Besides being in the running for Owner of the World's Most Glamorous Name, Katjana Vadeboncoeur plays the maternal hen Aunt Julia in blahblahblahBANG at On the Boards. To make a point of it, she sips then spits up her tea into a cup, complete with birdlike neck spasms, and hands it to her beloved, coddled nephew Yorgen Tesman -- who drinks it, onstage, to an audience of wrinkled noses. If you're an Ibsen fan (blahblahblahBANG is WET's precocious interpretation of Hedda Gabler) this subtextual underlining may just elicit a desire to see the original. The difference here is that it's not a matter of moral fiber or willfulness. WET's cast reacts to their socially caged life with the stereotyped behavior of unhappy parrots, literally climbing the walls. Again and again, WET reminds you that they are real people doing real things, disgusting, sexy, risky things. If it's not "perfect," it's compelling as a high-wire act. more ›

The first thing we noticed about Crumbs Are Also Bread is that its set is yet another magical emanation from the mind of Jennifer Zeyl. WET's stage isn't large, but somehow the frozen Midwestern town of Breadmouth fits on it: the town square, bedrooms, kitchens, backyards, the icy river. Even a full moon appears. Trees with bare branches, disquietingly, grow upside down. more ›

Saturday we went to go see The Museum Play at WET. We've been musing over what to tell you about it since then. It's a world premiere, see, and why give the story away? So few things these days have the opportunity to surprise us. If you don't care about that then by all means, read this Weekly review, or this bizarre, what-was-he-drinking? one in the P-I. [UPDATE: Here's the Stranger's AW! with a response within shouting distance of ours, and the Times' Misha Berson, with whose review we also find ourselves nodding agreeably.] more ›

Romeo and Juliet is one of those tales everybody knows, whether or not they've read it, seen it performed live, or watched one of the many film adaptations. So Seattlest kinda knew what to expect when we descended deep into the bowels of Center House for the play's opening night performance by the Seattle Shakespeare Company. We got the standard star-crossed lovers stuff, but director John Langs included a few modern updates, some of which we liked, and some...not so much. more ›

On Friday night Seattlest caught the Washington Ensemble Theatre's production of Crave. Not to be confused with one of our favorite restaurants in town, this play is the handicraft of Sarah Kane, a brilliant, troubled artist who spat out five intense and violent works before hanging herself at age 28. The marketing we've seen for the play would like you to think that the play is "sexy and brutal." Make no mistake---this play is definitely brutal, but focusing on the topic of sex does not automatically make something sexy. Crave is certainly anything but. more ›

[Ed. note: This post brought to you by our newest Seattlest contributor, Audrey Hendrickson. Welcome to Seattlest, Audrey.] more ›