Employees Picks
Earlier than we get caught within the “sunshine guilt” of excessive summer time, which may make lacking even a minute of our metropolis’s restricted stunning climate really feel like a cardinal sin, get caught up in a few of this month’s intriguing theater across the metropolis, from sudden musical hits to philosophical acrobatics.
“Spring Awakening”
This unlikely 2006 hit (actually, who would have thought {that a} pop musical adaptation of a Nineteenth-century German play, with e-book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan “Barely Respiration” Sheik, would win eight Tony Awards?) follows a gaggle of teenagers navigating adolescence in a repressive small-town surroundings. However in my reminiscence, the rating — plaintive strings, distorted guitar chords, driving rhythms, melancholy energy ballads — powerfully and completely echoes the angst, anger and craving of the teenage years. The present additionally grew to become a star-maker that launched the careers of its two younger leads, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, who originated the roles of naive younger lovers Wendla Bergmann and Melchior Gabor. On this fifth Avenue Theatre manufacturing, Caitlin Sarwono and Ricky Spaulding star as Wendla and Melchior; fifth Avenue affiliate creative director Jay Santos directs.
By means of June 30; fifth Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave., Seattle; tickets begin at $39; 206-625-1900, 5thavenue.org
“Clyde’s”
The CliffsNotes for this manufacturing of “Clyde’s” learn thusly: It’s a play by Lynn Nottage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton and starring Tracy Michelle Hughes. For some Seattle theater lovers (me), that’s all that you must know, however in case you need slightly extra info, right here we go. Nottage, a two-time Pulitzer winner for her performs “Ruined” and “Sweat,” set her newest play in a truck cease diner, the titular Clyde’s, the place previously incarcerated of us work to rebuild their lives. “Although it’s nonetheless about darkish issues, together with jail, medication, homelessness and poverty, it someway turns them into vivid comedy,” learn The New York Instances evaluate of the present’s 2021 Broadway premiere. Hughes stars as Clyde; this ArtsWest present is a coproduction with The Hansberry Challenge, the place Curtis-Newton serves as creative director.
By means of June 30; ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., Seattle; $10-$45; 206-938-0339, artswest.org
“53% Of”
Steph Del Rosso’s play, named “for the proportion of white ladies who (in line with preliminary exit polls) voted for Trump in 2016,” zooms in on a number of completely different demographic teams in 2016 and 2017, these politically unstable years all of us thought (ha-ha) can be non permanent. These teams: a cohort of conservative Pennsylvania mothers, their husbands and an enclave of (ostensibly) progressive 20-something New Yorkers. Sound Theatre Firm’s manufacturing options an all-female-presenting forged, and is directed by Sound’s co-artistic administrators Shermona Mitchell and Teresa Thuman.
June 15-30; Middle Theatre on the Seattle Middle Armory, 305 Harrison St., Seattle; $5-$75; 206-880-3947, soundtheatrecompany.org
“Woman From the North Nation”
Right here’s one other unlikely-but-wonderful musical, this one touchdown in Seattle on its nationwide tour: “Woman From the North Nation,” with a e-book by Irish playwright Conor McPherson (“The Seafarer,” “The Weir”), options the songs of Bob Dylan, so whereas it’s technically a jukebox musical, it doesn’t actually really feel like one. McPherson crafted an authentic story set in 1934, in a boardinghouse nearing foreclosures in Duluth, Minn. (Dylan’s hometown), the place all kinds of down-on-their-luck souls cross paths. Slightly than shoehorning Dylan’s songs into narrative service, McPherson employs them as an instance the internal workings of his struggling characters, caught between Melancholy-era despair and All-American optimism.
June 25-30; Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St., Seattle; tickets begin at $40; 206-682-1414, stgpresents.org
“The Circus of Second Probabilities”
My love of alt-circus troupe Acrobatic Conundrum is nicely documented, and the corporate is again with a brief run of performances that includes “three acrobats and a musician in a post-pandemic piece about longing and belonging.” Conundrum’s foolish, considerate works are usually philosophical, humorous and bodily spectacular , and on this present you may anticipate trapezes, ropes, Cyr wheel, hand-balancing and clown work from Emma Curtiss, Melissa Knowles and Terry Crane, with authentic music by Kamila Nasr. Based on the troupe’s web site, “the viewers is invited to take part on this course of” all through the present, and whereas I don’t know precisely what meaning on this context, take into account your self warned.
June 28-30; Broadway Efficiency Corridor, 1625 Broadway, Seattle; $25-$100; acrobaticconundrum.com
