By Christian Carvajal It’s one of our favorite yuletide scenes: The Peanuts gang twirls happily around an ice-covered pond. In The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack Skellington visits a hockey rink for vampires. Manhattan-based telefilms linger over kids and their parents skating beneath the fluttering flags of Rockefeller Center. Until this month, however, aspiring skate champions …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS What really happened to make Ebenezer Scrooge change his mind about Christmas, or did he really change his mind at all? Maybe he decided it had all been a dream after all. What else could explain why many years later he could be so stingy as to …
By Lucy Volker Legendary musicians Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt will be performing together at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts this February. “Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt are both outstanding singer-songwriters in their own right. Their lyrics and musicality is authentic and entertaining. To hear them performing together in a venue as intimate …
THEATER REVIEW by Christian Carvajal for OLY ARTS What an inspiring, majestic mountain director Lauren Love scaled with her production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at South Puget Sound Community College. This monumental script is over a quarter-century old now, and there’s still nothing like it in theater history. Even expansive productions like Peter …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS “Clockwork” at Olympia Little Theatre is ridiculously funny. Written by Pat Cook and directed by Robert McConkey, with a huge cast including some of Olympia’s best, it is a hilarious marriage of Agatha Christie, Larry Shue and “Hee Haw.” The Dunwoody clan is the kind of huge …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The Abstract Expressionist painter Adolph Gottlieb is most famous for his many variations on a single image: a nebulous circular form floating above a rough burst of energetic paint. The similarities between Gottlieb’s “Burst” paintings and Olympia painter Becky Knold’s paintings at the Washington State Department of …
By Tom Simpson Last June, the Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America won Tony awards in multiple categories, including best actor for Andrew Garfield and best revival of a play. Director Lauren Love is now bringing this 25-year-old, groundbreaking drama to South Puget Sound Community College’s stage. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia …
By Lucy Volker Children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit is a spotlight of the season at Lakewood Playhouse. Offering themes of love and imagination, this production is a partnership with Lakewood Playhouse Youth Theater Group and features a combination of adult and young actors. “The Lakewood Institute of Theatre spotlight show,” says managing artistic director John …
VISUAL ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Three painters whose style and subject matter differs greatly yet whose work look good hanging together can be seen at Olympia’s Allsorts Gallery. Currently on display are half a dozen paintings by Barlow Palmenteri, portraits and cityscapes by Nathan Barnes, and assembled landscapes by Liza Brenner. …
By Molly Gilmore In its 2018-2019 season — its first full season under the direction of conductor Nicholas Carlson — the Olympia Chamber Orchestra will go beyond the expected classical repertoire. Small by orchestra standards, the group of 40-odd musicians in their 20s through 80s aims to have a big impact on Olympia’s classical-music scene. …