Opening
Nights

Ariadne auf Naxos

McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), 389-7676. $25 and up. See seattle
opera.org for schedule. Ends May 16.

Suppose you have a ticket to Ariadne auf Naxos but can only drop in for half an hour. Your best bet will be the opening of Act 2; it’s where most of the magic is concentrated in Seattle Opera’s revival of its 2004 production (directed by Chris Alexander, set by Robert Dahlstrom) of Richard Strauss’ 1916 meta-opera. Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto posits that a wealthy patron has commissioned an opera on the Greek myth of the title and engaged a commedia dell’arte troupe to perform afterward as dessert; instead, the comedians invade and comment on the opera. Act 1 shows the backstage preparations for all this, with the singers jockeying for supremacy and the achingly idealistic Composer—SO favorite Kate Lindsey, ardent and soaring—agonizing over all these compromises.

Seattle Opera is selling the comedy hard, but the “serious opera,” the Ariadne scenes, is where both Strauss and Alexander do their best work. As Act 2 opens in a gallery-like setting, the singers are surrounded by pieces of art glass and the play-within-a-play’s onstage audience. Three nymphs strike lovely, statuesque poses and ripple a stream of silky blue cloth to imitate waves (so simple a stage effect, and it never fails). The commedia players float through the scene atop a slowly rolling grand piano—pushed by very visible stagehands, which adds to the surreal charm. And there’s the long dreamlike monologue of Christiane Libor as Ariadne, the cool gleam of her soprano a glorious complement to Strauss’ radiant orchestration, her delivery palpitating with emotion.

The comic scenes that follow, however, seem endless—even though they’re capped by the opera’s showpiece coloratura aria, given to Zerbinetta, leader of the commedia troupe. Sarah Coburn is assured and vivacious in the part, though she plays coquettishness by shifting her voice into a vampy, come-hither lower gear, which robs some of her music of sparkle. The torpor is not entirely Strauss’ fault, though comedy pacing was not one of his primary theatrical gifts. Throughout the performance, the comic business contains an unforgivable level of unimaginative cliche: miming what you’re singing about (if the lyrics mention your left foot, point to your left foot) and gesturing and bouncing in time with the music. (When a film score mimics onscreen action, it’s called Mickey-Mousing; is there a term for the reverse?)

Even Ariadne’s final scene with Bacchus feels its length, though the arduous role, which asks for a Mozart tenor’s lyric elegance plus clarion Wagnerian lung power, is sung beautifully by Issachah Savage, winner of SO’s International Wagner Competition last August. (His one rough landing, on his aria’s climactic high note, was surely a one-time occurrence.) And by the opera’s end, the magic returns, meltingly, thanks to him and Libor and an impressionistic fireworks display (promised, like Chekhov’s gun, in Act 1) projected against the back wall. Codas definitely were one of Strauss’ primary theatrical gifts, and the wondrous beauty of the final tableau rises to the level of ravishment, led by Lawrence Renes, coming from the pit. Gavin Borchert

Bunnies

Annex Theatre, 1100 E. Pike St., 728-0933, annextheatre.org. $5–$20. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. plus Mon., May 11. Ends May 16.

As a second-year playwriting minor in college, I penned a pseudo-profound drama about a mother visiting her daughter in a psych ward, complete with super-stylized dialogue. My prudent professor smoothly suggested I write scenes closer to my own humble life, less arty and pretentious. I hope someone has a similar kind talk with Keiko Green after her fanciful comedy finishes its run.

This pedantic mashup of The Bacchae and environmental armageddon—which also includes music by Jesse Smith—chronicles a crew of castoff cottontails who form a clique bent on environmental revenge against humanity. These murderous bunnies are far less fearsome or funny than Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog; in fact they draw inspiration from the pet rabbits abandoned in Woodland Park, where a huge feral warren now thrives.

Green’s ambition—undertaken via a hodgepodge of theatrical devices—is to indict the ass-hat pet owners who cruelly dump said rabbits in the park. Here those forlorn animals (played by eight actresses) serve as a Greek chorus—usually the province of drama, not comedy. Under the humdrum direction of Pamala Mijatov, the long-eared chorus doesn’t do much hopping or exhibit other animal attributes. The boy-on-bunny bestiality merely seems a spurious shock. These raging rabbits also display diction difficulties. I couldn’t understand a single lyric of the songs (by Green and Smith). As She, the chief goddess/bunny, Yesenia Iglesias mumbles her way through an opening monologue of classically inspired language.

The human foes prove more intelligible and interesting. Andre Nelson, playing an array of small roles, does supply some comic relief from, er, the supposed comedy. Also showing imagination, Robin Macartney’s simple set evokes Woodland Park, right down to those old four-color striped park signs. Despite that trace of realism, Wanda Rodriquez’s distracting costumes reminded me of Grizabella and Rum Tum Tugger: Cats in Hammer pants.

Forgive me for saying this is a hare-raisingly horrible show. The only upside came during intermission last Friday, out on the sidewalk where we witnessed the impromptu street theater of some May Day protesters. Back indoors, Bunnies lacks catharsis, doing a disservice to both to Euripides and Dionysus. Alyssa Dyksterhouse

POutside Mullingar

Seattle Repertory Theatre, 155 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), ­443-­2222. $17–$102. 
7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun. plus some Wed. & 
weekend matinees; see seattlerep.org 
for schedule. Ends May 17.

