Theater News

Seattle Spotlight: August 2007

A Monster Hit

Thomas Meehan, Mel Brooks, and Susan Stroman
(© Paul Kolnik)
Thomas Meehan, Mel Brooks, and Susan Stroman
(© Paul Kolnik)

It’s not every day Seattle gets a show this monstrous, but Young Frankenstein lumbers into town at the Paramount Theatre (August 7-September 1), before going straight to Broadway in October. The show features music by Mel Brooks, book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan (based on Brooks’ 1974 film), and direction and choreography by Susan Stroman. Tony Award winners Roger Bart, Andrea Martin, Sutton Foster, and Shuler Hensley headline along with multi-Emmy Award winner Megan Mullally, Christopher Fitzgerald, and Fred Applegate.

More excitement is on hand as ReAct presents Wonder of the World (August 2-26), a wacky comedy from 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire. ReAct’s season continues with The Exonerated (August 31-September 23), the acclaimed docudrama drawn from and based on the lives and experiences of average Americans who were wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced to Death Row for a crime they did not commit.

A lot of locally written material is displayed this month. Seattle Public Theater premieres Writer 1272 by Vince Delany (August 3-11), a black comedy that explores the underbelly of college admissions, and the art of the personal essay. Wing-It Productions’ The Declaration (August 2-September 21) looks at what really happened on July 4, 1776, as subjects of the famous Trumbull painting come to life to decide whether or not to sign the Declaration of Independence.

In Lightning in a Bottle (August 2-18), West of Brooklyn tells the story of patrons in a small neighborhood cafe, as they experience the highs and lows of the 2001 Mariner baseball season. Meanwhile, The Villians Web is Stan Gill’s musical melodrama at SecondStory Repertory (August 10-September 8), complete with blushing heroines and dastardly villains.

The Syringa Tree, the award-winning solo play about two families in torn apart South Africa, will be performed by Gin Hammond (August 18-20). The Mojo And The Sayso by Aishah Rahman, produced through ACT’s Hansberry Project (August 31-September 30), focuses on an African-American family trying to come to terms with their grief over the shooting of their son by an off-duty policeman. Theater Schmeater presents the West Coast premiere of Crescendo Falls, Episode 6: Four Funerals and a Wedding by Kevin Hammonds.

Also on tap is Dream’N, a new adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in today’s Rainier Valley and featuring music, dance, and spoken word along with Shakespeare’s text (August 2-11), and Creation of the World and Other Business by Arthur Miller, complete with God, Lucifer, Adam, Eve, “and all that rot!” (August 16-26).