center so it could get part of a million dollar grant to help renovate their facilities. A few days later, I went with Ma Weisenheimer to On the Town at the 5th Avenue Theatre, and they handed out cards afterward asking for votes so they could get some dough to fix up their lobby. I didn't make the connection at the time, but when I logged on to check it out, I learned that they were competing for the same pot of money.

The pot is $1 million to be doled out by the American Express Partners in Preservation Seattle-Puget Sound initiative. The partners are essentially American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. More than 100 organizations submitted applications for the grants. Twenty-five nominees were selected for the vote, which began April 15 and ends May 12. You can register at the site and are encouraged to vote daily for your favorite.

When I signed on I noticed several other projects of interest. One is the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at the University of Washington. Weisenheimer has done some writing on behalf of TJO in his alter ego as Seattle Astronomy Examiner. Town Hall Seattle is a worthy pick. King Street Station, Kirkland Arts Center, and the Point No Point lighthouse are all on the list. As we roll into the last 10 days of Chicago-style voting (early and often) it appears the race is between the Schooner Adventuress out of Tacoma and Town Hall Seattle, with the 5th Avenue running a distant third. Alas, the observatory is near the back of the pack, with less than one percent of the vote. There may not be enough astronomers in the area; the number of hits on my Examiner articles would bear that out!

While I've given the observatory and the cultural center my support so far, I think I'll give my remaining votes to Town Hall to see if they can't catch the schooner.

As was the case with George W. Bush, all is not lost for those who don't win the popular vote. The top vote-getter is guaranteed a grant, but the partners will divvy up the rest of the pot among the rest of the nominees as they see fit. I hope the "supreme court" gives something to my favorites, too!

Go fight outside! Balagan's "True West" is a smash

2010-05-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

A Hello Kitty toaster gave its life for comedy at Balagan Theatre Saturday night. The innocent kitchen appliance and a vintage Smith-Corona typewriter were among the many things destroyed during the final performance of Sam Shepard's True West, directed by Shawn Belyea and Tim Hyland.

Brothers Austin (Chris Bell, left) and
Lee (Mike Dooly) have some issues
with each other during Balagan
Theatre's production of True West.
Photo: Andrea Huysing.

Chris Bell and Mike Dooly star as the two brothers, Austin and Lee. Bell's Austin is a successful screenwriter, housesitting for his vacationing mother while working on his next project. His peace and quiet is interrupted by Dooly's Lee, a petty thief and a drunk who has popped in to mom's neighborhood to steal a few things and be on his way.

Things go a bit awry. During a golf match Lee convinces Austin's producer, Saul Kimmer (played by Belyea) to drop Austin's project in favor of his own cockamamie Western tale of two dimwits chasing each other across Texas. The brothers' epic struggle over who's the better man, fueled by mass quantities of PBR, Old No. 7, and bubbly, grows increasingly violent and threatening. Lee says screenwriting is way easier than a life of crime, and bets Austin he couldn't even steal a toaster. The next morning, Austin has at least a dozen of them, including the doomed Hello Kitty model, which meets its end, as does the typewriter and much of the set, at the end of a five iron. But not before Austin has made plenty of yummy toast!

A toaster just like this one gave its
all during the final performance of
Balagan Theatre's True West.

Dooly and Bell are great, Balagan favorites who really get into these great characters, and into smashing things. The hilarity of the situation reaches a fever pitch when their mom (Betty Campbell) returns home to her house in ruins, and can only lament that Austin forgot to water her plants (they're strewn all over the stage with the rest of the debris) and urges the boys to go fight outside.

Alas, you cannot see True West any more, as Saturday's performance was the last. We got the impression that the brothers may have been a bit more enthusiastic in their destruction on closing night, knowing that the set didn't have to be put back together for another show tomorrow. In fact, the crew was busy at work dismantling the stage within 10 minutes of the end, preparing to build in the final show in Balagan's 10-play season, an adaptation of Oedipus by the theater's company members. We can't wait for that!

FULL DISCLOSURE: Weisenheimer is chair of the board at Balagan, but it doesn't mean I'm biased!

Tell Me on a Sunday entertains at ArtsWest

2010-04-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

The standard showbiz bromide "Break a leg" nearly came literally true to scuttle the entire run of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Tell Me on a Sunday less than a minute into its opening night at ArtsWest Wednesday. A lift bringing actress Danielle Barnum up from beneath the stage for her grand entrance stuck and lurched slightly, sending Barnum staggering a bit. She was able to regain her balance, avoid skeletal damage, and turn in a marvelous performance as Emma in this seldom-produced Lloyd Webber show.

Danielle Barnum as Emma in Sheldon Bloom's swimming
pool in the ArtsWest production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's
Tell Me on a Sunday. Photo by Matthew Durham.

ArtsWest did most everything right in this production. Barnum is an engaging performer with a sweet singing voice. Director Christopher Zinovitch and crew cooked up an interesting set with a clever projection screen that sometimes hid, sometimes revealed the musicians. The musicians did a fine job with Lloyd Webber's score. The one mis-step, apart from Barnum's stumble onto the stage, may have been the selection of this particular work.

Tell Me on a Sunday is not typical Lloyd Webber fare, which could be good or bad depending on your point of view. This is a one-actor show, and while Weisenheimer isn't necessarily opposed to the same, it seems a musical must be especially challenging to pull off when there's nobody else to sing and dance with, particularly when the one character isn't fabulously likable. Emma's life in the U.S. is a lonely one, trying to break into the hat-making business far away from her native England, and she and her series of invisible beaus use each other until they're finished, then move on to the next. Some wonderful comic touches helped lighten the tone. The swimming pool scene in Beverly Hills was pretty funny.

Barnum gives it her best and turns in an enjoyable performance. We saw her in Balagan Theatre's well-received production of The Full Monty back in November. She was delightful in Tell Me, and pulled off some incredibly rapid wardrobe changes during the one-act show. She's a talented young actor and we're looking forward to seeing more of her. Kudos to musical director and pianist Deanna Schaffer, Joseph Baken on violin, Jacqueline Benthuysen on viola, and Justin Huertas on cello for some top-notch playing.

There were a few opening-night glitches on Wednesday, notably with the lighting, which we didn't think was always where it was intended to be. We're sure those will get ironed out.

All in all, Tell Me on a Sunday is worth a look. It's playing at ArtsWest through May 23.

Joan Osborne plays excellent show in Edmonds

2010-04-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer is a bit befuddled that a vocal talent such as Joan Osborne keeps playing relatively small venues. Maybe she's right where she wants to be. Perhaps it's partly a reflection that her one big hit, "One of Us", is now 15 years in the past. But Osborne has a kick-ass voice and a kick-ass band. She played a great show at the Triple Door a year and a half ago, and performed before a packed house Saturday night at the 704-seat Edmonds Center for the Arts.

Joan Osborne

Interestingly, Osborne played more tunes Saturday from her most recent album, Little Wild One, than she did at the 2008 show when the disc was brand new. She opened the set with "Rodeo" from that record, followed by "Help Me" from the Grammy-nominated 1995 disc Relish, and the Grateful Dead classic "Brokedown Palace." Osborne toured as part of the Dead, post Jerry Garcia, in 2003, and noted that they never let her sing "Brokedown Palace" on the tour. So she included it on her 2006 album Pretty Little Stranger, and it's now a staple of her performances.

Next came a smokin', bluesy version of "How Sweet it Is" which she recorded as the title track of her 2002 album of cool covers, and another from Little Wild One, "Hallelujah in the City."

A couple of the more interesting tunes for me were "Spider Web" and "One of Us", both from Relish. Both had interesting, jazzy introductions that had me expecting Miles Davis to come out and take up a back corner of the stage and start playing. Osborne's band, in fact, is fantastic and versatile. They played jazz, R&B classics, sorta-country, and the Dead exceedingly well. She's been touring with the same gang for a while now: Andrew Carillo on guitar, Richard Hammond on bass, Aaron Comess on drums, and Keith Cotton keyboards.

"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?" and "Ladder" closed out the show, and they played two songs from Little Wild One for an encore: the title track and "Light of This World." Fans yelled out many song requests; were Weisenheimer a yeller, he would have requested the sock-melting "Son of a Preacher Man." Osborne told the audience that having more material than you can squeeze into one show is a good problem. Clearly, though, the wag who bellowed "Stairway to Heaven" planted a seed in Osborne's mind. Don't be surprised if she does some Led Zeppelin next time she comes to town. Rest assured it will be fantastic.

Winners and losers in war shows

2010-04-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer took in a couple of shows with war themes in the last week, and neither was what one might expect. One was a light-hearted romp, and the other was just a dud.

L-R: Owen, Rudinoff, Reid, Wildrick,
and Allen at a club searching for Miss
Turnstiles. Photo: Chris Bennion.

On the Town, playing at the 5th Avenue Theatre, is only a "war" show in that it's about three sailors with 24 hours of shore leave in New York City. It's enough time for all three to find love, or something at least approximating it. Newcomer Joe Aaron Reid was marvelous as Gabey, the sailor who falls for Miss Turnstiles, whom he spots on a poster in the subway. Regulars Greg McCormick Allen and Matt Owen are splendid as Ozzie and Chip, Gabey's shipmates. The great performances were by the love interests, the always fabulous Billie Wildrick, who was Claire the anthropologist, and Sarah Rudinoff, who played cab driver Hildy will brass and bravado. Props, too, to veterans Allen Fitzpatrick and Suzy Hunt, who as Judge Pitkin and Madame Dilly added great humor to the show.

