The most winning thing about Head Over Heels, the 2015 musical now running at ArtsWest, is the matter-of-factness with which book writer Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) foregrounded the same-sex pairings and gender fluidity only hinted at in the show’s 16th-century source. Streamlining Sir Philip Sidney’s preposterously complex romance Arcadia, Whitty kept the setting and premise (a happy…

Emily Bautista and Anthony Festa as lead characters Kim and Chris in ‘Miss Saigon’

Watching Dracula, with a neckline cut to his navel, suck dry the tube of an old-timey transfusion machine is undeniably funny. That tasty tableau was one of many moments in Steven Dietz’s adaptation of the gothic novel that had an ACT Theater audience laughing out loud on opening night. But, strangely, it was one of…

Theatre Puget Sound staff from the 2018 Gregory Awards. From left to right: Libby Barnard, Shane Regan, Ariel Bradler, Keiko Green, Eron Huenefeld and Heather Refvem

Delphi Borich (center) as Lydia

How old were you when you realized that, in life, the center cannot hold? When The Great Moment begins, our narrator Sarah is 37, “the age my mother was when I first realized that my mother had an age.” Her grandfather Max is 98, son Evan is three, and time is the elephant in every…

Dim light leaks through a gauzy scrim, illuminating bodies crumpled on a dusty stage, everything gray, everything still. Three musicians play silent music, their instruments making no sound, as those bodies slowly rise, the ashes filling their sleeves and hands draining to the floor. Suddenly, the whole eerie scene bursts open, klezmer music blares, gray…

Lamar Legend as Frederick Douglass

Suzanne Bouchard as Joan Didion

From left to right: Corinne Magin as Min, Anasofia Gallegos as Lee and Sarah Nicole Russell as Ada

From left to right: Rachel Guyer-Mafune as Lee, Tyler Rogers as David, Christian Quinto as Lee’s brother Todd, Porscha Shaw as Nia, and Corinna Lapid Munter as Grace, Lee’s mom in ‘The Last Octopus Wrestling Champion’