The Incredible Undersea Trial of Joseph P. Lawnboy

Tacoma Little Theatre is doing Bryan Willis's amazing ecological musical fantasy (yes, I borrowed that phrase from the press release) "The Incredible Undersea Trial of Joseph P. Lawnboy."

I remember the first time I saw this play. It was a special Olympia Arts Walk presentation in the back room of an art gallery with the audience standing around in a circle and the performance in the middle. As well as I can remember, it was a non-musical production. I was amazed. I'd never seen anything like it. It dealt with critical ecological issues in a fantasy format. It was delightfully entertaining and highly innovative.

Undersea creatures put a young boy, Joseph P. Lawnboy, on trial for “crimes against the sea.” The audience becomes the jury and decides on Joe’s guilt or innocence.

It was written by Olympia’s Bryan Willis, with lyrics by Scott Whitney and music by Bruce Whitney. "Lawnboy" premiered with Olympia’s Harlequin Productions and ran for 99 performances during a two-year tour. It was subsequently staged over 500 times by various theaters including Seattle Public Theater, One World Theater (Seattle), Second Stage (Chicago) and schools in the Northwest.

Willis founded Northwest Playwrights Alliance, which has a long history of nurturing area playwrights. Area readers will recall that they used to present readings of new plays in the back room of Plenty Restaurant (now Cascadia Grill) in Olympia, and later moved to the Broadway Center in Tacoma, and then to Seattle Repertory Theatre.

The TLT production is directed by TLT Managing Artistic Director, Scott Campbell, and features Jerod Nace as Lawnboy, Darrel Shepherd as Fred the deep diving loon, Caresse Robertson as Greta the Fish, Betzy Miller at Darlene the mayfly larvae, and David Robertson as the Narrator.

March 5-14, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 PM
Tickets are $15.00 each or $10.00 each when buying three or more. Call the TLT Box Office at 253-272-2281 to purchase tickets or reserve your seats online at www.tacomalittletheatre.com.

Funny, tragic affair

Tentative love: Acting is impressive but set changes slow down powerful play

The News Tribune/The Olympian, February 26, 2010
Pictured (top) Raychel Wagner and Dennis Rolly
(bottom) Katie Driscoll and Raychel Wagner
Photos by Elizabeth Lord

“Stop Kiss,” written by Diana Son and directed by Elizabeth Lord, is a contemporary drama ending a short run this weekend at The Midnight Sun performance space in Olympia.

As with life, this show is tragic, funny and messy. It examines the emotional lives of Callie (Raychel A. Wagner) and Sara (Katie Driscoll), single women living in New York City’s West Village who gradually discover they are romantically attracted to one another. Watching them circle each other is hilarious and touching, and it becomes downright absurd when Callie’s boyfriend George (Brian Jansen) gets in the act.

But the hilarity comes to a tragic and sudden stop when Callie and Sara finally kiss for the first time. They are viciously attacked by a homophobic bystander. Mercifully, the attack is not acted out on stage.

Although a precipitating event in the play, the crime is not what the story is about. It is about the growing and tentative love between two women. The story is told out of sequence in a series of brief scenes that alternate between moments prior to and after the assault. It is a cinematic method of storytelling viewers will recognize from TV shows such as “The West Wing,” for which the playwright was a staff writer.

“Stop Kiss” is an acting tour de force for Wagner and Driscoll, who bring the main characters to life. Chemistry is an overused term, but it’s there for sure. They are in turn funny, expressive, intense, bumbling, hesitant and sad. Every expression seems heartfelt and genuine.

Brian Jansen is a joy to watch as Callie’s boyfriend, who is OK with her attraction to Sara – stopping just short of a stereotypical prurient male interest in lesbian love. Jansen excels in comedic roles, and he portrays George as a slightly arrogant and sleazy doofus who dominates the stage, but when compassion is called for he plays it convincingly.

