Theater

posts about live theater, live performances, actors, acting, shows, and other theatrical things…

Critic’s Corner: Best Visual and Performing Arts of 2024

Many of the South Sound’s best theater and visual arts critics write for OLY ARTS. We asked six of them to highlight some of their favorite visual and performance art shows from 2024, and we congratulate and celebrate the Olympia and Tacoma-area artists selected. Due to the limitation we put on the critics of no more than two or three shows, we are aware of and acknowledge that many great shows and artists were not picked. We are lucky to live in such a vibrant creative community.

Tacoma Light Trail Lends Brightness to Winter Doldrums

Tacoma Light Trail, December 31 through January 12, brings much-needed illumination to the dark winter streets of Tacoma. The Light Trail will line the streets of Tacoma with light art installations, and the entire free event will be blessed by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. Food trucks will be on hand to make this a perfect family-friendly way to ring in the new year.

Olympia Family Theater Responds to Financial Challenges 

Olympia Family Theatre, which has closed its adjacent all-ages space and reduced staff hours, is hard at work on raising the money it needs to keep the theater on solid footing going forward. Dean Shellman, chair of the non-profit theater’s board, said, “We’re carefully looking for savings opportunities that don’t change the experience for our audiences and students. OFT provides magical moments for families, and that won’t change.”

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Lakewood Playhouse

In this rendition of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Lakewood Playhouse there’s an added meta structure where the actors we see on stage are playing actors in the ‘40s, who are then playing the characters we know from It’s a Wonderful Life. “You’re an audience within an audience in the play within a play, which I think some people will be surprised by,” says director Brittany D. Henderson.

A Christmas Carol from Harlequin Productions Takes Center Stage This Holiday Season

“A Christmas Carol,” playing at Harlequin Productions Nov. 29 to Dec. 24, “is the greatest redemption story ever told, wrapped up in the trappings of a ghost story,” said Artistic Director Aaron Lamb. “A story of redemption is fundamentally a story about hope and forgiveness. If audiences leave a little more hopeful and a little more open to forgiveness after they see this production, we have succeeded.”

Nightmayor’s “The Oculist” at Wild Child

‘The Oculist’ by the two-person punk band nightmayor (Percy Boyle and Stella R.S.) is an irreverent retelling of the true story of John Taylor, an itinerant eye surgeon who traveled through Europe in the 18th century. See it at Olympia’s Wild Child November 14 through 24.

Phantom of the Paradise Restaged

The operatic scale of “The Phantom of the Paradise,” with that awful scarred hero-villain, his teeth metal and his eyes mad, screaming into the night as he watches the seduction of the woman he loved … if all of this is getting your midnight cult classics motor revving, there might not ever be a better time to see it than on November 8th at the Capitol Theatre, where for its 50th anniversary it will be accompanied with a live band and an actor-adjacent performance on the stage.

Dukesbay Production of “An Inspector Calls” Examines Social Truths

This story of “An Inspector Calls” at Dukesbay Theatre is entertaining as a character study and an exposé of moral hypocrisy, but then playwright Priestly subverts his own plot and introduces a whole new dimension. The sense of reality, for both the audience and the characters, seems to dissolve. It is as if a trap door opens and a whole new level of deconstruction begins.

Preview: Sondheim’s Theatre-of-Revenge Masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Stephen Sondheim’s theatre-of-revenge “musical thriller” masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is at Washington Center’s main stage. Working from Victorian popular fiction (“penny dreadfuls”) and Christopher Bond’s 1970 play, it is presented in a limited run on Oct. 11, 12, and 13 as a collaboration by Harlequin Productions, Olympia Symphony Orchestra, and Masterworks Choral Ensemble.

© Copyright Oly Arts, all rights reserved 2015-2025
Skip to content