posts about live theater, live performances, actors, acting, shows, and other theatrical things…
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 …
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 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 Christian Carvajal In a surprise August move, Harlequin Productions cancelled its original play choice for October, the Chicago crime drama A Steady Rain. In an interview with Molly Gilmore for The Olympian, Harlequin’s associate artistic director, Aaron Lamb, characterized Rain as “not the story we wanted to be telling at this moment.” Instead, actor-director …
By Lucy Volker Family-friendly comedy Corduroy opens this month at Olympia Family Theater. The original book, written and illustrated by Don Freeman in 1968, was recently adapted for the stage by Barry Kornhauser. After seeing the play’s world premiere this spring in Minneapolis at the Children’s Theater Company, artistic director Jen Ryle knew it would …
ART REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS John Logan’s dramatic two-man show Red at Olympia Little Theatre is engaging, intelligent and highly intense. It is a tour de force for actors Christopher Valcho as the painter Mark Rothko and John Tuttle-Gates as his studio assistant, Ken, and for director Jim Patrick. At an hour …
By Alec Clayton The angst, artistic sensibility and intelligence of the great abstract-expressionist painter Mark Rothko will be on display — raw nerve ends and all — when Olympia Little Theatre brings to the stage John Logan’s dramatic two-man show Red, directed by Jim Patrick and starring Christopher Valcho as Rothko and John Tuttle as …
By Christian Carvajal Now in his eighth year as managing artistic director of Lakewood Playhouse, John Munn has worked to diversify the types of shows audiences can expect from this community theater with big-city aspirations. The troupe’s 80th season therefore boasts everything from light, family entertainment to a six-hour-plus epic about America’s response to the …
In addition to the varied schedules of theater offered by professional, semi-professional, collegiate and community troupes, the South Sound offers students and other audience members show after show of engaging drama from high school companies. Often, teen performers share the boards with more experienced actors under the guidance of skilled, passionate educators. The following offerings …
THEATER REVIEW by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS The subtitle “the stage mother of all musicals” only begins to hint at what this campy musical is all about. It is a parody on just about everything, from Gypsy and Mame to The Bad Seed and all About Eve, and most of the female actors belt …