The Thriller is gone

Funny how news travels in 2009. Michael Jackson died today. I found out from some people who use this thing called Twitter. They found out from a Web site called TMZ, which bills itself as "celebrity gossip and entertainment news." TMZ beat the MSM to the story so badly that some of the MSM were relegated to reporting on what a celebrity gossip blog had posted. Several of the Tweeple I follow passed along an apparent comment from MSNBC that, "If the LA Times confirms it, then we believe it; they're a credible source." Sorry, all you "credible" news organizations--TMZ was first and accurate. They kicked your butt.

The other odd thing about the news coverage is that my sweetie, the official scorer, didn't find out about the news until after 9 p.m. when I remarked that I wished we had some MJ tunes on CD for our upcoming road trip. It was apparent she didn't grasp the gravity of the situation and hadn't heard, though she's a totally wired news consumer. As I thought about it this afternoon, I realized that, 90 years ago, none of us would have known about this yet, not until we received our morning newspapers. The news cycle sure is faster these days. Being first and accurate is hard work.

As for Jackson, I'll always remember that his megastardom hit just as I was getting started with my radio career. I was working overnights at KPLZ-FM in Seattle, "The Music Magazine," and was the local producer for the RKO syndicated show "Night Time America." The DJ on the show, Bob Dearborn, really hated the "rap" between Jackson and Paul McCartney at the end of "The Girl is Mine," and so would back-time the song at the end of the hour so he would have to drop the ending! Funny stuff. Thriller is one of the all-time great records (yes, records; I still have it on vinyl!) and Michael Jackson was without doubt the King of Pop, the biggest star of the 80s.

Rest in peace, finally, Michael.

Whoriskey named next artistic director at Intiman

The suspense is over. Kate Whoriskey has been named the next artistic director at Seattle's Intiman Theatre. Whoriskey and current AD Bart Sher will work together next year, after which Bart departs and Whoriskey takes over on her own beginning in 2011.

Whoriskey has directed three shows at Intiman already: Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs in 2000, Sher's first season at Intiman; Henrik Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea in 2001 and Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange in 2003. Weisenheimer saw the first two -- we were still Intiman subscribers then -- but I don't recall much about them.

My Sweetie, the official scorer, was suspicious that I'd become a commenter on The Slog when she found this there today:

Now that the affair's finally over, Bart Sher can't go soon enough. The money's on the dresser, Bart. We'll leave it to the philosophers to decide who was more used.

It wasn't me. But... yeah.

Coverage from The Slog, the Times, PI.com, and even the Puget Sound Business Journal. Plus, notice and Whoriskey's bio from Intiman. It's an interesting choice. Let's see how she does.

UPDATE: More coverage from Arts Journal.

Fifteen months to wait

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is all about planning ahead. OSF announced its 2010 season in March, and this week comes a bit of excellent casting news: Dan Donohue will play the title role in Hamlet next season in Ashland.

Donohue is fabulous. Religious readers of the Weisenheimer will recall that the Whitman College alum won the Best Actor Wisey award for 2008 for his portrayal of Iago in Othello at OSF last season. He was also amazing as Caliban in The Tempest and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet in 2007. Donohue played Scar in The Lion King on Broadway last year.

Sadly, it doesn't appear that Donohue will grace the Ashland stage this season, so we have 15 months to wait to see him as the melancholy Dane (presuming our typical September visit to the festival.)

Tempest brings treasures at Seattle Shakes

Every time I see a production of William Shakespeare's The Tempest I grow more fond of the play. The latest, put on by Seattle Shakespeare Company and directed by George Mount, adds to our appreciation immensely. The show includes a number of memorable performances, the best of which is a marvelous turn by Michael Winters as Prospero.

Winters brings tremendous range to the role, from thundering anger that rattled the theater to tender matchmaking to tearful forgiveness. (That's Winters as Prospero in hacked-off mode at right in a Seattle Shakes photo by John Ulman.) Winters is a treasure. He's been all over Seattle stages of late. Recently Weisenheimer has seen him in You Can't Take it With You at the Seattle Rep, and in Mame at the 5th Avenue. The Seattle Times ran a nice Q&A between Winters and Misha Berson as the play opened earlier this month.

Another recently discovered favorite, Carolyn Marie Monroe, plays Prospero's daughter Miranda, a far cry from the grumpy goth teen Rachel she portrayed in End Days in February at Seattle Public Theatre. Monroe also played Opehlia in the Green Stage production of Hamlet last summer.

The two other women in the cast were marvelous as well. Hana Lass as Ariel demonstrated a huge singing voice, necessary to be heard above the howling wind and crashing waves of the tempest. Kerry Ryan was a hoot as Trinculo, with her slapstick scenes and funny faces and voices. Ryan may be Shakes' go-to woman comic; she was also a laugh riot in Servant of Two Masters earlier this season.

Props to Peter Dylan O'Connor for his portrayal of Caliban, done with semi-human zeal in a way that brought to mind the creepy Gollum from the Lord of the Rings flicks.

