"This family has sure got a lot on its plate," remarked our companion at the intermission of the new play Wake, from Onward Ho! Productions. Playwright Sonya Schneider loads the Harlows with about a decade's worth of mishap and miscommunication, and then packs them all into a tiny cabin for a birthday party. There's a point about fifteen minutes in where you feel acute sympathy for Delby, a friend who's blindly wandered into this O'Neill-meets-Stoppard......

DANCE: George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a Francia Russell staging, opens tonight at the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Scenery and costumes are by the irrepressible Martin Pakledinaz, evoking a primeval Pacific Northwest. With Shakespeare's play as the basis, Balanchine turned to Felix Mendelssohn's music to dream on the childhood relationship to nature, and the nature of relationships. Here's the video preview. (Photo: Carrie Imler and Timothy Lynch; © Angela Sterling) 8 p.m. //......