The dancing in On the Town, choreographed by Bob Richard, was marvelous. Much of it was sort of avant garde ballet as envisioned by Jerome Robbins. On the Town, directed by Bill Berry, plays at the 5th through May 2.

The posters for Henry V, playing at Seattle Shakespeare Company, ask rhetorically, "Ain't war grand?" No, it ain't, and neither was the production, directed by Russ Banham. The biggest problem was the woeful miscasting, or mis-directing, of Evan Whitfield as King Henry. Whitfield didn't have much spark as the king, not enough to give us any inkling why those other guys would follow him once more into the breach. He clearly wasn't comfortable with the Bard's language, either. There were a few good moments, especially in the funny scene at the end where Henry tries to woo the English-challenged French princess Katherine (the sparkling Alexandra Tavares), but mostly Whitfield didn't work.

Tavares, left, and Hoffer
learn English. Photo by
John Ulman.

A daring move that paid off was the casting of Jerick Hoffer, who brought his drag alter ego, Ms. Kitty Witless from the comedy/musical duo The Vaudevillians, to the role of Mistress Quickly. Hoffer also played the nurse Alice and did a quick turn as a French soldier to boot. The scene in which Alice tries to teach some English to Katherine was a hoot.

There was a good fight between Pistol and Gower (played by Russell Hodgkinson and James Lapan) in which the weapons were leeks. And Stephanie Shine, the artistic director at Seattle Shakes, was super as chorus, providing the introduction and narration. Overall, though, Henry V was a disappointing finish to what has otherwise been an outstanding season for the company. It runs through May 9.

Janiva rocks Seattle again

2010-04-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

Janiva Magness must love Seattle. Magness played a smokin' show at Jazz Alley in February, and came back to town last Saturday night for a show at Highway 99 Blues Club to celebrate the April 13 release of her new CD, The Devil is an Angel Too on Alligator Records. A packed house enjoyed the hell out of two high-octane sets.

The opening set was devoted to the new record, and there's some marvelous stuff on there. True to the album title there is some naughty stuff on it and some nice tunes, too. Weisenheimer particularly likes Janiva's version of George Jackson's "Slipped, Tripped, and Fell in Love," the Earl Randle song "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down," the Nick Lowe tune "Homewrecker," a rocking version of Delbert McClinton's "Your Love Made a U-Turn," "Turn Your Heart in My Direction" written by her hubby, Jeff Turmes, and the title track by Julie Miller.

So, I've just called out fully half of the disc. Well, it's a darn fine one, and the record-buying public agrees! The Devil is an Angel Too debuted at #3 on the Billboard Blues chart, #1 on iTunes blues albums, #2 on the Blues & Roots chart, and is presently #16 on Amazon. This was a release PARTY in every sense of the word!

The second set was great, too, with favorites like "Fool Me Again," "You Were Never Mine," and the Koko Taylor tribute "Wang Dang Doodle."

L-R Janiva Magness, my Sweetie, the official scorer, and
Weisenheimer after Janiva's show at Highway 99 April 17.

Magness is touring with a kick-ass band: Zach Zunis on guitar, Gary Davenport on bass, Jim Alfredson on keyboards, and Matt Tecu on drums. The Highway 99 date kicked off their tour. They play in Gulfport, Mississippi tomorrow, and will spend the rest of April and the first half of May in the South. Magness next hits the Northwest in July. She'll play the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland on July 4, and the Mt. Baker Blues Festival in Bellingham on July 31.

Magness is a three-time winner of the Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year Award from the Blues Foundation, an honor she's up for again this year, and is the 2009 B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. Go see her if you can. Follow Janiva on Facebook and track the tour on her website, which my Sweetie and her team put together!

Fabulous Fences at the Rep

2010-04-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer has been accused on a number of occasions in recent months of being too nice, at least when it comes to theater reviews. It happened again last weekend when I did a one-word Facebook review of Seattle Rep's production of Fences. The word was "incredible." Folks were shocked--shocked!--to hear me gushing about a play. After several days of additional pondering of it, I'd like to amend my review to: "Effin' incredible." Bring on the critics.

I am not alone in my assessment of this production of the August Wilson play directed by Timothy Bond. Misha Berson raved in the Times (Fences hits it out of the park), Steve Clare of Examiner.com said it hits a home run, Michael Strangeways of Seattle Gay Scene called it beautiful and masterful, Jay Irwin of Broadway World wrote it is a perfect game, and Seth Kolloen of The Sun Break calls it "the best play I have ever seen."

James A. Williams as Troy Maxson
in the Seattle Rep production of
August Wilson's Fences. Photo by
Chris Bennion.

I won't go quite that far, but this Fences is right up near the top. The casting was perfect, the performances were spot-on, and it's a great script full of drama and humor. While all of the cast were fantastic, it was James A. Williams at the center as Troy Maxson, former baseball star and now garbage truck driver, who dominates the play as he dominates his stage family. What a grand performance: angry, vulnerable, drunk, alone, and burdened with responsibility. Two scenes especially crackled. In the first, Troy's son Cory (Stephen Tyrone Williams) asks his dad why he doesn't like him. As Troy explains it isn't his job to like Cory, he has an obligation, the hate damn near ignites the stage. In the second, Troy has broken the news to his wife Rose (Kim Staunton) that he's having an affair and has a kid on the way. Sparks fly during their discussion of the situation.

William Hall, Jr., José Rufino, Craig Alan Edwards, and Shiann Rush also were marvelous. Hall was memorable in another Wilson play, Gem of the Ocean, at the Rep a few years ago, and Rufino has been seen in a couple of shows at Seattle Shakespeare Company of late.

We saw Fences on its last weekend, and the run has ended. If you missed it, I think they're taking the production back to Syracuse. You should consider going. It's a great show.

AT&T Park -- 10 years old already?!

2010-04-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Weisenheimer finally took in a baseball game at AT&T Park in San Francisco Monday, the day after they'd celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first game played there. Time flies! The place has probably had two or three corporate names in that time.

AT&T Park, San Francisco. Photo by Weisenheimer.

It's a nice ballpark, and I'm not sure why it took me so long to visit. Two things factor in: We clearly don't visit San Francisco often enough, and the last time we were here I think the Giants were out of town. Plus, this is the town that got us used to NOT seeing baseball so much. It was 1994, my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I were here as part of our first anniversary celebration, we had tickets to home games for both the Giants and Athletics, and major league baseball went on strike. Oddly enough, we found it was easy to have fun in San Francisco even without major league baseball. It's possible I would not have seen a game since, save for the miracle run by the Mariners in '95. I didn't attend a game in the Kingdome until late August, when it appeared Sweet Lou had them on a run for playoff contention.

Say Hey, say Willie, that
Giants kid is great! Photo
by Weisenheimer.

Anyway, I knew I was going to have a good time at the Giants game when all the ticket takers and ushers seemed impressed with the ticket I'd bought. Club level, front row, just a little to the third base side of home plate. I could have called a better game that the umpire if he'd moved outta the way! The red-hot Giants beat Pittsburgh 9-3, Bengie Molina went 4-for-4 with a homer and a double, and Barry Zito worked into the seventh.

AT&T Park is better than Safeco Field in at least one respect: no roof. On the other hand, they could have used one Sunday when a monsoon delayed the start of the 10th anniversary celebration game by four hours. Such a monstrosity would ruin the great views. While the usher in my section, 217, was predicting more rain, it turned out to be a comfortable and pleasant evening.

Orlando Cepeda, a good enough
Giant to make it into Danny
Kaye's D-O-D-G-E-R-S song.
With a wham, bam, he hit a
grand slam! Weisenheimer photo.

Other features of the park include the well-known giant Coke bottle and giant baseball mitt that loom behind the stands in left field, and McCovey Cove outside the yard in right. Outside on the walkways are statues of Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays, with the Say Hey Kid's being the more popular.

All in all, the game was a great time. AT&T Park is way better than Candlestick for baseball. Not quite as way better than the Seattle park is over the Kingdome, but pretty close. I think I'll go again, and not wait 10 years this time.

Happy anniversary to SFMOMA

2010-04-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

Our current road trip has revealed that 1935 was a watershed year for the arts on the West Coast. Both the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) are celebrating their 75th anniversaries this year. To mark the occasion SFMOMA has dragged out a little of everything in its expansive collection, including historical documents that mark some of the museum's acquisitions over the years.

Weisenheimer is particularly drawn to SFMOMA's photography collection. The founding of San Francisco and the advent of photography roughly coincide, and local icon and personal favorite Ansel Adams was a key figure in getting the form to be considered serious art. There's some great Adams stuff, including a photograph of Diego Rivera at work. It's awesome just to look at prints made by the great master himself. Also on display are works from other legends, including Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Larry Sultan, Diane Arbus, and Alfred Stieglitz, whose portraits of Georgia O'Keefe are incredible. Only one person didn't seem to be enjoying the photography: a girl of about 8 or 10 who was clomping about quite noisily and muttering, "I've seen all this kind of stuff." Critics are born early.

"A Set of Six Self-Portraits" by Andy
Warhol, 1967. Photo by Weisenheimer.
Below, the author in his friends' kitchen
working on this blog post, 2010.

