theater

Unique Immersive Show “Our House” Revived for July-August 2025

Our House, written and directed by John Longenbaugh, is inspired by Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. This unique immersive experience is back for a limited run beginning on July 17. The 2024 production received rave reviews: “Nothing short of a triumph. By all means find yourself to Our House,” Margie Deck, Ineffable Twaddle; “enlarges what theatre can be,” James O’Barr, Oly Arts; “there’s also magic…a liveliness that theatre strives for” Gemma Wilson, Seattle Times — as well as a Critic’s Choice from Oly Arts.

Animal Fire’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lacey’s Wonderwood Park

Animal Fire Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lacey’s Wonderwood Park in July
“is something that I think we all need back in our lives — the magic and the mystery of all the human connection, love and lust and grandeur and all of that,” Director Brian Hatcher said. “We need to bring this levity back. “The last couple shows we did had a heaviness to them — Measure for Measure and King Henry IV,” he added. “We decided that this was the time to go light.”

Oly Arts Summer 2025 Print Edition

The Summer print edition of OLY ARTS N0. 33 is published! Here is a list of where in the Olympia area you can pick up your FREE copy, and a link to the PDF file so you can read it online. Enjoy!

‘Lizzie’ rocks at South Puget Sound Community College

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.

Bug at Tacoma Little Theatre

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.

TAO Revives The HEAD That Wouldn’t DIE!

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.

Bloomsday at Dukesbay Theater

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.

Lorca in a Green Dress — a Surreal Eulogy for a Poetic Mind

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.

Review: Is This a Room

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).

Speaking for Laramie at Lakewood Playhouse

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.

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