Nobody goes to a romantic comedy looking for surprises. We go for affirmation that, in the face of suspicious data, dubious reasoning, endless distractions, and daunting obstacles (real or imagined), fusion between two hesitant people can occur—even if it takes the G-force of the Large Hadron Collider to bring it about. The bristly main characters in John Patrick Shanley’s talky 2013 charmer seem a textbook illustration of Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, getting halfway closer, halfway closer, ad infinitum. There’s nothing the least bit edgy about Outside Mullingar, nor excessively sappy, so you can swoon at its abundant appeal and still keep your grumpus credentials in order.

In rural Ireland, the Muldoons and Reillys have owned adjacent farms since forever. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Chisholm) has been nursing a grudge against Anthony Reilly (M.J. Sieber) for decades: At 13, he shoved her when she was 6, a comically trivial basis for her planned revenge. She owns a strip of land that blocks his family’s property from the road—compromising a possible sale. Early on we meet one surviving parent of each lovebird (Kimberly King and Sean G. Griffin, both terrific) and get an inkling of where the weird comes from. As the romantic pursuer, however bitter, Rosemary gets more to do than Anthony. Under cover of anomie, she seethes, stews, smokes, pines, coaxes, goads, accuses, and corners. Allure, as most of us have come to think of it, is not in Rosemary’s quiver; her desire squeezes itself into the refrain, “Girl needs a chat.”

Sieber, playing an evasive depressive, is stuck in defensive mode. His Anthony declines all bids except a credulity-stretching one from his dying father. Director Wilson Milam was probably wise to guard the “secret” of Anthony’s love, but this is accomplished with a lot of head-down, eyes averted chore-doing that often strands Chisholm on her own.

Still, the 90-minute one-act flies by, the excellent performances expedited by lyrical language (spoken in proficiently non-distracting accents) and jaunty passing humor. Doubt playwright Shanley, the screenwriter of Moonstruck, knows how to be funny when he wants to be. His smart, hearty/hardy characters have a full grasp of irony. Their miserable, sodden existence—sheltered by Eugene Lee’s flimsy-looking sets and alluded to by Geoff Korf’s painterly lighting—is the only life they can imagine. Conceiving of new things is a liability around here. As Rosemary laments, “Thinking’s worse than February.” Margaret Friedman

The Tall Girls

12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave., 
washingtonensemble.org. $15–$25. 
7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Mon. Ends May 18.

For all intents and purposes, the heroines of Meg Miroshnik’s The Tall Girls are not girls at all. Faced by the gravity of their sex and looming adulthood during the bleak Dust Bowl era, these athletes have to be nimble enough to forego childhood.

In rural Oklahoma, we meet five young women vying to play ball. Jean (Leah Salcido Pfenning) calls Poor Prairie her “grave town” when she arrives at its train station. Almost 16, exceptionally tall and dressed older than she should be, she’s been sent by her family to help raise cousin Almeda (Bailie Breaux). “Al,” just a year younger, clothed in dirt and overalls, is a classic wild child. Before meeting future teammates Inez, Puppy, and Lurlene, Jean encounters the slightly smarmy Haunt Johnny (Ali Mohamed el-Gasseir), returning home with a fresh basketball and a dubious past.

Al and her best friends idolize Babe’s Ballers, a local women’s basketball league. In a series of all-too-convenient coincidences, the five form a team of their own, with Johnny as their coach (and arithmetic teacher). Jean’s predilection for numbers, her height, and Johnny’s affection make her a prime candidate for point guard—and Al’s jealousy.

This is Washington Ensemble’s second production of a Miroshnik play, following 2012’s The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, whose protagonists hustled to survive in Putin’s harsh new kleptocracy. What’s the connection? In desolate Poor Prairie, the odds are also stacked against women; and the team is under threat of being disbanded by First Lady Hoover’s “Committee on Play.” (Sports supposedly threaten the reproductive health of young women—all that jumping up and down, you see.) Director Kelly Kitchens writes in the playbill of “the cost of mortgaging your hopes for a meal ticket,” which is a little vague and a little off, because these girls’ hopes and meal tickets are one and the same. I think Miroshnik is more after the time-agnostic sense of sacrificing your hopes for duty. Yet Tall Girls seems to be about more than what’s being delivered in this production. Though more starkly realistic than Fairytale Lives, Miroshnik’s text lacks credibility: basketball is here a pipe dream for most of these characters—unless fatalism is her point here.

On the final scoreboard, The Tall Girls boasts a powerful young cast with great onstage rapport. The character interactions are poignant, if rushed, in an engaging drama that’s sometimes too fast-paced for its own good. (Only Jean registers as a full-fledged character, while the rest seem more like sketches.) Cameron Irwin’s simple, provocative set is complete with a basketball hoop incorporated into the drama. It’s a symbol of hope and a source of tension as these women line up to take free throws that really may determine their future beyond Poor Prairie. IRFAN SHARIFF

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