Founding director Grace McCann Morley had a reputation for going out on a limb for abstract artists. SFMOMA put on the first big solo show for Jackson Pollock, for example, and a couple of works by Pollock are included in the exhibit. This put her in the crosshairs for critics. There's a hilarious letter on display from a Life magazine reader who objected strenuously to Morley's selection of a Paul Klee painting "Nearly Hit" for the magazine's "Museum Director's Choice" series. Good times.

While Morley was a big supporter of those with different ideas, later directors weren't necessarily early adopters. For example, SFMOMA had only one work by Andy Warhol until five years after he died. That one piece, though, was "A Set of Six Self-Portraits" from 1967, a work so influential it has become almost ubiquitous. There are several pieces in the style in the home of our host friends on this leg of our trip, including a Barack Obama campaign card and a dozen rubber duckies. And any schlub with a MacBook, e.g. Weisenheimer, can create one in a second or two.

One piece that almost defies description is a 2006 video by Bruce Conner titled "THREE-SCREEN RAY." Conner may be the guy who killed the radio star, or at least an accomplice, as he began making music videos in the early '60s. The soundtrack is a smokin' live performance by Ray Charles of "What'd I Say." The visuals, on three screens, are a fast-changing montage of strippers, cartoons, newsreels about war, goofy fashion shots, fireworks, and countdown leaders. Most of these were shot or collected by Conner for his earlier work, and digitized and re-edited for "THREE-SCREEN RAY."

"Spiegel, blutrot" by Gerhard Richter, 1991.
Photog Weisenheimer reflected at right.

One piece Weisenheimer found oddly compelling was a 1991 work by Gerhard Richter called "Spiegel, blutrot" (Blood-red mirror). The name speaks for itself. I must have watched that thing, and all of the museum patrons' reactions to it, for 20 minutes or more. Likewise, another piece looked for all the world like a big stack of posters in the middle of the gallery floor, inviting everyone to pick up and take a copy home with them. I'm quite sure the elderly woman museum volunteer assigned to this gallery for the day must be nursing an ulcer by now; there's a lot of pressure and urgency in making sure nobody touches the art. This may well be the sort of thing the artist (I forgot to note the name! Bad reviewer!) intended, interaction with the piece, and other people, all day long.

SFMOMA is a must if you're going to be in the Bay Area. The anniversary exhibit runs through January 16, 2011.

"Vigil" a hilarious, touching romp

2010-04-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Who'd a thunk waiting for your auntie to kick the bucket could be so funny? The American Conservatory Theater production of Vigil, written and directed by Morris Panych, is a riot from start to almost finish, with a touching, teary ending.

Olympia Dukakis and Marco Barricelli
star in Vigil at American Conservatory
Theater in San Francisco. We were sitting
about this close. Photo by Kevin Berne.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, scored us front-row seats for the show at San Francisco's marvelous Geary Theater, so we ended up about five feet away from Olympia Dukakis and Marco Barricelli, both of whom turned in marvelous performances in this gut-busting script.

Barricelli is Kemp, and Dukakis is Grace, his dying aunt who has summoned him to take care of her, though they've not seen each other in some 30 years. The dying takes a lot longer than expected. Over the course of a year Kemp gets to utter out loud all of the tactless, horrible things that people in these sorts of situations are thinking. "Let's not talk about anything depressing, alright?... Do you want to be cremated?" Grace, on the other hand, utters next to nothing; Dukakis has just one line -- "Merry Christmas" -- in the entire first act, but says more with body language, gestures, and facial expressions than a lot of guys who have played Hamlet. Grace has maybe a dozen lines in the whole show. It's hard to get a word in edgewise with Kemp's constant ranting about his horrible childhood and impatience that his aunt get with it and croak, already.

At one point Kemp builds a "suicide machine," a classic Rube Goldberg device that Grace can use if she wants to, that gives several good options for ending it all, including a bonk on the head with a cast-iron frying pan. You knew Kemp would be hoist with his own petard, but it's still a hoot when it happens. The other big punch line of the script perhaps should have been seen coming down Geary Street, but surprised us. We won't give it away!

Dukakis, of course, is well known. Barricelli perhaps not so much, though he's artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz and spent eight seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We were fortunate to see him there in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac in 2006. That predates the Weisenheimer blog, but it was our favorite production of that season in Ashland. He's just amazing as Kemp, a total lout of a character with minimal social skills. What a virtuoso performance.

Grace's house is a jumbled, attic-like collection of junk and crazy, off-kilter windows and doors. The set and costumes were designed by Ken MacDonald, partner with writer/director Panych in life as well as in 50-plus shows.

Our one quibble is with the intermission. We know, theater companies need to bring a little revenue in with refreshments, but sometimes they sacrifice the art to get there. Vigil ran about two hours with an intermission. It could easily have been done in 90 or 100 minutes and kept its momentum going. We may have some posts devoted to intermissions in the coming weeks and months.

If you're in the Bay Area this show is a must-see! It runs through April 18.

"Cat" sizzles at OSF

2010-04-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Beatriz as Maggie on
the OSF poster for Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof.

Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has to rank among the greatest plays in the English language, and the current production at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directed by Christopher Liam Moore, is absolutely dazzling.

The show features a Seattle favorite, Michael Winters, who was nominated for a best-actor Wisey last year for his portrayal of Prospero in The Tempest at Seattle Shakespeare Company. We were thrilled to learn Winters would play Big Daddy, then disappointed to hear that Cat was only running through July 4, and we typically visit Ashland in September. But, my Sweetie, the official scorer, has a business trip to San Francisco, Ashland is conveniently located about halfway there, and so a side trip was in order.

Winters and Big Daddy don't even appear until the second act, but the wait is worth it. He's incredible in a kick-ass role. Williams wrote him bigger than life, master of "28 thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile," and Winters is up to the task. A virtuoso performance by a great talent.

Stephanie Beatriz was hot and in charge as Maggie the Cat. We gave Beatriz a shout-out for her performance as Catherine in A View from the Bridge at OSF in 2008. She was really superb and more than a match for Sister Woman Mae (Kate Mulligan), Big Mama (Catherine E. Coulson), and Gooper (Rex Young), all of whom were marvelous.

Big Daddy (Michael Winters)
insists that Brick (Danforth
Comins) tell him why he
drinks. OSF photo by
Jenny Graham.

Perhaps the best acting was done by Danforth Comins as Brick, who had to look bored and disinterested for about 45 minutes in the first act while smokin' hot Maggie pranced around the stage in the wispiest of slips, setting the stage for the fun to come. Man! Liz who? My Sweetie had some quibbles with Maggie's hair. Frankly, I didn't notice!

A great deal of credit goes to director Moore and scenic designer Christopher Acebo for a fabulous set. It was simple: the bed, a nightstand, and Brick's liquor cabinet. There were no walls, just some wispy curtains in a circle around the stage, emphasizing the challenging lack of privacy in Brick and Maggie's world. In scene two they flipped around the furniture so that the set was a mirror image of what it was in scene one. Lots of reflection in that second scene. In the third scene, the bed was moved to a more prominent position, and that's where the play ends. Moore also used a 1974 version of the script, to which Williams added some more zesty language and more details about Brick's relationship with Skipper.

What a marvelous show in all regards. Get thee to Ashland and see it if you can.

Sunlight at ArtsWest leaves a few things in the dark

2010-04-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

West Seattle's ArtsWest theater purports to produce "artistic events so fiercely compelling that they require conversation." It's a bit of an audacious claim from a company that has been doing the goofy Christmas musical Plaid Tidings the last few holiday seasons. But ArtWest's recent production of Sunlight by Sharr White, directed by Vanessa Miller, accomplished the mission.

Sunlight is the story of a family torn apart in the post 9/11 world. The protagonists are a liberal college president, the conservative dean of the law school who also happens to be his son-in-law, the president's daughter/dean's wife, and the president's long-time assistant.

Director Miller coaxes marvelous performances out of all four actors. John Wray is hilariously fussy and bossy and pompous as the president, Matthew Gibbon, who has built this college out of a swamp. John Ulman is Vincent, his former star pupil who, as head of the law school, helped the government develop "guidelines" under which torture is acceptable--guidelines that led to the brutal death of a 15-year-old boy. Caught in between is Peggy Gannon, fabulous as Charlotte, Matthew's daughter, lawyer, and advisor, and Vincent's about-to-be estranged wife. Karen Nelson was incredible as Maryanne, long-time assistant to Matthew and something of a companion since the death of his wife several years previous.

While the performances were wonderful, the play has a few holes in it. The title refers to the quote from former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who opined that sunlight is the best disinfectant. But this play takes place at night, and I don't think all the cards are on the table. Vincent's main argument in support of torture is that Charlotte worked in the World Trade Center, he didn't know if she was OK that morning, and therefore torture is always justified if we think we can root out a threat. It's too simple, and not the real reason governments take part in the practice. Neither is it believable that Matthew would completely trash his dean's office, then trip him and start a fistfight in his living room. Even if he had been drinking.

But props to White for raising the question. I expect we'll be seeing plays about torture for a while now. Last year's Wisey-Award-winning best play, Equivocation, also included torture among its many plot lines. Creepily, in Equivocation Sir Robert Cecil was a big supporter of the practice, and suggested that it might even be considered a plus on the résumé by the time the 21st Century rolls around. And good for ArtsWest to doing some interesting and challenging new work.

