Opening Nights
PNW New Works Festival
On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9886, ontheboards.org. $14. 8 p.m. Fri., 5 & 8 p.m. Sat., 8 p.m. Sun. Ends June 14.
On the Boards has been producing this festival for 31 years, and every time there’s something you could never predict. Which is the point, but it still makes our eyebrows shoot up and our jaws drop when we see it.
Opening weekend’s contenders for “Who would have thought of that?” include Sarah Rudinoff’s snappy observation that, on Facebook, “Everyone is having a cocktail. You never see them paying a bill.” Then there’s ilvs strauss’ mild-mannered imitation of a sea cucumber giving birth in a wonderful costume fashioned from a red sleeping bag. In the final tableau of dancer Linda Austin’s Hummingbird, she balances on top of a cat’s scratching post with a tablet computer glowing on her head, tooting on a pair of noisemakers. Zac Pennington shoves his microphone down Allie Hankins’ pants, then sings into her crotch.
You get the picture.
Some works have a seriously spooky aspect. Kyle Loven is already disturbing as a Morse-code transcriber in Ham Sandwich, but then his world falls apart, and he’s reduced to using bread to record his messages. Finding a surveillance camera in the light fixture just makes it worse. Anna Conner turns her camera on the viewer in YOURS, but don’t kiss me when her dancers exit the stage, leaving the audience grateful that the camera is pointing at someone else. The Pendleton House and Rainbow Fletcher both explore dark corners in their choreography—literally so for Pendleton House, where dancers spend long chunks of time in the near-dark, only to blind us with reflected light when they pass through a beam. Fletcher’s dancers appear in balaclava masks; her visceral movement style and deft use of stage patterns was a disorienting contrast to the anonymity of the masked performance.
The lineup for the second weekend is equally rich; however, you won’t be able to see anything I just described, since none of the programs repeat. That too is the point of the fest: to introduce as much new work as possible. For that reason, I look forward to seeing Amy O’Neal, who continues to reconfigure hip-hop dance in an intense solo; and Erin Pike, who’ll explore female stereotypes in theater, as expressed through their stage directions; and David Schmader, whose new monologue We All Can See Your Lips Move promises to devour itself. Sandra Kurtz
PThe Price
ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $20 and up. Runs Tues.–Sun. Ends June 22.
Overshadowed by his prior hits (Death of a Salesman, etc.), Arthur Miller’s psychologically astute mid-career (1968) drama is finding new fans through recent revivals around the country, including ACT’s deeply satisfying one, sensitively steered by Victor Pappas. Its themes feel bespoke for today: the emotional fallout from economic distress; the fear of one’s own idealism; the need to self-actualize (no one else will do it for you); and the life-shaping rationalizations we invent to justify our past misjudgments. Four great performances in a well-wrought, timely story make this a production you should go out of your way to see.
The gist: Policeman Victor (Charles Leggett) and surgeon Walter (Peter Lohnes) converge in their childhood bedroom after many years to dispose of their Depression-wrecked parents’ belongings, aided by elderly Jewish furniture dealer Mr. Solomon (Peter Silbert). A thankfully far cry from Hoarders, the stuff on Robert Dahlstrom’s maze-like set reflects twin yearnings for conformity and individuality: bourgeois “Spanish Jacobean” must-haves sprinkled with science projects and kooky fad Victrola records. The task of appraising the jumble prompts long-overdue stock-taking for the long-estranged brothers. Each sees the past through an entirely distinct lens, with Victor’s good-sport-whose-patience-is-wearing-thin wife Esther (Anne Allgood) rounding out the play’s Rashomon-esque trifocal vision.
Leggett wears Victor’s life vanquishment quietly, in the slack of his face, the melt of his shoulders. He was the “good” son, who sacrificed his schooling to support his father while Walter took off and never looked back. Victor’s summation of his father’s failure to recover from the Depression—“Some men don’t bounce”—applies the more aptly to himself. By contrast, Lohnes brings jaunty energy to his scenes—energy fracked from Walter’s permitting himself to experience life’s highest highs and lowest depths, rather than hewing to the middle. It’s a difficult, morally ambiguous role, which he manages masterfully. Meanwhile, Esther’s admiration and disgust ping-pongs between the men, reflecting the audience’s uncertainty about whose actions and values are more virtuous.
And what, you might ask, about the antiques dealer? Fasten your borscht belts for some A-game shtick from Silbert, returning to ACT after a 14-year absence. His delectable Solomon waxes chatty, feigns dudgeon, nibbles an egg, cadges salt for the egg, grabs his own face like a homicidal starfish, praises the lady, mimes rolling out the royal carpet, etc. He’s the wise, mythical nudge who catalyzes the inevitable blowout between brothers and has the last laugh—though not how you might think. Margaret Friedman
TEWAZ
Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, cabiri.org. $20–$35. 7:30 p.m. Fri.–Sun. Ends June 14.
The Cabiri’s shows have always been ambitious combinations of intensely physical dance theater and mysterious, mythology-based narrative. They want to blow your socks off while teaching you a lesson about the foundational stories of civilization. But this time out, it looks as if they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.
The story in TEWAZ reaches back to pre-Genesis descriptions of angels and demons, at a time when gods and humans existed together on Earth. It’s rich material for theater, but tricky to keep straight, even with the detailed description in the playbill. Artistic director John Murphy shows us an incredible plethora of characters: humans who hunt as leopards, loping across the stage on all four limbs; angels hanging from the ceiling on silks and trapezes; one priestess who could’ve been Ruth St. Denis in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance; and another who looks like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. They all perform a complicated mix of dance, gymnastics, martial arts, and aerial choreography—much of it highly skilled work.
With all these elements in play, TEWAZ seems overwhelmed by the sheer size of its tale. Even factoring in opening-night jitters, there were gaps in the narrative and cracks in the technical flow. Some individual scenes are astonishing, especially the aerial battles and the tumbling hunters pursuing a yak, but transitions need to be tightened up. The story either needs to be simplified or narrated more closely.
The Cabiri’s mytho-acrobatic performance style does fit these stories of gods and humans: When we see a demon on a bungee snatch up a cowering villager, we’re right in the middle of those cave-art times. But we expect a great deal from special effects in these 3-D days; and if you’re going to present yourself as a pocket version of Cirque du Soleil, you’ve set your bar high. Maybe too high. TEWAZ is the first chapter in the Tea Trilogy, which the Cabiri will continue the next couple of years. By the time we get to Book Two, they should be further along on all fronts. Sandra Kurtz
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