Seattle Spotlight: April 2008

April brings a light rain of well-known musicals and a shower of world or local premieres. The Paramount presents Lerner & Loewe’s legendary musical, My Fair Lady (April 29-May 4), touring the US direct from its 50th Anniversary London production and U.K. national tour. Christopher Cazenove and Lisa O’Hare are earning rave reviews wherever they go. Miss Saigon (April 11-May 4) will fly into Tacoma Musical Playhouse, apt timing for a Vietnam War story.

World premieres include Fathers and Sons by Michael Bradford (April 25-May 25), which examines a history of absence, mistakes, mistrust, and broken promises across three generations. Driftwood Players displays The Promise of Pittesville (April 20-28) by local actor-director Jeff Stilwell, a political stew in small town America. Wake (April 3-13) is the first production of Onward Ho! Productions, written by local Sonya Schneider and is an observant story of parents and children, friends and lovers, and complex relationships.

Theater Schmeater presents The American Pilot by Scottish playwright David Greig (April 25-May 24), a haunting tale of what happens to a small third world village when an American pilot is forced to parachute into their midst. The Cure at Troy by Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney (April 3-May 4) marches into Seattle Repertory Theatre bringing with it Hercules, Odysseus, and assorted Greeks. Charles Mee’s Big Love (April 24-May 17), about 50 brides rebelling against forced marriage, is examined at Balagan Theatre.

A 1955 Brooklyn baseball-loving family is displayed in And Somewhere Men Are Laughing (April 24-May 17) at Eclectic Theater Company. Would you agree to die next week if you got a million dollars today? That’s the premise for the reality-TV spoof, The Dead Guy at ArtsWest (April 2-26).

Classics of both the humorous and serious sort include Ghost Sonata (April 11-May 10) haunting Open Circle Theater, August Strindberg’s precursor to horror movies. Ghost Light Theatricals presents George Farquhar’s 1707 comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem (April 4-19), with an all-female cast. Driftwood Players has fun with You Can’t Take It With You (April 11-28) by Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman. Renton Civic Theatre presents both Agatha Christie’s The Patient (April 20-29) and Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias (April 11-27).

The Ilkhom Theatre Festival continues its residency at ACT with Ecstasy with the Pomegranate (April 9-13) by their late director Mark Weil, in which a Russian artist becomes entranced with an Uzbek dance done only by young boys.

For the kids, Seattle Children’s Theatre offers Busytown (April 25-June 15), which brings Richard Scarry’s lovable characters — Huckleberry Cat, Farmer Pig, Train the Dog, and of course, Lowly Worm — to life. Also, Book-It Theatre debuts an adaptation of The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch (April 17-May 10), winner of the 2006 PNB Book Award, about a summer earthquake and its effect on a short 13-year-old.