Two Scalawags of Verona

2010-03-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

We were a tiny bit skeptical when we heard Seattle Shakespeare Company was going to set its production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in modern California. But director Marcus Goodwin's idea really worked, and a marvelous cast of local favorites made Two Gents an entertaining evening of theater on my Sweetie, the official scorer's birthday.

Hana Lass, at right, threatens to kick
Samie Detzer's ass. Photo: Erik Stuhaug.

They didn't lean on the California thing too much, but did make nice use of cell phones and cameras with pictures projected on the back wall of the set. They were also able to mine for new jokes this way, coming up, for example, with a funny visual gag for when Proteus (Daniel Brockley) gives a ring to his love, Julia (Hana Lass). We won't give it away, but this physical quip probably wouldn't have made much sense to the Bard's audiences.

Chris Ensweiler and "Russ"
Photo: Erik Stuhaug.

Speaking of the marvelous cast, it starts with Lass, who, as regular readers (are there any?) of WSW know, kicks ass. She also looks great with a soul patch. Connor Toms (Valentine) is a fine young talent and he and Lass have recently announced their engagement. Toms, David Goldstein (Speed), Brockley, and Chris Ensweiler (Lance) have a great deal of fun with the comic scenes. Ensweiler is an especially gifted comic and a regular at Seattle Shakes, where we've recently see him as Truffaldino in The Servant of Two Masters (for which he received a Wisey nomination for Best Clown) and as Feste in Twelfth Night. Ensweiler's Lance was a stoner/surfer/DJ dude who also had the challenging task of having a dog as co-star; Russ was great as "Crab."

The Two Gentlemen of Verona can be a bit challenging because, in the end, Proteus and Valentine turn out to be a couple of first-rate schmucks. Thus, Goodwin breaks form and stays away from a lives-happily-ever-after ending. It was refreshing and a great punch line to a good show.

Plenty of Whimsy at latest Brick House Gallery show

2010-03-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

Proprietor Peter MacDonald writes that "Whimsy," the current show at his Brick House Gallery in Tacoma, was "conceived to make you smile" and to "feel a whole lot better about this crazy world we live in." MacDonald's whimsical show hits the mark, featuring the work of 18 artists, local and from up and down the coast.

Weisenheimer's favorite piece in the show is the one pictured at right, Galen Turner's sculpture "Funk-Bot-Three-80." It's described as a "deconstructed robotic kid toy with dead stuff, neon halo, and motion sensor." What's more, it dances to the Young MC tune "Bust a Move." We also loved Pat Schuman's bright, colorful paintings depicting junk drawers and cluttered refrigerators. Somewhat more disturbing was a painting by Alan S. Hopkins called, "Facts, Fantasies, and Fictions." It shows us a North Pole awash in melted ice cap, with Santa stranded on the rooftop awaiting rescue, next Christmas turned into mere flotsam among the walruses and polar bears.

Art lovers with a sweet tooth would appreciate a triptych by Judy Gilbert featuring candy corn, licorice ropes, and Smarties. Cathy Fields contributed a marvelous painting called "An Unlikely Parade." The marchers include monkeys, a tiger, a two-headed juggler, harem girls, a yak, and snake handlers. Monica Gonzalez has several jewelry pieces in the show, made of wire and various washers. And, had it not been already snapped up, Weisenheimer would have purchased Ellen Miffitt's drawing "Catbotage," of a naughty kitty shredding the toilet paper roll. My Sweetie, the official scorer, has a birthday coming up, and she thinks it's pretty cute when our cat does that!

Local photographer Steve Russell has a great shot of a T-Rex menacing the bridge of Glass in Tacoma. I bet he had to wait a long time for that shot! Last but not least, next to the gallery door is Frank Terrill's "In Case of Emergency," pictured at left. Duct tape is a good fix for anything!

The Brick House Gallery is open on third Thursdays each month, and by appointment. You can see all of the pieces in Whimsy, as well as the artists' statements, on the gallery Web site.

"The Jammer" runs circles around all of those other Roller Derby plays

2010-03-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

The performance space at Balagan Theatre is on the tiny side. At maximum they can cram about 100 seats in there, but that leaves a stage the size of a ping pong table. Yet already this season they've managed to have an all-male strip show and a circus at Balagan with plenty of room to spare.

Just as impressive is the current production of The Jammer by Rolin Jones, directed by Terri Weagant. Weagant and set designer Jen Butler fit a Roller Derby rink, the team bus, a cathedral, and an amusement park all onto the stage for this laugh riot of a show -- "The King Lear of Roller Derby plays." Though none of the actors is actually on skates, Weagant uses other wheeled devices and set pieces to create that skating sound in the rink, to amazing effect.

The Jammer is a familiar story, really. Boy thinks his life is Dullsville, so he hits the road for a big adventure. The adventure turns out to be not so hot, and boy learns there's no place like home.

Boy in this case is Jack Lovington, played with aplomb by Nick Edwards. Christie Nelson was a ball of fire as Lindy Batello, chain-cursing, hard-drinking cannonball of a Derby girl and Lovington's love interest on the circuit. Unfortunately for Jack, she's only interested because she's being paid by slimy team owner Lenny Ringle, played with great relish by Balagan regular Ashley Bagwell. Michael D. Blum tries to keep Jack on the straight and narrow as Father Kosciusko; in the end it works out. Versatile and talented Ray Tagavilla plays four parts, including the doctor who cures Jack of what Lindy gives him. That's Nelson and Edwards at left above in a photo by Andrea Huysing from the play's Facebook page.

The Jammer provides non-stop laughs and is a great night out at the theater. It runs at Balagan through April 3.

DISCLOSURE: Weisenheimer is chair of the board at Balagan, but it doesn't make me biased!

Mavis Staples testifies at Jazz Alley

2010-03-06T00:26:00.000-08:00

If you don't go see Mavis Staples this weekend at ~~Jazz~~ Gospel/Blues Alley, you're out of your frickin' mind.

Mavis rocked the Alley on Friday night, and now I won't have to go to choich for a couple of years at least.

It was an incredible show: a music legend, a kick-ass band, and great stories about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Pops Staples. I'm here to tell you that Mavis has still got it. It's a little known fact that I've always wanted to be a Supreme, but now at least I've sung with Mavis. Sure, it was just backup vocals with the rest of the audience on "I'll Take You There," but I think this will launch my singing career.

Staples sang a number of other classics, including "Freedom Highway," "The Weight," "Why Am I Treated So Bad?", and "Wade in the Water." That's two great ones in a row for Jazz Alley.

BUT -- a note to the alley: BUY A FRICKIN' GROUND PLUG!! The Janiva Magness show last weekend was marred by an annoying hum in the sound system, and the same was even more pronounced during Friday night's show by Staples. Radio Shack has them, I'm just sure of it. It's a little preposterous that the great acts the Alley is bringing in should have to put up with less-than-perfect sound.

Glengarry Glen Ross is the boss!

2010-02-28T01:20:00.000-08:00

Whether you like David Mamet or not, you just knew the Seattle Rep's production of Glengarry Glen Ross, directed by Wilson Milam, was going to be brilliant just for the incredible cast.

Start off with three Seattle legends: R. Hamilton Wright as Ricky Roma, in his 45th play at the Rep since 1979. John Aylward as Shelly Levene, 47 productions at the Rep since 1970. Charles Leggett as Dave Moss, whose Rep performances aren't enumerated in the program, but who has run up a string of great performances of late, topped by his Shylock last year that garnered him both a Wisey Award for best actor and a Theatre Puget Sound "Gregory" (no relation) award for outstanding actor. Mix in a couple of future legends, MJ Sieber of the promising New Century Theatre Company and Shawn Belyea, who is executive producer of 14/48 and artistic director at Balagan Theatre, among other pursuits. Throw in solid performers Ian Bell and Russell Hodgkinson, and you've got a bunch of guys you'd pay to watch reading the phone book.

A couple of scenes really stick with me. There's one early between Hodgkinson and Leggett (L-R at right), talking in the Chinese restaurant, in which Moss is trying to convince George to rob the office and steal the leads. The dialog is so crisp, the banter so letter perfect and razor sharp, and Leggett's use of the shoulder poke and emphatic control of cigarette smoke so incredible that you're totally drawn in. Amazing timing, incredible precision. The second comes later, when Bell's character James Lingk comes in to the office to try to get out of a deal he made with Wright's Roma. Aylward and Wright work to dupe Bell, Sieber screws it up, and the tantrum Wright throws is priceless. In fact, there are a number of great tantrums in the show, with chair throwing, chair kicking, file box kicking. And it's all done with great verve and energy.

This is a short show. Curtain was at 7:30, and it finished at about 9:10 -- WITH INTERMISSION. I know, I know, you've got to sell a few cookies and glasses of wine, but the intermission messed with the flow of the show. We've seen enough great one-act plays and short productions, e.g. Balagan's great staging of another Mamet piece, Edmond, earlier this year, to come to think that intermission is the work of the devil. Maybe if you're doing full-text Hamlet you need a break, but even Americans can sit still for an hour and a half for some gripping, compelling theater.

Interestingly enough, Gary Cole was originally cast as Roma, with Wright as Dave Moss and Leggett as Lingk. Cole had to bow out just at the start of rehearsals because of a family emergency. I think director Milam lucked out. Right now it's about as hard to imagine anyone but Wright (OK, maybe Al Pacino) playing Roma as it is trying to imagine Ronald Reagan playing Rick in Casablanca. Leggett is an incredible actor and was fabulous as Moss. Trust your local talent!

