Performing Arts
Seattle’s Dina Martina Is the ‘Jift’ That Keeps on Giving
The annual spectacular from Seattle’s comedy goddess wishes you a very merry Kitschmas
If you fell in love with Dina Martina when she was playing funkier, stripped-down venues like Re-Bar, but wonder if her magic translates to a plusher house like ACT’s Falls Theatre, you needn’t worry. For the entertaineress’s Christmas cavalcade of songs, anecdotes, videos, and audience gifts, ACT has provided a cozy set straight out of a community-theater Nutcracker: Victorian furniture, candy-striped wallpaper,…
Taylor Mac’s Over-the-top Holiday Show Celebrates the Season in Style
Catch 'Holiday Sauce' in Seattle this month
This article appears in print in the December 2019 issue. Click here to subscribe. “Christmas as calamity” is Taylor Mac’s approach to the holidays and their attendant songs in this musical, maniacal show—and some form of audience participation is likely, so brace yourself. A Pulitzer Prize nominee and MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, this NYC-based playwright, actor and cabaret…
‘Shout Sister Shout!’: Come for the Music, Stay for…Also the Music
A star turn by Carrie Compere buoys this overburdened bio-play of music legend Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Carrie Compere’s voice is enough to make you a believer, which would make her character in Shout Sister Shout!, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, very happy. The new Tharpe bio-play by Cheryl L. West, co-created with director Randy Johnson and now running at Seattle Rep, traces the arc of this musical visionary, from her days as a…
With ‘Head Over Heels,’ ArtsWest Go-Goes for Broke
Add New Wave hits to a sexually updated Elizabethan comedy and the result is... a bit of a mess
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…
A ‘Beautiful’ Debut at Seattle’s Can Can Culinary Cabaret
Singer Renee Holiday, née Shaprece, is back in town to share a story of transformation with Seattle audiences
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Renee Holiday. Deep in the plush crimson grotto that is the Can Can Culinary Cabaret in Pike Place Market, one of the most reliably fun venues in town, a new star is preparing to rise. You may know her as Shaprece, with the dreamy vocals and powerful stage presence—a singer who…
‘Dracula’ at ACT: How Does a Play About Blood Turn Out So Bloodless?
Steven Dietz’s new adaptation of the horror classic seems to have unintentionally landed on comedy
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…
The Gregorys: How Seattle’s Theater Awards Work and Why They Matter
This annual party is an important part of an artistic ecosystem, and you’re invited
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
Seattle Rep’s ‘The Great Moment’ Give Us Birth, Death, Aging—You Know, the Boring Stuff
Anna Ziegler’s world premiere play explores the expansive mundanities of life
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…
Paula Vogel’s Energetic, Elegiac Play ‘Indecent’ Now Running at Seattle Rep
The play-within-a-play is complex, exploring ideas of creative determination, censorship, immigrants and more
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…
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