Theater News

Seattle Spotlight: March 2011

Giving it Their All

Chuck Cooper
(© David Gordon)
Chuck Cooper
(© David Gordon)

Tony Award winner Chuck Cooper leads an all-black cast in Intiman Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s Tony Award-winning drama All My Sons (March 18-April 17). The play is about an ordinary family pushed into extraordinary circumstances in the aftermath of World War II, and director Valerie Curtis-Newton has set the action in Seattle’s Central District in order to explore an African-American family pursuing the American Dream within the realities of the region in the 1940s.

The Village Theatre has incubated a world premiere musical, Iron Curtain (March 16-May 22), by Susan DiLallo and Stephen Weiner with Peter Mills. Tongue-in-cheek labeled a “commie-dy,” it’s about a New York writing team being abducted to the Soviet Union and forced to create a Broadway-style musical. The production features funny men Nick DeSantis and Matt Wolfe, along with up-and-comer Danielle Barnum. Another world premiere musical comes to Seattle Musical Theatre, with The King’s Proposal (or the Marriage of Princess Guido) (March 20-April 10), a Mel Brooks-meets-Shakespeare musical that tells the story of an evil king who tries to marry his daughter to an unwanted suitor.

Northwest Savoyards presents classic Gilbert and Sullivan with Ruddigore; or, The Witch’s Curse (March 10-20), one of the rarely produced Victorian Era comic operas with villains turned heroes, heroes turned villains, helpless maidens, and professional bridesmaids. Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker flits into Ghost Light Theatricals (March 11-27) as the dark, shape-shifting fairy attaches herself to two teenage girls and wreaks havoc with their lives. Seattle Repertory Theatre explores John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (March 18-April 10), the story of disabled Lenny and protector George trying to scrape together enough money as ranch-hands to buy a house of their own in depression-era California.

Live Girls world premieres a prize-winning new play by Victoria Stewart, Hardball (March 4-26), in which a young woman transforms from journalist to celebrity pundit in a complex exploration of modern day news and commentary. ArtsWest stages the recent Off-Broadway hit, Distracted, by Lisa Loomer (March 9-April 2), about parenting in the age of Ritalin. Heather Hawkins stars as Mama. Seattle Public Theater opens The Happy Ones, a comedy by Julie Marie Myatt (March 18-April 10). When tragedy strikes Walter, the only person who can help him reclaim his life is the person who inadvertently destroyed it.

Theater Schmeater continues their serial mounting of Twilight Zone scripts verbatim with Twilight Zone Live (March 18-April 16), this time featuring the episodes “Time Enough at Last,” “The Obsolete Man,” and “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” Macha Monkey remounts their popular Hearts Are Monsters (March 4-26) by Kelleen Conway Blanchard, about a 16-year-old girl with a colony of naked mole rats, whose murdered father’s ghost appears to ask her to seek revenge.

Taproot Theatre presents Douglas Anderson’s play based on a true story, The Beams Are Creaking (March 23-April 23) of people trying to destroy Hitler from within. Stage Right Theatre mounts The Firebugs by Max Frisch (March 10-26), an absurdist tragedy in which Gottlieb Biedermann refuses to believe that the two men who have entered his home uninvited are the arsonists who have already burned down much of the town.

Family-friendly fare includes The Boy Who Cried Wolf at SecondStory Repertory (March 4-20), where a young boy learns honesty is the best policy. Also, Thistle Theatre uses Bunraku-style puppetry to go to Japan with Momotaro (various locations, March 5-26), in which a young boy who magically emerges from a peach, bands together with a dog, a monkey and a pheasant to defeat the Onis (demons) who have been terrorizing his village.