All in all, Glengarry Glen Ross was great theater. I'd like to see it about five more times. Alas, it closed today.

Janiva Magness. WOW!

2010-02-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

As a general rule Weisenheimer buys into the notion that live music beats the recorded variety. In the case of Janiva Magness, the CDs are marvelous, and we own several of them, but we learned this week that her live show is mind-bogglingly fantastic.

Magness played at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley Tuesday and Wednesday, turning the place into Smokin' Hot Blues Alley for a couple of nights. And damn, Magness is an incredible talent. A three-time winner of the Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year award from the Blues Foundation, she's up for the award again at the 31st annual Blues Music Awards coming up in Memphis in May. It's easy to see why. Magness has incredible pipes, passion, and range in her singing, and a great stage presence to boot.

I wasn't keeping notes, but a couple of moments stood out. First was the moving ballad "You Were Never Mine" from her 2006 album Do I Move You? Second was a great story she told about Taj Mahal and his opinion about the muscle tone of her arms. Third was the finale of her set, an incredible story about and tribute to Koko Taylor during a rollicking rendition of the classic "Wang Dang Doodle." The tune highlighted Magness' ability to tell a great story, and put on a theatrically great performance, with the band gradually picking up in volume as Janiva described Taylor climbing to the stage for one of her final performances. Taylor, Queen of the Blues, passed away last June. It was an amazing piece and wrapped up one of the most entertaining live music shows Weisenheimer has ever attended. I certainly pitched a wang dang doodle all night long!

Don't despair for missing these shows. Magness will be back in Seattle for a show at Highway 99 Blues Club April 17. Her new album, The Devil is an Angel Too, will be released April 13 on Alligator Records.

Yonkers, Trout Stanley, Schmorgasborg add up to fun theater weekend

2010-02-21T14:34:00.000-08:00

We took in a great triple-header of fun theater this weekend.

Friday we made our first-ever trip out to the Village Theatre in Issaquah, where we saw Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, directed by Brian Yorkey. The play is the story of two teenagers left to live for a year with their difficult grandmother while their Pop, Eddie, goes off around the country selling scrap metal during WWII in order to make enough cash to pay off a couple of loan sharks. Along the way we meet a couple of their ditzy aunts and Uncle Louie, a small-time mobster. Each is doing his or her best to escape the reach of Grandma Kurnitz, a battle-axe of a candy and ice cream shop owner whose picture is in the dictionary next to the definition of “tough love.”

Special kudos to Jody McCoy, the understudy who stepped in to play Grandma Kurnitz in place of regular cast member Suzy Hunt Friday. As near as we could tell McCoy nailed it. Also fabulous was Mike Dooly as Uncle Louie. Dooly always has a kick-ass stage presence, and he was bigger than life as Louie. He's one of our favorite actors and the main reason we ventured out to Issaquah for the show (along with the opportunity for a double-date with our friends Heidi and Steve.) Nick Robinson was especially fine as Arty; Robinson is a fine young actor. Jennifer Lee Taylor was compelling as Aunt Bella, a kind spirit if she’s not necessarily the brightest. Collin Morris as Jay, Bradford Farwell as Eddie, and Karen Skrinde as Aunt Gert also were wonderful. (That's the cast above at right. Seated L-R are Morris, Hunt, and Robinson; behind the couch Taylor, Skrinde, Farwell, and Dooly. Not sure who took the photo; I lifted it from Dooly's Facebook page!)

Lost in Yonkers is highly recommended. It plays in Issaquah through Feb. 28, then moves to the Everett Performing Arts Center for a run from March 5-28.

Balagan Theatre’s production of Trout Stanley by Claudia Dey, directed by David Gassner, is a sweet-yet-disturbing tale of twin sisters whose solitary lifestyle is broken up by the appearance of the title character, a roast-eating, whiskey snitching, slipper sniffer if there ever was one. Wisey Award-winning director Ryan Higgins plays Trout with a certain degree of subtlety, though the character is not the least bit understated. He also gets to wrestle with sister Grace Ducharme (Sarah Budge) and smooch with sister Sugar Ducharme (Angela DiMarco) with whom he eventually runs off. DiMarco was a revelation as Sugar, displaying a wide range of emotion in a challenging role. We enjoyed her work at 14/48 last month, but missed well-received performances in Abe Lincoln in Illinois at Intiman and in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Village. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing more of DiMarco's work. (That's Higgins, DiMarco, and Budge in the Andrea Huysing photo above at left.)

As for the play itself, the story was interesting, but there sure was a lot of speechifying, with some long soliloquies. Those could have used a little editing, though my Sweetie, the official scorer, opines that Trout’s what-I-believe speech rivals that of Crash Davis from Bull Durham in this category. Trout Stanley runs at Balagan through March 6. It's been getting lots of great reviews, so go see it.

Following the show was Balagan’s monthly late-night cabaret mash-up, Schmorgasborg. It’s free, but hostesses Terri Weagant and Julia Griffin would be well worth the price of admission on their own even if it were substantially higher. Griffin was assistant director of Trout Stanley, and Weagant is directing Balagan’s next production, The Jammer. Billed as “the King Lear of Roller Derby plays,” The Jammer opens March 11 and runs through April 3.

Favorites Bucket of Honey, the Vaudevillians, and Fanny Tragic were on the Schmorgasborg bill. So were Higgins and Chris “Sloop” Bell, who both proved again that they are sick and twisted. We love them for it.

No arguments with the Rep's Speech and Debate

2010-02-13T17:10:00.000-08:00

The Seattle Repertory Theatre production of Stephen Karam's Speech and Debate, directed by Andrea Allen, is a marvelously entertaining presentation of a fantastic, witty script and provides some great opportunities for a trio of superb, young, local actors.

Erin Stewart as Diwata is at the center of the action from the beginning, when she concocts a musical podcast diatribe against the clearly clueless drama teacher who failed to cast her in the lead of her Salem, Oregon high school's production of Once Upon a Mattress. She becomes the leader of a small ring that includes Solomon (Justin Huertas), a cub reporter miffed because the school paper won't let him publsh his story of a sex scandal involving the mayor; and Howie (Trick Danneker), the openly gay, new kid in school who wants to start a gay-straight alliance. That's Stewart in the foreground, with Danneker (at left) and Huertas in the Chris Bennion photo above right.

Diwata is completely annoying; a bossy know-it-all who doesn't yet care what others think of her, and Stewart plays her with great flair and sensitivity and even a hint of vulnerability. Solomon is a total dork who is really pushing that story. "I'm a journalist," he says while sticking his digital recorder in everyone's face. As a journalist, he's not so hard-boiled; he gets out of sticky situations by declaring, "My dad is waiting for me outside." Howie is a little high-strung and nervous, and Danneker nails the character.

In the end, they get around the censors by forming a speech and debate club at the school. They present their story in a Group Interpretive performance ("Group Interp" is what the cool kids call it, Diwata informs us). Their interpretation of the story includes a strip and dance to Diwata's original composition. OK, they're wearing flesh-colored body stockings, but I bet they got the school board's attention.

The three manage to take us through a discussion of teenage angst and sexuality, free speech, politics, and fighting with "the man" without scaring away everyone over 23. In fact, they draw us in with wonderful performances of this funny and touching script.

The show is free of adults save for Amy Thone, who plays both the weary journalism teacher at the school, and the local NPR reporter who does a story on the team and promises Solomon she'll try to get his story into the Oregonian -- which we're sure she'll do if she can just stop plugging the new edition of her book for a minute.

Stewart has earned some measure of appreciation on the Weisenheimer pages for being the author of the incredibly sick Mr. Jibbers, performed at last summer's 14/48 festival and for which Stewart earned a Wisey nomination for best writer. Danneker played the title role in Picasso at the Lapin Agile last year at Balagan Theatre.

Speech and Debate is a great production. We're a little worried that it's a hidden treasure, as there were way too many empty seats in the Rep's Leo K Theatre at Friday night's performance. It runs through Feb. 21, so get out there and see it while you can!

Electra

2010-02-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

The other evening I had a queue of music on from the late romantic era; all lovely, lush, like a warm bath. Very nice. For whatever reason I'd capped off the queue with some Handel. And the moment the baroque came on it was like a breath of fresh air; invigorating, muscular, strong, straightforward stuff, and I perked right up. Wonderful.

I feel that way about Seattle Shakespeare's production of Electra. No complaints about the theatre we've been seeing lately. Lots of well-done stuff, some experimental, some feel-good, some fun stuff. But Electra was a bracing eighty minutes of breathtaking theatre. The Greeks didn't mess around, nor for that matter did Frank McGuinness in his adaptation. They got right down to business.

I'm not sure I moved during the whole uninterrupted play. By the end I had to just sit for a minute. The rest of the audience did too. I'm quite sure it was one of the actors who signaled the end of the play by clapping, as we sat sort of stunned in the darkness.

Electra's is a timeless theme, about the next generation's disappointment in and disgust with their parents. And their idealization and idolization of their parents. The kids are righteous and they take it upon themselves to work justice and then find out it's a pretty messy business, and they just might have some explaining to do to their children later on. There's a lot in common between Greek tragedy and the best episodes of The Sopranos.

