Results tagged “seattlerepertorytheatre”

When we walked into the Bagley Wright Theatre last night, we had absolutely no expectations from Aurelia's Oratorio. We'd seen the publicity photos and figured it had something to do with playful illusion, but that was the extent of it.

The Seattle Repertory Theatre has just announced its artistic director, David Esb...Esbjornson has decided not to renew his contract. When it expires on June 30, 2009, so will he. Esbjornson joined Seattle Rep in 2005, and we still have trouble with his name.

"Though we are genuinely disappointed with David's decision, we understand that a complex series of factors informed his thinking." said Marty Taucher, President of the Board of Trustees. "David is well into developing the 2008-2009 season and will continue working through to its successful completion.

    

There's a rotting foot at the heart of The Cure at Troy (through May 3 at the Rep, tickets: $10-$59); you can almost hear Philoctetes's leg oozing as he walks. The stench is described well enough to draw flies to the theatre. And when he loses his mind with pain, screaming about his wound cracking open, blood everywhere, you'd really like to be elsewhere, and maybe less nauseous.

If you go, go for Suzanne Bouchard's outstanding performance as a feral alcoholic widow. You won't see better acting in Seattle. (Also, thanks to design team Michael Ganio, Frances Kenny, York Kennedy, and Christopher Walker, the sights and sounds of a Texas summer day have never seemed so real to us.)

Inspired by a random iPod event at Seattlest's Thanksgiving, a friend lamented the early death of John Denver and then launched into a diatribe about how he didn't pull a Kennedy; that is, Denver wasn't a dilettante pilot. He went on to explain that Denver was an experienced pilot who owned many planes and flew often. He died, our friend claimed, when one of the fuel tanks in the experimental plane he was flying...

The script to Birdie Blue is the sort that, if there was any justice in this world, would have been unceremoniously trashed by every producer whose desk it crossed. Unfortunately, this being the real world and all, this awful script has been produced off-Broadway and in regional theatres all across the country, despite the fact it's guilty of every terrible conceit and device you could associate with the modern theatre. Nothing would have made us...

Through May 6, tickets $10-$48

Writing on The New Republic Online in November, 2006, James Kirchick snarkily commented, "Of all the subjects for a 90-minute, one-woman show, Rachel Corrie ought to have been at the bottom of the list." Rachel Corrie was an Olympia native and Evergreen State College student who, in March 2003, while working with the International Solidarity Movement, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer destroying Palestinian homes. And frankly, before seeing Seattle Rep's production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, we tended to agree with Kirchick, albeit for completely different reasons.

Seattle Rep’s 2007-2008 season in the Bagley Wright Theatre begins with Shakespeare’s beloved comedy, Twelfth Night, followed by a powerful play about the Cuban revolution, The Cook by Eduardo Machado. A new play, The Breach about Hurricane Katrina comes next, then the classic Molière comedy, The Imaginary Invalid, and finally Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney brings his skills to a classic Greek adventure in The Cure at Troy.

Continue reading "The Rep Plans To Be Around Next Season"

Blue Door is part confessional crisis, part historical saga -- or part Philip Roth's The Human Stain and part Alex Haley's Roots. It's showing in the smaller Leo K Theatre at the Rep, which features continental seating (no center aisle) and jumpy Rep subscribers. We sat down 10 minutes early and stood up 8 times to let people in and out. Holy crap. Don't let anyone tell you older people are all ruled by the pull of gravity.

It's a sad thing, but even narcissists die. They don't like to admit it, but they do. When other people die on them, it's almost worse, losing their attention.

Yes, a real pie is baked onstage during the performance. We'd call it a gimmick, but the theatre was crammed with moms and daughters for whom pie-making, apparently, inspired the same kind of emotion as going for it on 4th and 2 with 1:12 left to play. The flour-sifting, butter-chopping, dough-rolling, and pan-trimming met with hoots, gasps, sighs, and chuckles.

If it's not a great Gatsby, we can blame F. Scott Fitzgerald's preference for establishing mood at the expense of story arc. The good news is that this production revels in atmosphere: Tom Lynch's pitch-perfect set design and Jane Greenwood's gorgeous '20s costumes -- combined with Scott Zielinski's dreamily radiant lighting -- conjure up exactly the right nostalgia for a time that never was. We could have done without the itinerant saxophonist, whose bluesy wails belong in the adaptation of a novel by Saul Bellow, not Fitzgerald.