Guides
I see about 40 plays a year in the South Sound. Some are better than others, and some make more money. At least two will tank despite being quite good indeed. End Days at Harlequin and Next to Normal at Capital Playhouse struggled to find audiences, and those were my
Guides
If I may be so bold as to offer one piece of advice for first-time zip-liners, it would be this: you really do need to thrust your legs straight out in front of you. Pretend you're a kid on a swing set. My wife had trouble with that. It didn't
We Recommend
I promise you, no animals were harmed in Olympia Little Theatre's production of playwright Lauren Gunderson's Exit, Pursued by a Bear (other than an antelope set upon by crocs in a nature video, for which life doesn't seem to be going well). The prey in this story is Kyle
Stage
Among the most notorious of all stage directions appears in the middle of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In Act III, Scene 3, Sicilian lord Antigonus has just delivered a longish soliloquy of 45 lines when - why the hell not, really? - the script directs him to "[Exit, pursued by
We Recommend
Harlequin's production of Israel Horovitz's Fighting Over Beverley costars one of my favorite local actors, David Wright, in yet another role for which he gets to growl around the stage and show off a convincing accent and physical infirmity. I'm not complaining - far from it! I'd
Stage
You may have noticed we theater critics often spend much of our allotted word count telling you the story of a play. To be honest, we sometimes do this to get out of writing mean things about hapless actors or directors. Other times, we can't think of much to say
Travel
If this is your first trip to Olympia, welcome! I feel an affinity, as I've only lived here since 2007. It took months to wrap my head around the flagrantly liberal banter in Orca Books, introverted hints of "the Seattle freeze" in local taverns, and the mind-expanding pleasures of real
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If there's one show every theater practitioner in America "knows" is overproduced, it's Neil Simon's 1965 comedy The Odd Couple. As Lakewood Playhouse's artistic director, John Munn, pointed out to me many times, however, that reputation isn't fully deserved. I, for one, had never actually seen a
Stage
If there's one show every theater practitioner in America "knows" is overproduced, it's Neil Simon's 1965 comedy The Odd Couple. As Lakewood Playhouse's artistic director, John Munn, pointed out to me many times, however, that reputation isn't fully deserved. I, for one, had never actually seen a stage production of
We Recommend
Between 1853 and 1929, through both the American Civil War and World War I, the Orphan Train Movement shipped over a quarter of a million parentless children to the Midwestern states from overcrowded metropolises on the Eastern seaboard. Initiated by Calvinist minister Charles Loring Brace and
Stage
Between 1853 and 1929, through both the American Civil War and World War I, the Orphan Train Movement shipped over a quarter of a million parentless children to the Midwestern states from overcrowded metropolises on the Eastern seaboard. Initiated by Calvinist minister Charles Loring Brace and his Children's Aid Society,
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Man of La Mancha finds Miguel de Cervantes in a dungeon with other prisoners, defending his life by narrating the story of Don Quixote, the naïve but faithful Sancho Panza, and the scrappy Aldonza. The treatment of Aldonza/Dulcinea in the musical, as opposed to the novel, is
Stage
I resolved to read Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1615) after the World Library declared it the "best literary work ever written," praising it above the book of Job, the Odyssey, and Hamlet. It took a year to complete my quest. In English translation, the novel runs to 391,000 words,
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Somewhere along the way, Boeing Boeing lost its hyphen, but never lost a distinctly French, laissez-faire attitude toward sex and romance. Zach Holstine plays Bernard, in this version an American in Paris, who's happy to provide temporary lodgings for a visiting Wisconsin friend, Robert (Ken Luce). Robert is
Stage
The Guinness Book of World Records says Marc Camoletti's Boeing-Boeing (1960) is the French play most often produced around the world. I suggest Cyrano de Bergerac holds the title; but if I'm wrong, I can live with it. Either way, it's easy to see from Olympia Little Theatre's production (of
Stage
The year, I think, was 1991. I was a junior in college, and I'd paid my acting dues. Now at long last, it was time for my first main-stage lead. My actual brother Richard and I were cast as the "Schneider brothers," Leo and George respectively, in Neil Simon's 1977
