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 …
By Molly Gilmore On Saturday, Oct. 27, Emerald City Music invites you to the musical version of a Parisian café — warm and intimate. Café Music spotlights a group of 20th-century French composers known as “Les Six,” who hung out with other avant-garde artists at Paris’s celebrated Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit. It also showcases …
By Molly Gilmore Broadway Olympia’s production of The Rocky Horror Show — opening, oh so fittingly, on Halloween — was more than two decades in the making. That’s quite a feat considering the musical-theater company launched its first season just two months ago. It all began in 1995, when managing director Kyle Murphy first saw …
By Karen Lunde At the conclusion of the 2017-2018 season, after 18 years with Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia, conductor John Welsh retired. With Welsh’s blessing, Portland native Cameron May has taken up the baton as SOGO’s new conductor and music director. He comes to Olympia by way of Champaign, Illinois, where he’s finishing a …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Dry Powder is billed as a comedy, and yes there is a lot of humor in this tale of high-finance shenanigans. But there’s a lot of searing drama as well, as Jenny (the versatile Helen Harvester), Jeff (the comedic Ryan Holmberg), Seth (film actor Brian S. Lewis) …
By Adam McKinney For over two decades, Jenn Champion has been making open-hearted music in the Pacific Northwest. Champion made her name in indie rock favorites Carisa’s Wierd, then found success with her solo project, S, which favored a more stripped down bedroom pop. It’s refreshing to see Champion’s recent pivot to electro-pop, presented in …
By Christian Carvajal “Across an immense ethereal gulf,” a voice intoned, “intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” It was Sunday evening, October 30, 1938. The voice was that of 23-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles, already a radio and stage star on two …
By Molly Gilmore Masterworks Choral Ensemble begins its 38th season by celebrating nature’s glories. The singing group will wade in the water — and explore the elements of earth, air and fire, too — in Sacred Elements at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts. “I really resonate with the environment,” said Masterworks artistic director …
By Adam McKinney Legend has it – and legends have everything – that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroad at midnight. In exchange for his soul, the devil granted him the ability of a master guitarist. Regardless of whether this event actually took place, what we know from the …