Frank McGuinness's language is lovely and, yes, musical. Director Sheila Daniels complements it with judicious use of dissonant music throughout. The language is by turns lyrical, bombastic, with crescendos, silences, wailing, discord, movement, and finally resolution. Favorite line: "Your mother will no longer displease you."

OK, kids, now what?

Ritual and movement were beautifully choreographed throughout on a spare set with chain link fencing. For instance, at the moment Orestes kills Aegisthus, Electra splashes water over herself, and in that instant the wall behind her is splashed with blood.

There wasn't a weak link in the cast, but it is Marya Sea Kaminski's show in the titular role. She is fierce, and leaves all her blood and guts on the stage. An extraordinary performance. (That's Kaminski in the John Ulman photo at right.) Susannah Millonzi's performance as sister Chrysothemis is equal to Kaminski and their arguments give off sparks. Todd Jefferson Moore is perfectly grounded as the faithful servant and touches lightly and smoothly on what very, very little levity the play has.

This play messes with all kinds of expectations we have of theater in this day and age. It's an old play. Its assumptions and pace are very different from what is usually produced today. But it has its own internal logic and structure that is utterly convincing, inevitable, and beautiful. Sheila Daniels' production was note-perfect.

p.s. Wouldn't you be sort of curious to go back in time and meet Sophocles' mother? She must have been one hell of a piece of work.

The State of Our Souls

2010-02-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

One of us asked the other at dinner tonight, "Do you miss church?" Naturally that prompted a wide-ranging conversation. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Bach, and Zwingli were mentioned, for starters. And Shakespeare, George Carlin, and baseball. Consubstantiation, several unpopular Bible passages, and the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal. Alzheimer's. Grandkids. Estate planning. Jell-o and macaroni salad. Memorizing poetry. Yes, there was a bottle of wine involved (a 1998 Syrah).

And by the end of it we were playing the track "Ain't But the One," Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, loud enough to rattle the windows. And there was some smokin' triple-step swinging and gettin' down.

And then we did dishes.

I think we're irredeemable.

Apocalypse is hilarious in Harlequin's End Days

2010-02-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

We ventured down to the state capitol Friday to catch the Harlequin Productions staging of End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer, and a marvelous show directed by Linda Whitney made the trip well worth the effort.

Superb, nuanced performances by Ann Flannigan as Sylvia Stein, born-again Mom bent on saving as many sinners as possible before the rapture on Wednesday, and Scott C. Brown as Arthur Stein, her spouse who has been virtually comatose since surviving the 9/11 attacks while most of his co-workers perished, were the centerpiece of the Harlequin production. That's them at right in a photo lifted from Brown's Facebook page.

The kids were all right, too. Amy Hill was great as the eternally angry goth chick Rachel Stein, their daughter. Rian Wilson played new neighbor Nelson Steinburg, an uber dork with a crush on Rachel, and who flips if he's not wearing his Elvis costume. Rounding out the cast was Robert McConkey, who plays both Jesus Christ and Stephen Hawking, who appear only to Sylvia and Rachel, respectively.

This is a hilarious play that takes on serious themes of religion, science, commitment, generations, and family. We saw the Seattle Public Theater production a year ago and it knocked our socks off, earning Wisey nominations for Best Play, Actress, and Writer. The Harlequin production was also wonderfully entertaining. We especially liked Whitney's and Flannigan's decision to play Sylvia for more laughs, the comedy of her rants enhanced by her eyeball-rolling straight man, Jesus. We've seen Flannigan in several plays at Harlequin over the years, and she always delivers. Conversely, we thought Wilson put a little too much self-confidence into Nelson, who is constantly pelted by milk cartons and regularly whomped at school.

We could have done without the odd, acid-trip effects projected on a large screen at the back of the stage during scene changes and such. While it was a cool effect for the storm that blew through town at one point, mostly it was a distraction.

Harlequin is doing some great work, and End Days is a great play with a strong cast. Get thee to Olympia and see it, playing through Feb. 20.

South Pacific entertaining, but falls way short of the hype

2010-02-02T22:17:00.000-08:00

The much Bali Ha'i'd -- er, ballyhooed -- Lincoln Center Theater production of South Pacific sailed into the 5th Avenue Theatre last week. While a perfectly entertaining show, it left Weisenheimer thinking, "THIS is what Bart Sher has been doing that has the Big Apple all ga-ga?"

It's hard to go terribly wrong with South Pacific. The Rodgers and Hammerstein classic is chock full of great tunes that everyone knows even if they don't know what they're from: "Some Enchanted Evening" (performed about 20 times), "A Wonderful Guy," "Bali Ha'i," "Happy Talk," and "Honey Bun" are marvelous familiar songs. The best numbers of the show were two others, the Seabees' lusty rendition of "There is Nothin' Like a Dame" and the nurses' "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," both performed with high energy, snappy choreography, wit, and humor. The Thanksgiving Follies scene was also a lot of fun.

Carmen Cusack (pictured above) was a delight as the cockeyed optimist, Ensign Nellie Forbush. Cusack played the role with joy and emotion and energy. You just had to watch her when she was on stage. Matthew Saldivar was marvelous as Luther Billis, Rod Gilfry is an opera dude who really belted 'em out as Emile de Becque, and Keala Settle was a total scene stealer as Bloody Mary.

Somehow, though, the show really dragged at times. Sorta reminded me of the old Noel Coward bit: "She stopped the show. But the show wasn't really traveling very fast." Perhaps it's unfair to note that the show didn't live up to its hype. No show could. And one should take Tony Awards with a large grain of salt (witness the accolades heaped on the boring and pedestrian Light in the Piazza.) Despite its length, South Pacific was pretty entertaining. But I'll be glad to wash Bart Sher right out of my hair and send him on his way.

Balagan's Edmond haunting, fabulous

2010-01-31T22:37:00.000-08:00

Balagan Theatre's staging of Edmond by David Mamet, directed by Paul Budraitis, is a marvelously conceived production, and Sam Hagen's portrayal of the title character is a theatrical tour de force.

Budraitis, who also designed the set, put the play right in our faces. The set was stark and simple, in the round. A table on a couple of cylinders served as everything from a bar to a prison cell. Small track lights, the sort of disc-shaped ones you might buy to stick under a counter top, and some bare light bulbs gave the set alternately dim and stark illumination. A pair of flat-screen monitors suspended above either end of the tables gave information I frankly mostly missed; there was too much interesting stuff going on to be watching the screens. Most of the actors were already seated in the front row of the theater, below the screens, when the audience arrived. They stayed there, in character, changing costumes, and narrating scene changes throughout.

Hagen was a huge revelation. Maybe we're just in post-Wisey mode, but my Sweetie, the official scorer, thinks he's a virtual shoo-in for a best-actor nomination for this year. There's a lot of time left, but it was a powerful and amazing performance. Edmond swings from boredom to rage to victim to victimizer to dork to murderer and has us riveted on every word. Truly marvelous.

The rest of the cast, most of whom played multiple roles, were great from top to bottom. I'll single out just a few. Carolyn Marie Monroe, fresh off a Wisey win as best actress for 2009, was super as Glenna, a waitress/actress whom Edmond murders. She just smoldered with anger for the rest of the show from her seat in the front row. Colleen Carey was smashing as Edmond's wife. When she visits Edmond in the big house after the murder, she doesn't have to say a thing; sadness, anger, rejection, loneliness and fear all play out on her face. And Ryan Fields turned in a performance alternately subtle and brutal, especially as Edmond's cell mate. Hats off to the entire cast for solid performances.

It occurs to Weisenheimer that we often partake of theater or film or literature looking for a character to like or to root for. There's really nobody to like in Edmond, with the possible exception of his wife, dumped by Edmond because of sheer boredom in about scene two. We hope she goes on to a better life. The rest of them are hustlers, pimps, thugs, cynics, peep show girls, hookers, charlatans, cynics, and jerks. Even the chaplain is a schmuck. Not an optimist in the bunch. Somehow in the end Edmond finally seems to be at peace with his lot in life.

The play is sad and disturbing and vulgar and somehow tremendously compelling. See it through Feb. 6 at Balagan.

Other reviews and resources:
Review in The SunBreak
Interview with Budraitis in The SunBreak
Review in the Seattle Times
The Onion: Mamet to direct Anne Frank
Review in Seattle Gay News

Full disclosure: Weisenheimer is president of the board at Balagan, but it doesn't mean I'm biased! Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is coming to the Seattle Rep in February, so we have sort of a mini Mamet-fest going!

Wisey recap: 2009 was a great year for local theater

2010-01-29T22:13:00.000-08:00

A recap of the Wisey winners for 2009, with links to their award posts:

Best Play: Equivocation by Bill Cain
Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Directed by Bill Rauch. Bill Rauch, artistic director.

Best Actor: Charles Leggett, The Merchant of Venice, Seattle Shakespeare Company

Best Actress: Carolyn Marie Monroe, End Days, Seattle Public Theatre

Best Supporting Actor: Ray Tagavilla, Elephant's Graveyard, Balagan Theatre

Best Supporting Actress: Hana Lass, The Tempest, Seattle Shakespeare Company

Best Director: Ryan Higgins, The Comedy of Errors, GreenStage

Best Writer: Bill Cain, Equivocation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Best Clown: All of them, especially Mark Bedard, The Servant of Two Masters, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Best Set: Sunday in the Park with George, 5th Avenue Theatre. Projection design, Timothy Byrd and the Knifedge Creative Network. David Farley, set design.

