by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS The Last Five Years, opening Aug. 18 at Harlequin Productions’ State Theater, tells the story of a relationship told from beginning to end—and from end to beginning. The Jason Robert Brown musical opens with Cathy (Katherine Strohmaier) singing about the end of her marriage. Then Jamie (Aaron Lamb) sings …
Olympia enjoys an embarrassment of riches when it comes to local acting talent, but every star owes his or her success to good teachers. Thus it’s no surprise Oly also has some of the best youth theater programs around. Get to know the companies that make this city a training ground for nationally lauded performers …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Audrey II, the people-eating plant protagonist of Harlequin Productions’ Little Shop of Horrors, is a role too big for one person. If the horror-comedy rock musical is Faust in a florist shop, Audrey II is Mephistopheles. Christian Doyle and Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe team up to play the vined villain, which …
Harlequin Productions is a professional not-for-profit theater company at the State Theater in downtown Olympia. Founded in 1991, its mission is to seek to invigorate, educate, and empower our community and all people to feel more, think more, play more and judge less through the mirror of real live theatre. Through a dynamic selection of …
by Alec Clayton for OLY ARTS Local theater company Harlequin Productions has a love affair going with playwright Israel Horovitz. It began with a surprise email the playwright sent to Harlequin co-founder Scot Whitney early in 2009. For Whitney it goes back much further than that, to sometime in the late 1980s. Whitney and his …