The costumes by Doris Black were grand, particularly Caliban and Ariel. The latter impressed my Sweetie, the official scorer, who claimed that she might have become an actress if she'd known she could wear a bustle. Ariel's headgear included a veil and all sorts of belts and ropes and sufficiently shipwreck-y stuff. That's Lass as Ariel in another Ulman photo at right. Click here to see it big.

Our one quibble with the show was the decision to play it as sort of end-of-life dream sequence for Prospero. That's a hospital gown under Winters' robe in the photo above, and he wears a patient ID bracelet throughout as well. While the "white light" scene at the end was effective, overall the hospital thing didn't really work for me, and the periodic noise of the machine that goes "ping" was something of a distraction. Who left their cell phone on?

Still and all, The Tempest is a good story well told. It runs at Seattle Shakespeare Company through June 28.

Should I stay or should I go?

The Seattle Times reported Tuesday, in a front-page story, that Bart Sher is leaving as artistic director of the city's Intiman Theatre. SeattlePI.com, which doesn't have a "front page" any more, reported that Sher is staying. Both are, apparently, correct. Sher plans to leave Intiman at the end of 2010. His successor, alreay chosen but not yet identified by Intiman brass, will work as some sort of understudy director for a year before taking the reins. This rather odd arrangement is called a "multi-year succession plan" on Intiman's Web site.

Weisenheimer isn't a big fan of Sher. In fact, we're awfully perplexed at the ga-ga boy genius staus that Sher seems to have attained. Especially puzzling are the accolades heaped on The Light in the Piazza, a Tony Award winner despite being as mundane a piece of bilge as ever produced.

We had great hope for Sher when he first arrived in town. As fans of the Bard, we were delighted that he produced Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus. But recent history has not been so great. We thought Sher's Richard III was totally botched a couple of years ago. And the Intiman stage has been littered with klinkers for quite some time, leading us to drop a long-standing subscription to the theater. The saving grace is that Sher, too busy with his New York projects, is not going to direct the Intiman production of Othello this year as originally announced. But it won't be a local production, either. They're bringing in a staging from New York's Theatre for a New Audience.

We're glad to give up Sher to the New York audiences. We hope his succession plan doesn't lead to more of the same from Intiman.

Grease invaded by Hicks

The other day one of my Facebook friends announced that she was "going to see Taylor Hicks in Grease in Seattle today!" And that is about the only thing that's wrong with the production of the Jacobs and Casey musical playing through the end of the month at the 5th Avenue Theatre.

Call us un-American if you must, but my Sweetie, the official scorer, and I had our cable TV unplugged several years ago. Mostly it was because all we really wanted to watch on TV was the Mariners, and the Bavasi-era M's were just too painful to look at, certainly not worth the $50+ monthly cable bill. I'm sure we'd never have seen these shows anyway, but I've never seen an episode of "American Idolator", "Survivor", "Dancing With the Has-beens", "America's Next Scary Anorexic", or any of the other fodder that seems to make the world go 'round these days. So up until Sunday I wouldn't have known Taylor Hicks from the Unabomber if the three of us had met in the bar of JaK's Grill in West Seattle on a Monday evening when the theaters were dark.

Nothing against this Hicks dude, really, except the fact that most of the players in Grease were better singers and actors. We even had an understudy Sandy, Ruby Lewis, who was most enjoyable and really could belt out a tune. Allie Schulz was sassy, brassy, and bawdy as Rizzo. Eric Schneider, who also played Frankie Valli in the touring production of Jersey Boys, was grand as Danny. David Ruffin was marvelous as Kenicke, even if he's stolen the name of the great Temptation, who has been dead for almost 20 years now. All of the Pink Ladies were great, too.

They went so far as to make references to the "Idolator" show during Grease. As Hicks, who played the Teen Angel, sang "Beauty School Dropout" to Frenchy, she noted that "I voted for you." Ugh. Get back into the giant soft-serve cone and go back to that malt shop in the sky.

In the end, Hicks got to do one of his own songs after the show, got the biggest cheer, and got to sell CDs in the lobby. Too bad. He was the weakest link in Grease. My friend Lisa over at Dancing Again got to interview Hicks the other day and found him very nice. I don't doubt it. But the rest of the cast of Grease were better. We weren't expecting big, brainy stuff from the kids at Rydell High. But we can at least try to value talent over celebrity.

I won the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. Sorta.

The last page of The New Yorker each week features a cartoon caption contest. It's easy. One of the magazine's cartoonists provides a cartoon. Readers submit captions. The editors pick three finalists, and readers vote on the winner. Weisenheimer submitted the winning entry for the April 20, 2009, contest, the drawing for which is at right. What caption would you choose?

Unfortunately, I apparently wasn't the only weisenheimer to submit the winning caption. I checked the contest rules, and if multiple entrants submit the same caption, and it is chosen as a finalist, the finalist contestant is chosen at random.

Bastards. 

Thus, Bob Vogel of Portland, Maine goes on to eternal fame and glory, and all Weisenheimer has to show for it is this lousy blog post.

What was the winning caption?

"Gesundheit."