With a brand-spanking new script by Jon Marans, all new-orchestrations, and a reshuffled song score, 5th Avenue Theatre’s reimagining of Paint Your Wagon seems, with just a little more refinement, ready to roll on to a lengthy Broadway revival.
David-Edward Hughes
David-Edward Hughes has been a fixture in the Seattle theatre community for 25 years as a theatre journalist, actor, director, producer and teacher. He currently contributes reviews and interviews to Talkinbroadway.com and Seattlegayscene.com. He is pleased to work with the Jetspace team and pursue different sorts of writing opportunities.
Critical Condition: Kim Maguire’s A Night in June
Kim Maguire’s A Night in June is well produced, aurally entrancing. This is an album for lovers, and for lovers of great vintage American music.
Critical Condition: Off To See The Wiz
Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s The Wiz is a too seldom produced small gem of its era, and the leads and ensemble members had enough heart and energy to transport us back to Oz.
Critical Condition: Like Yours, Like Mine, Like Home
Home and family are at the heart of the shows I recently attended. Whether the home is Detroit or the shores of Cape Cod, home and family, and all the struggles that are attached to them are universal. Both tales are also largely cast with African-American performers, and there is no dearth of exquisite talent in that community, whether the show is fresh from Broadway or locally produced.
To Oz and Beyond: An Interview with Sam Pettit & Justin Beal
In the great tradition of such inspirational teams as Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe, PNW musical theatre duo Sam Pettit and Justin Beal are carving a name for themselves in the Seattle musical theatre scene.
Critical Condition: All in The Family
A sage, aging woman plans for and faces what she is sure is her imminent death. A callow youth’s growing obsession with ballet risks tearing his close-knit family apart. In this week’s column I consider two shows with two dissimilar protagonists, though both are grappling with fractured family dynamics.
The Fully Realized Laura Kenny
The Realization of Emily Linder, which opened last week at Taproot Theatre in N. Seattle, stars one of the best-loved and most familiar faces in the Seattle acting community, Laura Kenny.
Critical Condition: Working to Death
One is a venerable golden age Broadway drama, the other a musical that was short-lived on the Great White Way yet has thrived in regional revivals ever since. Seeing the two just days apart made me appreciate how timely and timeless the subject of Americans at work really is.
Billy Elliot’s New Grandma: Faye B. Summers
Long time Seattle actress Faye B Summers is a little older, a little wiser, and twice as saucy now as she takes on Village Theatre’s upcoming production of the musical Billy Elliot.
Critical Condition: A Ton of Glitter, A Sprinkle of Mystery
One production sizzles while another sort of fizzles in this review of Kinky Boots at 5th Ave and Sherlock Holmes and The American Problem from the Seattle Rep.
Timothy McCuen Piggee: Working For A Living
Timothy McCuen Piggee, a mainstay of the Seattle theatre community, is in the director’s chair for Showtunes’ 2015-2016 season closer, WORKING.
Critical Condition: Power vs. Passion
Aaron Posner’s stage version of the popular Chaim Potok’s popular novel My Name is Asher Lev, from New Century Theatre Company at 12th Avenue Arts, is a powerful yet distant theatre experience.