posts about shows at OLT
Harlequin Productions calls its 2023 season a “Resilience Season.” That appellation could well apply to all local live theater after more than two years of Covid. Here’s a great season preview for all local theaters, including Harlequin, Olympia Family Theater, Olympia Little Theatre, Broadway Olympia, and SPSCC.
By Alec Clayton Life Is Complicated at Olympia Little Theatre is a play of firsts: a first-time writer and a first-time actor, the best actor in the play in this reviewer’s opinion. Kendra Malm, OLT board president and artistic and production manager, wrote and directed Life Is Complicated. She had never attempted writing a play …
Falling, now playing at Olympia Little Theatre (OLT), is 70 minutes of edge-of-your-seat intensity, a roller coaster of love, fear and laughter with no intermission. If there were an intermission, the audience’s total immersion into the Martin family would be weakened; if it were any longer than 70 minutes, the actors would be physically exhausted and the audience emotionally so. As it is, the time flies by at warp speed and the audience is left depleted, yet thoroughly satisfied.
In many ways the Martins, the quintet of characters who populate Deanna Jent’s hour-long, 2011 play Falling, resemble a typical American family. Mother Tami, in some ways a stand-in for Jent herself, is overwhelmed and fond of red wine. Teenage son Josh demands a day off from school. There’s one all-important factor missing from that synopsis, however: Josh is a person with autism, given to veering from giddy hilarity to violent frenzy with little provocation or warning.
It’s surprising and delightful when an amateur company chooses an entire slate of obscure material. Such is the case with Olympia Little Theatre (OLT), which will offer a roster of seven shows entirely new to most audience members. Feeling adventurous?
Congratulations to local writers Tamara Keeton and Katherine Kelly for undertaking the arduous task of researching The Originals, the true story of the heroic female pilots of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron during World War II, now playing at Olympia Little Theatre.
It can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between bad acting and good actors playing the part of bad actors — or between a bad script and a play about a badly written show. Audiences at Olympia Little Theatre’s farcical The Bold, the Young, and the Murdered, written by Don Zolidis and directed by Katelyn May, are left to decide for themselves.
By Alec Clayton Nobody, neither the audience nor any guest at Boddy Manor, has a clue who killed whom. Perhaps more accurately, everybody has a clue, but they’re all wrong. Based on the 1985 movie with an all-star cast including Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn and Michael McKean, with a setup based on the popular board …
In OLT’s “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley,” Mr. and Mrs. Darcy are hosting a Christmas party. That creates endless work for the servants downstairs, but the real hitch is the impending arrival of Mr. Darcy’s sworn enemy, Mr. Wickham.
By Alec Clayton Local storyteller and co-founder of StoryOly, Elizabeth Lord, says Amy Shephard is a powerhouse. She should know — Shephard was her StoryOly co-founder. StoryOly is Olympia’s premiere story-telling slam. Locals brave the stage at Rhythm & Rye once a month to tell stories — the rule is they must be true stories. …