The Winter's Tale, Wooden O Productions

I'm trying to remember what I said that made the Weisenheimer think that I don't like The Winter's Tale. I might have been grousing about that whole business in act V scene ii where, after the dramatic build up of act V scene i (spoiler alert!), three Gentlemen come in and blab about how everything worked out, and then we move on to all this Pygmalion/Galatea nonsense in scene iii with the "dead" queen posing as a statue and coming to life to the astonishment of all assembled. I always think Shakespeare must have been on deadline and ran out of time and thought "oh, fuck it," and dashed off 150 or so lines of exposition and then 150 or so lines ripped off from Ovid and called it good. So, OK, I don't love the ending.

But I did thoroughly enjoy Wooden O's production of The Winter's Tale, directed by Mary Machala and playing in Seattle area parks through August 12. Every time the play risks getting mired in Greek tragedy, they dialed up the comedy and the pastoral bits. David Quicksall's performance gave sweet comic relief as Antigonus right up to "Exit pursued by a bear" and as Autolycus after that. Shakespeare gives the Old Shepherd's son no name other than "Clown," and Mark Oram brought clowning skills aplenty. I thoroughly enjoyed the original, live music provided by Sean Patrick Taylor. And I appreciated what they did with the staging and costuming to dramatize the falsely accused queen Hermione's plight, giving birth in prison and being called too soon after to stand trial (costume designer K.D. Schill). Not at all nice. 

Like many of Shakespeare's plays, there are some characters who seem mostly types fulfilling their narrative/dramatic function, and other characters around them who make things really interesting. The most interesting characters to me are Paulina, Polixenes, and Camillo—the ones who must live with, respond to, and conform themselves to the actions of the king Leontes, his queen Hermione, and the next generation, Perdita and Florizel. The actors playing these three characters did not disappoint, drawing out the conflict and humanity of people loyal by family or duty to Leontes, who's bollocksed everything up. In particular, Therese Diekhans' feisty performance as Paulina gave the play spice and flavor, spark and heat. Mike Dooly as Polixenes and Nick Rempel as Camillo were as fascinating to watch when they weren't speaking lines as when they were, showing us throughout the bewilderment and confusion of men struggling with their principles and their loss in the face of being let down by those they love most.

I guess the Weisenheimer is right. It's not my favorite Shakespeare play. But enjoying Wooden O's production and getting a new perspective on the play, especially the Paulina and Polixenes characters...sitting outside on a lovely (if sprinkly) Seattle summer day with a picnic, a Dante's Inferno dog, and the Weisenheimer...is exactly where I wanted to be.

Great wrapup for Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival

The Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival was a big success, with seven more performances to solid audiences at Volunteer Park on Sunday. Weisenheimer caught three of them, and parts of a fourth.

The Queen (Erin Day, kneeling) gets grilled by Wolsey
(Michael D. Blum), the King (Daniel Guttenberg) and
Cardinal Campeius (Charles Gift) in the GreenStage
production of Henry VIII.

The first show of the day was Othello by the Young Shakespeare Workshop, directed by Darren Ley. Weisenheimer set out to watch this play. However, they did a full-on Othello at 2 1/2 hours; they did it in the round, which often made it very difficult to hear; and they did it under some big cedar trees, where it was damned cold this morning! I bailed out for a sunnier spot.

We sat in the sun for the GreenStage production of Henry VIII, directed by Teresa Thuman. There is plenty of court intrigue and power playing during the show, and we were especially taken in by the accusation and trial of Queen Katherine of Aragon because of the electrifying performances of Erin Day as the Queen and Michael D. Blum as Cardinal Wolsey. Daniel Guttenberg as King Henry and Alyssa Kay were strong as well, and the entire cast turned in super performances.

Henry VIII is not produced very often. In fact Day, who serves as artistic director for GreenStage, said after the performance that they've been wondering if this production isn't the first time its ever been staged professionally in the state. Get out and see it this summer.

Curtain call for the cast of Hansel and Gretel.