Best Music: Elephant's Graveyard, Balagan Theatre. Jake Groshong, musical director.

Best Costume: The Comedy of Errors, GreenStage. Janessa Jayne Styck, costume designer.

Best Understudy: Jake Groshong, The Full Monty, Balagan Theatre

The Show Must Go On Award: Book-It Repertory Theatre, A Confederacy of Dunces

All-around Cool Theatre Guy Award: Shawn Belyea

Best-play front-runners Equivocation and Elephant's Graveyard received the most Wiseys, two each. Graveyard had the most nominations, seven. Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Balagan Theatre were the companies most honored, each taking home three Wiseys. What great fun to reminisce about a year of great theater!

Wisey Best Play: Equivocation

2010-01-28T18:54:00.000-08:00

The nominees for best play of 2009 are:

End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer
Seattle Public Theatre. Directed by Carol Roscoe. Shana Bestock, artistic director.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Seattle Shakespeare Company. Directed by John Langs. Stephanie Shine, artistic director.

Equivocation by Bill Cain
Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Directed by Bill Rauch. Bill Rauch, artistic director.

Elephant's Graveyard by George Brant
Balagan Theatre. Directed by Jason Harber. Jake Groshong, executive director, Lisa Confehr, managing director.

Opus by Michael Hollinger
Seattle Repertory Theatre. Directed by Braden Abraham. Jerry Manning, producing artistic director.

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
GreenStage. Directed by Ryan Higgins. Ken Holmes, producing artistic director.

Our Wisey-winning best play of the year had it all: a strong, talented cast, a sock-you-in-the-gut story, lighthearted moments, marvelous staging, and wonderful costuming. It was a theater experience that will stick in memory for a long, long time. That description is completely apt for both of what were our two Wisey finalists, Elephant's Graveyard by Balagan Theatre and Equivocation by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Ultimately it was Best-Writer-Wisey-winner Bill Cain's amazing script and story that gave Equivocation the slightest edge and the trophy in a close contest between two incredible, well-told stories.

We've spilled a lot of words here about Equivocation. Weisenheimer and Sweetie both wrote reviews after seeing it in Ashland, and the gushing might have been a tip that the play was on its way to this award: "The most mind-blowingly fantastic theater Weisenheimer has experienced in a while... incredibly clever writing and joyous language. It's an astounding piece of work." Sweetie wrote in her post on Cain's best-writer Wisey that Equivocation is "intricate without ever getting bogged down; clever without ever being trite; ambitious without ever getting lost... this is an important and enjoyable play—and that's not an easy combination to strike." What a great show. The OSF production was its world premiere, it made an encore performance for a month at the Seattle Rep, and now folks all over the country are falling all over themselves to produce it.

I'm proud as hell of my friends at Balagan Theatre for being right up there with the Equivocation juggernaut with their spectacular staging of Elephant's Graveyard. It has been oft written on these pages, though not in any of our Wisey posts, that Weisenheimer is the board chair at Balagan, but it doesn't make him biased. Sweetie and I, in fact, kicked around the idea that the connection might be creating an anti-Balagan bias. I don't think so; we gave Elephant's the most nominations, seven, of any show all year. But it's true that others got the nod in a couple of close calls over Balagan nominees, particularly in the best play and best actress categories. Kudos to all of y'all at Balagan. For the record I'll note they're all volunteers. As board chair, I invite all readers to give us lots of money so we can pay these talented folks!

Hardly also-rans, End Days, Merchant of Venice, Opus, and The Comedy of Errors were all great shows. 2009 was a super year for theater. We thank all of the talented people who make it happen.

Wisey Best Actor: Charles Leggett, Shylock, Merchant of Venice

2010-01-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

The nominees for Best Actor are:

Charles Leggett, The Merchant of Venice, Seattle Shakespeare Company
Michael Winters, The Tempest, Seattle Shakespeare Company
Jonathan Haugen, Equivocation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Brandon Whitehead, A Confederacy of Dunces, Book-It Repertory Theatre
Allen Fitzpatrick, Opus, Seattle Repertory Theatre
Mark Fullerton, Mr. Jibbers, 14/48 The World's Quickest Theater Festival

This really is impossible. How do you choose among such stellar performances? Between performances so vivid nearly a year later?

After the fun of remembering and reflecting on such wonderful performances for a few weeks, we finally settled on Charles Leggett for best actor for bringing Shylock to life in Seattle Shakespeare Company's The Merchant of Venice. His portrayal was extraordinary: Shylock as lugubrious, careful, bold, and sharply aware of the hostile society around him. Leggett's performance was restrained and subtle, showing us the steady chafing of Shylock's emotions, a raw, old sore that won't heal. He captured Shylock's contradictions—his resolve and his bewilderment. Leggett can communicate volumes without seeming to do anything. Except maybe something with his eyebrows. Even more than the words I remember his face and eyes as Shylock struggles and fails to find terms on which to engage his society.

OK, we're taking liberties here. Technically, Jonathan Haugen's role is probably supporting to Anthony Heald's lead as Shagspeare in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Equivocation (we also saw the OSF production reprised at the Seattle Rep). But we argue that this is really Haugen's play. The entire ensemble cast is strong, no one disappoints, and Heald turns in yet another magnificent performance. However, Haugen's malevolent, calculating, and sometimes pitiful Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley drives the play. Sometimes the antagonist is the larger-than-life character. In addition, Haugen has to switch on a dime between characters throughout the play, and he does so flawlessly, sharply, his entire body changing into the character instantly. So impressive.

We're glad Brandon Whitehead survived playing Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces at Book-It. Between the bad luck that has dodged actors slated for a movie version (Belushi, Candy, Farley, all dead), the number of hot dogs he had to chow down, and the fire alarm interrupting the performance we saw, it looked a little dicey. But he survived and triumphed. Whitehead is a comedic genius, no doubt about it. He played quirky, eccentric, self-absorbed, and oblivious perfectly, without ever breaking stride (almost not even for the fire alarm). He nailed the dignity that makes Ignatius' outrageousness touching—and even funnier.

Michael Winters is a giant of the stage, and was alternately a lion and a pussy cat treading the boards as Prospero in Seattle Shakespeare Company's The Tempest. A big part of the delight was the magic between him and best supporting actress Hana Lass's Ariel: chemistry, timing, skill, practice...whatever all it is, it's wonderful. We can't wait to see him as Big Daddy in Cat at OSF later this year.

Allen Fitzpatrick played Elliot in Opus at Seattle Repertory Theatre; a nervous, uptight, high-strung leader of a string quartet; a control freak while his personal and professional life spin out of control. It took my breath away to see his face and body react to a hurtful comment his lover, played by Todd Jefferson Moore, casually tossed off while turning away. It wasn't a line, it wasn't even a face-to-face exchange, but Fitzpatrick made it the emotional turning point of the play.

Mark Fullerton still haunts us as a little boy having trouble going to sleep in Mr. Jibbers, an exquisite little play from 14/48 with a clever set and brilliant puppetry. Fullerton was perfectly petulant and playful and bewitched by the dreams and terrors of the night.

Wisey Best Actress: Carolyn Marie Monroe

2010-01-24T15:32:00.000-08:00

The nominees for best actress are:

Carolyn Marie Monroe, End Days, Seattle Public Theatre
Terri Weagant, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Balagan Theatre
Anne Allgood, Rock 'n' Roll, ACT
Robin Goodrin Nordli, Macbeth, Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Tracy Hyland, Just Drink It, 14/48

And the Wisey for best actress of 2009 goes to Carolyn Marie Monroe for her portrayal of Rachel Stein, an exasperated, super-bright goth teenager, in the Seattle Public Theater production of End Days.

While we listed five nominees this was really just a tough choice between two great actresses. Monroe was terrific as Rachel, the normal one in a dysfunctional family. She nailed the teen thing, with just the right mix of confident brass and emotional insecurity. (That's her as Rachel in the John Ulman photo at right.) She's a marvelous young performer. We've enjoyed her recent roles as Opehlia in Hamlet at GreenStage and as Miranda in The Tempest at Seattle Shakespeare Company. She was fun in last summer's 14/48 festival as well. We're looking forward to seeing more of Monroe.

Weagant was spectacular as the bag lady Trudy, and a zillion other characters, in Search for Signs at Balagan. Like Monroe, Weagant is playing a lot around town and we love it all. She was great as Desdemona in Othello last year, also at Balagan, and hosts Schmorgasborg, the company's monthly late-night theatre mash-up. Members of Theatre Puget Sound agree with us about Weagant; they voted her their member's voice award for best actress back in October. We hear she's landed a role in Cider House Rules at Book-It this summer.

Thumbs up to two great veteran actresses. Robin Goodrin Nordli, 2008 best actress for The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, turned in a splendid performance as Lady Macbeth at OSF last season. Anne Allgood was marvelous in a couple of roles in ACT's Rock 'n' Roll. Tracy Hyland was memorable in the hot, sexy Just Drink It at 14/48 in August.

