Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, day 1

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.

GreenStage Macbeth is a fun splatter-fest

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.

GreenStage Titus is bloody good fun

GreenStage's current production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus includes a couple dozen murders, several rapes, one sliced-out tongue, five lopped-off hands, one chopped-off horn, two slain offspring baked into a pie and served up to their momma, abused pumpkins, wanton out-of-wedlock sex that results in an illegitimate clown child, stabbed flies, a hootenanny, and so much spilled blood that the front row of the theater is declared a "splatter zone."

It's a comedy, and one of the funniest things Weisenheimer has seen in a while.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, declares that the program for the show contains the best ever one-line summary of a Shakespeare play: "Thus begins a series of events that lead to revenge, revenge, revenge, more revenge, and then some pie." Director Tony Driscoll writes that he thinks Titus includes "some of the greatest characters and some of the best verse the Bard ever gave us." He also finds it drop-dead funny. His production is a scream. It's what you might expect Quentin Tarantino or Sam Peckinpah would have done with it. The blood and violence are entirely over-the-top, and the inspired comic touches are too numerous to mention.

Driscoll gets marvelous performances out of a wonderful cast. A couple deserve calling out. Nicole Vernon as Lavinia is probably the goopiest character ever seen on stage. After losing both hands and her tongue she oozes blood for the rest of the show. That's her in the photo at right, shot by GreenStage producing artistic director Ken Holmes. But she gets a LOT bloodier than that! Orion Protonentis is wickedly evil and funny as Aaron, the clown. GreenStage regular Erin Day is delightfully conniving as the Goth queen Tamora and as the dominating empress to Lamar Lewis, who plays Saturninus somewhat less assertively than your typical Roman leader. Tom Dewey plays seven or eight characters and every one of them gets offed, including "guy with dead pigeons."

The cast included several Balagan Theatre veterans, among them Patrick Bentley, who played Titus. Banton Foster (Quintus) and Sam Hagen (Marcus) are fresh off Balagan's critically acclaimed Elephant's Graveyard. In Titus Foster plays banjo for the second consecutive production. Let's keep the streak alive! Johnny Patchamatla (Lucius) was marvelous as Balagan's Othello, the play that got me hooked on the company. And Amelia Meckler is a riot as "Scrub Wench," a role that -- wait, let me check -- nope, it's not in the Bard's original list of Dramatis Personae for Titus. But she's absolutely necessary in the production as a practical matter. Leaving all that blood about would make for slippery footing and force the company to change its name to RedStage. And when Meckler wipes down a Roman column, that baby gets clean!

Titus Andronicus runs through Halloween night. Go see it!

Comedy of Errors highlights bang-up first day of outdoor theater fest

We saw four marvelously entertaining plays today as the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival took to the lawn on a gorgeous day at the amphitheater at Volunteer Park. The final show of the day, a superb production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors produced by GreenStage and directed by Ryan Higgins, was a hilarious treat and the highlight of the opening day of the festival.

Higgins has already caused Weisenheimer a lot of trouble. It was his fabulous take on Othello at Balagan Theatre that started me on the path to joining the board of directors at that company. His great work with Comedy of Errors cements his status as one of the most interesting young directors working in Seattle. His added twist is one most common in Shakespeare -- to the play's comic confusion of two sets of identical twins, he adds the gender flip, too, as women play men and men play women. The "hot chicks" of The Comedy of Errors are above. From left to right it's one of the Dromios, Patrick Bentley as Adriana, Michael D. Blum as a Courtezan with Marge-Simpson hair, and Rio Codda as Luciana.

Props, too, to Don MacEllis, who seemed to play about 12 characters all with great comic presence. Higgins gets the most out of a wonderful cast, and the show is a rapid-fire riot from start to finish.

Finishing a close second on the day is a nice production of Richard III by Wooden O and Seattle Shakespeare Company, directed by Stephanie Shine. George Mount, who directed the recent well-received recent production of The Tempest at Seattle Shakes, is appropriately wicked and scheming and even funny as Richard. Another Balagan favorite, Mike Dooly, does much of Richard's dirty work as Buckingham. That's them above, with Richard peering over Buckingham's shoulder. Higgins directed Dooly, who played Iago, in Balagan's production of Othello.

The day opened with a nice production of The Merry Wives of Windsor by Last Leaf Productions and a fun performance of The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Theater Schmeater and directed by Julia Griffin. The cast were solid, but we especially liked the over-the-top performance by Aaron Allshouse as the Sorcerer and by Monica Wulzen as A Cat.

The festival wraps up with five more shows at Volunteer Park on Sunday. Most can be seen again elsewhere. Wooden O runs Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew at various parks through August 2, Apprentice runs Saturdays and Sundays at 5 p.m. at Volunteer Park through August 9, Last Leaf runs Wives and Shrew the next couple of weekends in Snohomish County, and the GreenStage shows run through August 15.

The Bard alfresco

The Weisenheimer never thought he'd discover anything better than Shakespeare in the park on a gorgeous summer afternoon, with a picnic basket full of goodies and a nice bottle of vino on the side. But on Sunday, August 10, we actually experienced something better: a twin bill of two of the Bard's finest, played out at Magnuson Park.

Seattle's delightful Green Stage is producing Hamlet and Twelfth Night for its 20th anniversary season, and both are wonderful shows.

The melancholy Dane led off the afternoon's shows. Susanna Wilson directed and Shawn Law starred as Hamlet in one of our favorite performances of the role. Law was alternately angry, moody, flippant, giddy, and focused. Weisenheimer also singles out Allan Armstrong's performance as Polonius, simultaneously clueless and pompous, right up until he's mistaken for a rat behind the curtain. The photo above is of Law, at left, and Armstrong, lifted from the Green Stage Web site and shot by Ken Holmes, who is the company's producing artistic director and also treasurer of the Green Stage board.

The setting in a city park provides its challenges. Weisenheimer was wary at the start of the day's performances, wondering who would be moronic enough to bring their dog to a theater, even if it is outdoors in a city park. The several canines in attendance were pretty well behaved, after some early posturing. Magnuson Park was also apparently right under the flight pattern for Sea Tac for the day, and there was considerable seaplane activity in addition to your standard park stuff. Still, the dialog was mostly audible, and one must give the actors credit for hollering at the tops of their lungs for three hours.

Another particular challenge on this day, especially during Hamlet, was some sort of loud music fest going on in another building in or near the park. This was marginally distracting at times. I tried to put it off as constant revelry at Elsinore, and that seemed to do the trick.

Elsinore was pretty minimalist, props-wise, consisting mainly of a couple of fake stone archways closed off by some lovely purple shower curtains. I recommend them for the home. It makes on feel positively royal! The photo above, by Weisenheimer, shows Elsinore and the cast in the last act. Yes, it's Hamlet: everyone dies in the end. Dang, I forgot to include a spoiler alert!

Twelfth Night holds special significance for the Weisenheimers, who saw a performance of the play at the Seattle Rep as part of their first "big time date" early in their courtship, lo these 17 years ago. We saw it on our first trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2005, and the Rep ran it again in the fall of 2007 (in a delightful production that included superb performances by Frank X as Malvolio, David Pichette as Feste, and Nick Garrison in a gender-bending turn as Fabian. (Garrison, parenthetically within a parenthetical statement, seems to be the go-to guy for gender bending, having done an enjoyable performance as the Emcee in Cabaret at the 5th Avenue this year.))

The Green Stage production, directed by Amelia Meckler, included especially entertaining performances by Mathew Ahrens as Sir Toby Belch, Thomas Maier as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Ashley Flannegan as Fabian. The trio were zany in their taunting of Malvolio and their use of the audience as cover in several scenes. Sir Toby nearly spilled our wine, in fact. I'm surprised it didn't stop him in his tracks. Nicole Fierstein was also memorable as Olivia, grumpy and mournful at the death of her brother, but giddily head-over-heels for Nicole Vernon as Cesario who really is Viola. Meckler herself jumped in as Maria due to a last-minute "actor emergency." The fabulously named Orion Protonentis was blustery and not-that-smiley as Malvolio, but he wasn't really cross-gartered, and it's going to be a while before someone tops X's performance in the role.

Props for Twelfth Night were even more minimal than for Hamlet, just a couple of portable benches that were dragged on and off lawn -- er, stage -- when needed.

Alack and alas, you have but one more weekend to enjoy the Green Stage productions of these two great plays. Twelfth Night plays at Seward Park on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Hamlet plays at Volunteer Park on Friday and is the second half of the twin bill at Seward on Sunday.