Dennis Rolly is cast in the unfortunate role of the tough, no-nonsense detective assigned to investigate the hate crime. Detective Cole’s grilling of Callie is written too much like that of a standard TV cop, and even Rolly’s considerable acting skill doesn’t lift this detective above the mundane. Good supporting roles are also turned in by Bonnie Vandver in the dual role of a witness to the crime and as a nurse, and Jon Tallman as Peter, Sara’s former boyfriend.

The story, which is powerful and realistic in both its tragic and comedic moments, is mostly well written with a great ear for dialogue and sense of character, and the acting is outstanding.

The big drawback is there are far too many distracting scene changes. The audience is asked to play along with the deception that we’re watching events in actual lives in New York City, but it’s hard to play along when stage hands are moving furniture during 20 scene changes. Some of the scenes are actually shorter than the time between scenes. In a larger theater, such distractions could have been avoided; here the audience is asked to overlook these necessary mechanics.

When: 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday
Where: The Midnight Sun, 113 Columbia St. N.W., Olympia
Tickets: $12 available at www.buyolympia.com and at the door. Seating is limited. Buy online to assure a seat.

New at Matter

New artists at Olympia's newest gallery

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Feb. 25, 2010
Pictured: Bret Lyon's untitled sculpture at Matter


Sculpture by Bret Lyon along with functional furniture and other works by Sam Winters are among the latest additions to Matter in downtown Olympia.

Marcel Duchamp and Allan Kaprow erased the boundaries between art and life. Andy Warhol destroyed the boundaries between fine and commercial art. Matter in Olympia has wiped out the distinctions between art and crafts, functional and non-functional art, galleries and boutiques. Matter features works by some 85 artists - 22 from Olympia - who make objects both aesthetic and functional out of materials that have previously been used for other purposes. In other words, recycled materials.

Art from recycled materials is all the rage now, and that's a good thing for the environment, but it's not a new thing. It started with Picasso and Braque before anyone ever heard of recycling. Matter owner Jo Gallaugher understands that it takes more than choice of materials to make good art, and she chooses artists with an eye toward quality, whether the work be jewelry, furniture, sculpture or some other art form.

Lyon is an abstract sculptor from Tacoma who works with found and scavenged materials. For his latest work he has taken apart the inner workings of an turn-of-the-century piano. The showpiece in Matter is his untitled work created with cables and felt damper blocks from the piano and bent wood taken from, I was told, discarded pieces from another artist's work. The parts are connected in a circular configuration that can be interpreted as an octopus or a sea anemone or the open petals of a flower. It is quite beautiful and also intriguing in concept as it depicts delicate organic forms in hard materials.

Also by Lyon is a wall-hanging sculpture made from the felt blocks and more pieces from the piano. It is called Exercise No. 2, and it reminds me a lot of a totem pole or some kind of ceremonial staff. While not as striking as the untitled work, it is quite attractive. A similar fetishistic work is Surrounds, bronze, steel, and plaster, which has mask-like faces embedded in a solid oblong form surrounded by a coil spring.

Lyon's The Space Between is a circular form made of many small scraps of wood to form what looks something like a two-person swing sitting on the floor or an off-kilter yin-yang sign. The contrast of the smooth shape and the rough texture of the wood pieces is very nice.

Winter's chair and bench made from welded scrap metal pieces that he calls tubes (they look more like gold bars to me) are very attractive minimalist sculptures. I didn't have the nerve to sit on one of them, if that is even allowed, so I can't attest to how comfortable they are as functional furniture, but they're great to look at.

Another piece of minimalist sculpture is a small piece by Jude Manley called Substitute for a Missing Ingredient. This is a piece of bow-shaped found wood with two long black splits into which are laid small stalks of some kind of plant. It looks like turned wood but may very well be found art. I didn't ask for details.

Another piece I like is Tim Mulligan's Flag IV. Strictly speaking it is an assemblage of painted wood scraps - differently colored planks laid out in a vertical stripe pattern. Conceptually it is an abstract painting.

These are but a few of many new pieces in this constantly changing and expanding gallery.

[Matter, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon to 5 p.m., Sunday, