posts by Alec Clayton
By ALEC CLAYTON Inspired by a true story, The Hundred Dresses tells the story of Polish immigrant Wanda Petronski and the bullying she endured at school. Petronski’s classmate, Maddie, stands up to hostile classmates and makes an unlikely friend in the process. Olympia Family Theater describes the play as “a poignant tale of bullies and …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The defining thing about the annual postcard show at South Puget Sound Community College is humor, is variety, is lots and lots of little works of art — is most of all that nothing is rejected. Every work submitted is accepted into the show without judgment, which …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Sherry Buckner’s latest pastel landscapes beg an old question: why do it. Nature can be stunningly beautiful, especially when there are sunsets or stormy skies, or, in the case of Buckner’s pastels, mist and fog. But it is so much easier to snap a photo than to …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The Department of Ecology in Lacey is routinely filled with art, with rotating shows of local and area artists in the public spaces. Works by two Olympia artists, Lois Beck and Mary McCann, are now on display in the dining room (McCann) and the lobby (Beck). These …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Standing Room Only’s “Shrek the Musical” at Triad Theater is a fairy tale for adults that is also suitable for children, even though children might not get all the pop-culture references and tongue-in-cheek jokes on traditional fairy tales, shows and movies. For a low-budget, small community theater, …
By Alec Clayton John Dodge, longtime columnist for The Olympian, has published a book about the most powerful windstorm ever to hit the West Coast. That book is A Deadly Storm: The 1962 Columbus Day Storm. On Oct. 12, 1962, winds in this region topped 100 miles per hour. The Naselle Radar Station in southwest Washington clocked gusts of …
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 …
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 …
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. …