The 5 p.m. show was Theater Schmeater's production of Hansel and Gretel, directed by Julia Griffin. I missed it Saturday but my Sweetie saw it and reported it was good. I caught it today and it lived up to Grimm's reputation of "frightening children for hundreds of years." This production frightened this adult, too; set after the original story, the witch is remodeling, which means two of the characters are incompetent contractors from the "Short and Sweet Building Company." Having survived a home remodel last year, we have sympathy for the witch.

Amelia Meckler was great as the migraine-plagued witch, Jay Irwin a hoot as H&G's mom Betty Knott, and Monica Wulzen and Nathan Pringle (a chip off the old block) played the title characters. The Schmee as usual delivered fun for all ages.

Wrapping up the festival on the set of Twelfth Night.

The festival rounded out with the production of Twelfth Night by Seattle Shakespeare Company's Wooden O, directed by Makaela Pollock. This was a highly entertaining show featuring Emily Chisholm and Matthew Gilbert as the "twins" Viola/Cesario and Sebastian, Connor Toms as Duke Orsino, Emily Grogan as Olivia, and George Mount as Malvolio. A special shout-out to Justin Huertas, who relished the role of Feste the fool, and the dizzying array of props and costumes at his disposal.

It was a most entertaining festival, and on Sunday we weren't able to attend all of the plays, missing Balagan Theatre's Sally and Thor Save the World (at Summer Camp), Shakespeare Northwest's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Jet City Improv's The Lost Folio, all of which played across the way at the Museum stage.

Not to worry, all of these will be playing at multiple venues through the rest of the summer. Check their websites for dates, times, and places of a show near you. We're lucky to have such great outdoor theater options all summer long!

Disclaimer: Weisenheimer is doing marketing work for GreenStage, but it doesn't make me biased!

Great day! Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, day one

The Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival is like Christmas, or maybe the World Series. Don't plan any other events during that time, because my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I are booked.

Saturday was the first day of this year's festival, and all three productions we attended hit the mark.

The cast of The Winter's Tale Saturday at Volunteer Park.

The first show of the day was The Winter's Tale, performed by the Seattle Shakespeare Company's Wooden O and directed by Mary Machala. My Sweetie isn't crazy about this particular text, but enjoyed what they did with it. I think it's a cool story, and this production featured marvelous performances all around.

Especially fabulous was Therese Diekhans, who as Paulina did some boisterous lecturing of King Leontes. Look up "speak truth to power" in the dictionary and you'll find Paulina's picture there, as she calls the king a dolt for his obsessive jealously. We also loved her in recent turns as Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor and as Volumnia in Coriolanus, both at Seattle Shakes.

Speaking of stubborn idiot kings, Mike Dooly and Michael Patten were super as Polixenes and Leontes, and we loved David Quicksall as Antigonus and especially as the pickpocket and swindler Autolycus. The Winter's Tale is a super production.

I missed Theater Schmeater's production of Hansel and Gretel, as I was doing a stint in the festival's information booth. Mostly we informed people of where the restrooms are (two choices: behind the stage or in the red-roofed building) and what play was next, though we did get one question about what exactly a goatee is. For the record, we got it wrong, but from here on out we'll know that a goatee is technically a beard just on the chin with no mustache.

Anyway, armed with that knowledge I'll see H&G on Sunday and report back, but my Sweetie enjoyed it!

Action shot! Kate (Allison Standley) lands a good punch
during a fight with Petruchio (Tom Dewey) during The
Taming of the Shrew Saturday at Volunteer Park.

The evening was closed out by The Taming of the Shrew, produced by GreenStage and directed by Mark "Mok" Moser. The play had a good-sized audience laughing throughout. Tom Dewey and Allison Standley played the protagonists Petruchio and Kate. Their acrobatic fight scenes were great, and both proved pretty handy with a whip. (Crack!) Nick Edwards was a riot as Grumio, Petruchio's dim-witted and frequently flogged servant. Really, the entire cast of 10 actors were fantastic.

You don't want to miss Shrew--my Sweetie expects we'll watch it many more times this summer.

The Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival wraps up Sunday with seven more shows starting at 11 a.m.; the complete schedule is on the website for GreenStage, which produces the festival. We'll see you out at Volunteer Park. Or, if you want to catch The Taming of the Shrew, it plays in Seward Park at 7 p.m., and Winter's Tale will be on Sunday evening at 7:00 at Luther Burbank Park.

Disclaimer: Weisenheimer is doing marketing work for GreenStage, but it doesn't make me biased!

Back in the saddle

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

OK, it has been about six minutes, but before that it was six months! And let's face it, in the last year there have only been six posts on Weisenheimer. Two of those were about 14/48 and two more about the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival; this is sort of like blogging about how much you love Christmas. One of the other posts was even more directly Christmas related, as it was about cartoon poop. This means that our only post in the last 12 months that was not about the greatest thing ever was about a dumb-ass production of Alladin at the 5th Avenue Theater.

I wouldn't think this would be such a disaster for anyone except for a couple of incidents in the last two weeks.

Daniel Guttenberg stars as Henry VIII
in the GreenStage production this
summer. Go see a play!

First, at a preview party announcing the 2012-13 season for Balagan Theatre, a loyal reader (and he may well be the only one, as Ma Weisenheimer is not a consumer of the Internet) lamented the lack of recent posts and opined that he missed our writing very much. A few days later, while proofreading the summer program for GreenStage, we noticed that Janessa Jayne Styck, who is the costume designer for the company's production of Henry VIII, lists in her bio that she received the Wisey Award for her 2009 design of costumes for A Comedy of Errors.

We haven't even DONE the Wiseys for a couple of years (busy, busy, busy), though I think that last year Live! From the Last Night of My Life by Wayne Rawley and starring Ryan Higgins may well have swept, unless the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Imaginary Invalid worked its way in there somehow.

By the way, the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival is coming up July 14-15 at Volunteer Park. I'm doing marketing these days for GreenStage, which produces the festival, but it doesn't make be biased to say that it's going to be great. And I'm still on the board at Balagan, which is doing Avenue Q, Next to Normal, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and August: Osage County for its upcoming season. It doesn't make me biased to say that you should buy season tickets to see these shows.

There. That's two posts in a day. We now return you to your regular programming.

Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, day 2

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

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.

OSF: Much Ado About Nothing (STOS)

Having seen Branagh's Much Ado so many times, as the Weisenheimer mentions, and having read the play multiple times, I was aware of what Branagh left out. So it was fun to see a production that put back in some of Benedick's struggle to be taken seriously by Beatrice, the prince, Claudio, and--as played by the very funny David Kelly--even himself.

Kelly was a surprising choice to me for Benedick, but he sure had the comedic chops and also portrayed a much wider and subtler range of emotion than we sometimes get in the comedies. We saw the insecurity that lurks behind being a goofball; the sharp eye and wit that doesn't miss much; exasperation and frustration; and reluctance, resolve, and action.

Which makes the ending all the more disappointing. I assume it was a directorial choice to sprint through the last forty or so lines (I like Kate Buckley's work here and in Shrew a few years ago, but was she afraid we would all be Dodgers fans?). This is Benedick's time to shine, and in a few pithy and memorable lines Shakespeare has him take his rightful place as the only man of Padua in a restored order where all is well. These exchanges with Beatrice, Claudio, and the prince should be savored.

Robynn Rodriguez was a fierce and feisty Beatrice, as she should be, and she nails the rapid-fire timing of the banter. She is convincingly frustrated to tears by the clueless and hurtful men around her. And while I now think Peter Macon is a bit of a ham, I agree with the Weisenheimer that he was very funny as Don Pedro. Special shout out for alumnus of Seattle stages Todd Bjurstrom as Borachio.

Setting the play in immediate post-war Sicily wasn't a distraction, which it seems is as much as I can ask of Shakespeare plays set in more modern times. I do choose to speculate that the whole fountain scene was a bit of one-upmanship to Branagh, and Kate, your staging was a splash.

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.