At first glance, Singin’ in the Rain at Village Theatre and King Charles III at Seattle Rep might seem to have next to nothing in common. One is a screen to stage transfer of a most beloved 1952 MGM musical satire of Hollywood ushering in talking pictures, while the other is an audacious, Masterpiece Theatre sort of drama, imagining the turnover at the top when Queen Elizabeth finally breathes her last.
With the abundance of theatre in Seattle this season, I was late catching two really special shows that both close this weekend. Smaller companies tend to have a harder time building audiences, even in spaces with smaller seating capacity. But if you like intimate musicals, the Reboot Theatre and Second Story Rep have some dandy fare on stage right now!
Teatro ZinZanni’s Welcome to Wonderland is as wacky, winsome, and yes, wonderful as can be. With a zesty and quick-footed cast led by sultry chanteuse Lady Rizo and Kevin Kent, it would take being clinically depressed to have less than a grand time in ZinZanni’s always enticing Spiegeltent.
Beautiful–The Carole King Musical may have won only 2 of the 7 Tony award nominations it garnered in 2014 but it provides everyone from confirmed theatre subscribers to sometimes jaded critics with a show to root for and embrace, because, well, it is beautiful.
Oh what a few years on Broadway in the smash hit Disney musical can do. Don Darryl Rivera is an impish, butterball of a comic actor/singer, popular in the Puget Sound for much of the last decade returns to Seattle after 2.5 years (with no end in sight) of playing Iago in the smash Aladdin, to steal every minute he is onstage in the 5th Avenue’s impressive Man of La Mancha.
A venerable and important play, an acclaimed playwright, a proven director, a capable cast, and more leads one to expect Seattle Repertory Theatre’s production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun to be a must-see of the current season.
The Second Story Rep production of Songs For a New World really bit into each of their songs with strong vocals and assured acting.
When does something familiar, peculiar, gaudy, and bawdy not come from the score of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum? When it’s One Man, Two Guvnors, British playwright Richard Bean’s delicious riff on Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte classic The Servant of Two Masters.
That Bonnie and Clyde, the debut production of Studio 18 at 12th Avenue Arts, works at all well has less to do with the show itself than the very respectable production this new company has given it. The big question at hand is why they chose to do this flawed, short running Broadway musical at all?
The sum of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder’s parts is a pirate’s treasure indeed. If you are dying to laugh your head off, don’t miss this one!
Richard Nelson’s Sorry has heartbreak, humor, and politics on its mind in the tradition of the finest Hallmark Hall of Fame Specials.
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.