Opening
Nights

The God of Hell

Stone Soup Theatre, 4029 Stone Way N., 633-1883, stonesouptheatre.org. $15–$25. 
8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. plus 4 p.m. Sun., March 8. Ends March 14.

Outraged by the Bush administration, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, etc., Sam Shepard hastily composed this absurdist and somewhat awkward farce in 2004. A dozen years later, though we’re out of Iraq, ongoing drones strikes, Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations, and, most recently, the Chicago police’s “black sites” discovery make the agitprop less outlandish—though no more captivating.

In a plot combining elements from FOX News and Star Trek, the uncomplicated existence of Wisconsin dairy farmers Frank (Edwin Scheibner) and Emma is upended when they host Mr. Haynes (Keith Dahlgren), a presumed scientist on the run from a secret U.S. plutonium project. In pursuit, masquerading as a door-to-door salesman hawking patriotic products, the government henchman Welch (Gianni Truzzi, an erstwhile SW contributor) comes knocking. From there we are taken on a rugged route reconnoitering torture, politics, and democracy.

Please note, Maureen Miko normally plays Emma; however, due to a medical emergency, director Joanna Goff Sunde subbed for her—still on book—with commendable commitment in the performance I saw. Still, the problem here isn’t the acting, but the direction and choice of material. Truzzi’s disturbing character is a Brechtian clown, yet he fails to dispel any illusions of theater or politics. The production needs to be more cartoonish, to amp up the effects. After any physical contact, Haynes supposedly suffers from “static electricity” and lightning bolts flashing from his appendages. All we see is what we hear: a disappointing game-show-esque buzzer. Even allowing for the low budget, Sunde’s pacing makes Rand Paul’s anti-drone filibuster seem brief.

Near the end, long after Verfremdungseffekt has morphed into unmitigated indifference, Frank’s monologue mourns the loss of a less bellicose America. “I miss the Cold War,” he says sincerely. It’s a nostalgic, hackneyed notion to anyone actually raised during the terrifying era of Mutually Assured Destruction. Yet Shepard came of age protesting the Vietnam War. Every epoch has its atrocities and political rationales to ridicule, as the playwright (and theatergoer) knows. Why doesn’t his God of Hell raise my hackles in the year 2015? Perhaps because it does not incite the intended ire; and, damn it, I wanted to be outraged—not bored by more partisan sniping. ALYSSA DYKSTERHOUSE

PSemele

McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), 389-7676, seattleopera.org. 
$25 and up. 7:30 p.m. Wed., Fri., Sat. 
Ends March 7.

The spectacle is what’s been hyped about Seattle Opera’s production of Handel’s Semele, but the music is why you shouldn’t miss it. In the title role of a mortal woman whose crush on Jupiter leads to pride, ambition, and a fiery end, Brenda Rae (in the Wednesday/Saturday cast) sounds glorious in both her dreamy slow arias and her acrobatic showpieces. In “Oh, sleep, why dost thou leave me?” and “My racking thoughts,” the orchestra, led by Gary Thor Wedow, is pared down to just a few instruments; with Rae’s sweetness of tone, the result is an enrapturing chamber-music intimacy I wouldn’t have thought possible in a hall McCaw’s size. And her allegros—especially “Myself I shall adore,” likely the most preposterously ornate aria Seattle Opera’s ever presented—will leave you dazzled (and wondering when and how Rae breathes). But the key to coloratura is to make it expressive, not just a circus act. One magical example comes soon after the opera opens, while Semele’s still betrothed to Athamas and wants out. She beseeches Jupiter for help—“O Jove! in pity teach me which to choose/Incline me to comply, or help me to refuse!”—but Rae’s seductive vocal flight on those last four words makes it clear she’s considerably less conflicted about the choice than she pretends.

Similarly, Stephanie Blythe brilliantly handles the extremes of her two roles: bold and resonant as the jealous Juno (even drawing a spontaneous ripple of applause for her imperious lowest notes), and reserved yet deeply affecting as Semele’s sister Ino—for example, dialing it down to pair beautifully with the lighter voice of countertenor Randall Scotting as Athamas in their duet. (If Blythe had sung at full force here, Semele wouldn’t have been the only one in the opera reduced to a pile of ashes.) Furthermore, she expertly plays these opposites off each other when Juno disguises herself as Ino to manipulate Semele into making her fatal request. Also, Seattle Opera-goers who heard Blythe’s Amneris or Fricka, but missed her in the title role of Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers, may not know how funny she can be, but her scene with Amanda Forsythe as Juno’s messenger Iris drew well-earned laughs. (In an interesting reversal, in this production it’s the gods who provide the comedy; normally in baroque opera, seriousness is a class marker, with comedy reserved for the lower orders and gravity the province of the nobility.)

John Del Carlo’s gruff bass works well as Cadmus, Semele’s father, and even better as Somnus, god of sleep. With rapid passagework as daunting as the ladies’, Handel makes the lead male role, Jupiter, rather a thankless task; Alek Shrader’s hard work here was admirable but audible.

Erhard Rom’s set is cool, airy, severe—inspired, from the look of it, by the PACCAR Pavilion at the Olympic Sculpture Garden, or maybe the Gates Foundation building, or, really, anything built in Seattle so far this century. Projections on screens large and small add visual variety. Not all of these work; no face looks good blown up to billboard size, and one image, a pink rose against a screen-saver backdrop of drifting clouds, resembles nothing so much as a telenovela’s opening credits (Amores de dioses, maybe, or Ambicion mortal ). GAVIN BORCHERT

Seven Ways to Get There

ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676. $20–$65. Runs Thurs.–Sun.; see acttheatre.org for exact schedule. Ends March 15.

Here’s an earnest new comedy of hybrid parentage: Dwayne J. Clark, a local businessman, is the newbie fictionalizing his past experiences in a men’s therapy group; writer Bryan Willis is the stage professional who helped him shape that circular sharing into a two-act structure. (John Langs directs at a brisk, welcome pace.) With a female shrink running herd on seven neurotic dudes with various maladies, the laughs here ought to come quick—provided we don’t have any serious belief in therapeutic outcomes. Back in the day of unenlightened Broadway or Hollywood romps, mental illness was simply joke fodder; no one cared about being cured, since that would kill the source of the laughter.

But now we live in different times. Therapist Michelle (Kirsten Potter) implores her group to share in good faith, to keep their secrets sacred, and above all to believe in the process of healing. Seven Ways is nothing if not sincere about that process, which tends to undercut the comedy—or seriocomedy, really. Since the male characters here never emerge beyond types, you at least want them to be funny types. This is a situation verging on sitcom, where you need the experienced joke-smithery of a Neil Simon. Again, however, this is a tyro team that falls back on the obvious: easy male put-downs, talk of a porn co-op, the guys bursting into pirate banter, spontaneous dance parties, even a fart joke or two. If the conceit is thin, the writing is thinner.

Among the various patients (angry, indecisive, sex addict, etc.), Charles Leggett makes good use of comic silence and withholding (almost as if he knows the lines aren’t worth delivering). Darragh Kennan brings a lot of urgency and energy to his resentful, court-mandated attendee, but the character feels like a Randle P. McMurphy knockoff. Bradford Farwell’s tormented painter adds the most pathos to the piece—almost too much; he’s the odd man out in this comic ensemble. Meanwhile their strained but patient therapist keeps encouraging them to open up and take more risks. Would that the play did the same. BRIAN MILLER

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