SPSCC Theater Collective’s rock musical “Lizzie” about Lizzie Bordon, accused of the ax murder of her mother, assumes Lizzie’s guilt, according to its director. It also doesn’t shy away from suggesting that Lizzie’s relationship with her father included sexual abuse, a theme explored in the song “This Isn’t Love,” one of the 26 songs that tell Lizzie’s story.
What happens after you die? How do we find meaning in a world where suffering is inevitable and unjust? What actually goes down at a Texas Roadhouse? God and the Devil attempt to answer all these questions and more in a classic American road trip that will make you laugh, make you cry, and might even save you! Post-Promethia is a two-woman dramedy written …
In Tacoma Little Theatre’s production of Bug, Peter starts to see bugs in Agnes’ room, and soon enough, Agnes thinks she might see them, too. Bug, written by Tracy Letts, and directed for Tacoma Little Theatre by Blake R. York, has a reputation for its intensity, and it’s well-earned: once tensions begin to mount, they never let up, building to a manic crescendo as we helplessly watch two people spiral into madness. The play elicits plenty of nervous laughter from the audience, as they witness some truly horrifying events, but there are also audacious moments of humor.
Theater Artists Olympia’s “The HEAD That Wouldn’t DIE!” at Lakewood Playhouse is a takeoff on one of the worst B movies ever, “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” with additional dialogue and lyrics by the TAO collective. It is two hours of camp and insanity, not recommended for children younger than 13 according to a warning posted in the theater and not recommended for people who don’t get satire according to this reviewer.
Past and present blend together in “Bloomsday” at Dukesbay Theater through April 6. If you could talk to your younger self, would you try to change the past? Should you? Is it possible to turn back the hands of time and make things right with the one that got away? “Bloomsday” is a melancholy play, but not without its world-weary laughs. As the older Robert and Caithleen, Gonzales and Lockett are suitably impatient with their younger selves, lamenting their tastes in clothes, literature and partners.
In Lorca in a Green Dress at Tacoma Little Theatre, the “Lorca Room” is neither heaven nor hell, but rather a space for the poet Lorca to spend 40 days coming to terms with his death, and the Lorcas around him represent different sides of his personality. …the conversations and events that take place feel very much like a dream. It’s as if the mind of Lorca has shattered into pieces, creating the hall of mirrors that is the Lorca Room; everyone’s dialogue shares a musicality, as they trip through lush language and finish one another’s sentences.
Aaron Lamb, director of Harlequin Production’s Is This a Room, has created a piece of moving, powerful theatre with a light and confident artistic hand. Jeannie Beirne’s set design, Savannah Van Leuvan’s lighting design and Keith Jewell’s sound design with its weird cover of the redacted dialogue rendering it unspeakably inaudible, accomplishes a trifecta. The strange stage set enables us to take in the equally strange encounter that occurred on June 3, 2017, when 11 FBI agents arrived unannounced at the home of Reality Winner (portrayed most affectingly by Olivia Finkelstein, in her Harlequin debut).
Trouble in Mind Written by Alice Childress Directed by Michelle Blackmon March 28 – April 20, 2025 Taking place entirely in a rehearsal space in an old New York theatre, Trouble in Mind brings us up close and personal with a group of artists working to open a new Broadway show. Themes of race, class, …
The overwhelming sensation in The Laramie Project, playing at Lakewood Playhouse through March 9, is not one of anger or of sorrow, but of a kind of cautious hope. Because of our society’s “one step forward, two steps back” approach to LGBT rights, any one of The Laramie Project’s performances since its opening in 2000 could be said to be unfortunately timely, and now is no different. This terrific ensemble cast comes together to paint a picture of a town trying to process a tragedy.
“How Much the Heart Can Hold” by Bryan Willis and Linda Kalkwarf will be performed one night only at Harlequin’s State Theatre. Inspired by the words of writer and artist Zelda Fitzgerald: “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” Directed by Kathryn Dorgan, the play is a series of illustrative scenes tied together with readings of what Willis calls “snippets of wisdom, culled from a variety of writers and thinkers, that guarantee inspiration for lovers of all ages.”