Wisey Best Supporting Actor: Ray Tagavilla

2010-01-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

The nominees for best supporting actor are:

Michael D. Blum, The Comedy of Errors, GreenStage

Kevin Kenerly, Macbeth, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

John Tufts, Equivocation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Evan Woltz, The Full Monty, Balagan Theatre

Peter Dylan O'Connor, The Tempest, Seattle Shakespeare Company

Todd Jefferson Moore, Opus, Seattle Rep

Ray Tagavilla, Elephant's Graveyard, Balagan Theatre

Seanjohn Walsh, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Balagan Theatre; general fabulousness, 14/48

Patrick Bentley, The Comedy of Errors, GreenStage

I know. That's a lot of nominees. And the thing is, this is the narrowed down list, after much arm-wrestling between the Weisenheimer and Sweetie ("every time I lose a wrestling match, I have the funny feeling that I won..."). We toyed with splitting the year in half...or nominating by quarter...or by section of the alphabet...

What a problem, right? Great performances in great plays all year long. In the end, the well-deserved award goes to Ray Tagavilla for his riveting performance in Elephant's Graveyard at Balagan Theatre.

We saw Elephant's three times during the run, and one of the three nights I thought Ray was a tiny bit off his stride—and he was still fantastic. The role of the elephants' Trainer is the fulcrum on which the play's gut-wrenching plot pivots and lurches. He and Ballet Girl know Mary the elephant the best; the Trainer has the additional burden of responsibility for Mary and what happens to her. His agony at the events and his role in them, and in what he has to do for Mary at her death, fills the stage even when the lines and action are elsewhere. Tagavilla's performance is precise and tightly controlled—well-edited, if you will, nothing extraneous—so that every nuance of gesture, posture, tear, and grimace is pure, focused emotion, and utterly believable. We've been impressed with everything we've seen from Tagavilla, and his work in Elephant's was outstanding.

I thought Kevin Kenerly pretty much redeemed Macbeth at OSF this year. His performance made the play human. And we think John Tufts' career is one to watch. Michael Blum was nominated for Comedy of Errors but could as easily have been nominated for the role of Ringmaster in Elephant's, with the perfect gravitas to anchor the ensemble cast. Patrick Bentley embodied comedy (in Comedy of Errors) and tragedy (Titus Andronicus) this year for GreenStage. Evan Woltz might have turned in the most sensitive acting performance of the great, brave cast in The Full Monty. Peter Dylan O'Connor was an otherworldly and creepy Caliban in Tempest. Todd Jefferson Moore hit all the right notes in Opus. And we had to include Seanjohn Walsh for an unforgettable trio of performances across the lifespan: a dirty old man in Picasso at Balagan, a totally out of control little kid in A Whole Mess of Badgers at 14/48, and, yes, six-months pregnant in Six Months In, also at 14/48.

Outstanding Nancy Johnson retrospective at Brick House Gallery

2010-01-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

Tacoma's new Brick House Gallery has opened with a bang-up retrospective of the work of Nancy Johnson. A long-time project of outstanding local artist Peter MacDonald, the charming gallery is in a restored 1900-era house at 1123 South Fawcett Street in downtown T-town.

A steady stream of visitors enjoyed viewing the paintings and meeting the artist at a reception Thursday evening. Johnson has been painting since the '50s, and this particular exhibit spans five decades of her work, from 1968 through 2002. Several artifacts around the cozy gallery underscored Johnson's long and successful career, including a 1982 "Pacific" magazine from the Seattle Times for which Johnson painted the cover illustration.

The painting at right particularly caught Weisenheimer's eye. Titled "Sonatina #14," the 2001 work is part of a series of spectacular abstract landscapes. Johnson says in her statement on the paintings that she does not have an image in mind when she starts, but yet "some people see in the paintings places they have been, places I have never seen." Indeed, when he saw me riveted to "Sonatina #14" MacDonald remarked that it reminded him of Wyoming. Interestingly, I was thinking just the same thing, as the powerful, roiling, bright cloud took me back to the thunderstorms we encountered while on our Pioneer League baseball tour last summer. The bright cloud is not a result of camera glare; I snapped it with my iPhone. No flash. It's even more spectacular in person in its full size, 30x30.

Many of the paintings in the exhibit feature water scenes, swimming and sunbathing or just the waves rolling in. They're spectacular. Go see!

Brick House Gallery is open limited hours, the third Thursday of each month from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. MacDonald will also open the gallery by appointment. Call 253-627-0426 or visit the Web site at http://www.thebrickhousegallery.com.

Wisey Best Supporting Actress: Hana Lass

2010-01-18T21:42:00.000-08:00

The nominees for best supporting actress are:

LaChrista Borgers, The Best Daddy, Balagan Theatre
Kjerstine Rose Anderson, The Servant of Two Masters, Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Hana Lass, The Tempest, Seattle Shakespeare Company
Nicole Vernon, Titus Andronicus, GreenStage
Allison Strickland, Elephant's Graveyard, Balagan Theatre
Ellen McLain, A Confederacy of Dunces, Book-It

The Wisey for best supporting actress for 2009 goes to Hana Lass, who was marvelous as Ariel in the Seattle Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest.

This was a tough call with some wonderful actresses turning in super performances. In the end, we fell back on the four words any theater reviewer should remember: Hana Lass kicks ass.

Lass combined an enormous singing voice, that amazing costume, and a marvelous presence on stage to create a memorable Ariel in The Tempest, perhaps the best show that didn't get a best play nomination this year (despite the fact that it got best actor, supporting actor, supporting actress, and clown nominations, and a best actress nominee was in it as well, though that nomination was for a different play). Lass and Michael Winters as Prospero were an incredibly electric duo. It wasn't a factor in the decision, but Lass was also great in the 14/48 play A Mess of Badgers. That's her as Ariel at right in a Seattle Shakes photo by John Ulman.

Lass won the vote by a bustle over Allison Strickland, fantastic as Ballet Girl in Elephant's Graveyard at Balagan Theatre, and Ellen McLain, who was a great foil as mom opposite Brandon Whitehead as Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces at Book-It. We also have to do shout-outs for LaChrista Borgers, memorable in the incredibly sick The Best Daddy, part of the first Death/Sex at Balagan, and Nicole Vernon, who kept in character through all of that blood in the GreenStage indoor production of Titus Andronicus. Kjerstine Rose Anderson is one of the great utility players at OSF. She was hilarious in its production of Servant.

Wisey Wm. Sh. Best Writer: Bill Cain, Equivocation

2010-01-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

Well, one way to deal with problem of choosing 'best writer' when you see half a dozen or more plays a year by William Shakespeare is to name the award after him and take him out of the running. Thus handicapped, the slate is:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BEST WRITER WISEY

Michael Hollinger, Opus

Bill Cain, Equivocation

George Brant, Elephant's Graveyard

Erin Stewart, Mr. Jibbers

Darian Lindle, Great Expectations!

Deborah Zoe Laufer, End Days

Shel Silverstein, The Best Daddy

Vincent Delaney, Six Months In

We love 10-minute, one-act plays; they're like chewy salty-sweet dark chocolate caramels. Death/Sex at Balagan and 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival serve up gobs of one-act goodness. Especially memorable 14/48 plays in 2009 were Mr. Jibbers by Erin Stewart—disturbing and hilarious; Great Expectations! by Darian Lindle, a tale of trust and betrayal in the high-stakes world of show choir; and Six Months In, because it still takes good writing to make a play with six pregnant men in it that funny. A Death/Sex highlight was The Best Daddy by Shel Silverstein, a rather sick little specimen from a collection of short sketches first produced as An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein.

Among full-length plays, we especially admired the writing of George Brant for Elephant's Graveyard, at Balagan Theatre. Brant bases his play on a historical incident, which makes it all the more horrifying, but takes artistic license to turn it into an all-too timely and relevant study of American "us and them" tendencies. It's not preachy; it aims for the solar plexus, and every punch lands.

Opus, seen at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, is a beautifully written piece of possession and jealousy, love and friendship, and work and creativity—much of which goes wrong, even as the ensemble is achieving professional triumphs. I found the unsatisfying, anything but neat-and-tidy ending very....satisfying.

I was just sure we had our winner all the way back in early Feburary when we saw End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer at Seattle Public Theater. This is a very smart play, great Comedy with a capital C. As I wrote in my original Weisenheimer review, "It's got it all: two couples who aren't together but should be, an interloper, dislocation, disguised identities, conflict between generations/ societies, and a reaffirming happy ending. And it's funny as hell."

So imagine my surprise when we saw another play this year good enough to edge it out for best writer: Bill Cain's majestic Equivocation. We saw the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production at OSF and again at the Seattle Rep; the Jenny Graham OSF photo above shows Anthony Heald as Shagspeare and Jonathan Haugen as William Cecil.

Cain's project with Equivocation is very, very big. All the heavy themes of work, religion, citizenship, friendship, and family; integrity, truth, and deception; and the meaning-of-it-all. And to make it good and challenging, it's in a historical setting with only the most famous playwright in the world for a protagonist. The play is intricate without ever getting bogged down; clever without ever being trite; ambitious without ever getting lost. It carries you through a range of emotions pleasant and difficult until all of the characters—and the audience—arrive at the end with compassion. I think this is an important and enjoyable play—and that's not an easy combination to strike.

Don't count End Days out just yet. It's playing at the Harlequin in Olympia, WA. And we've got tickets. Which means by Wisey rules, we can nominate it again for 2010! It's early in the year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes the list again. Think of it like the Hall of Fame. It can take a few ballots to get in. Get your tickets, it's playing January 29 through February 20.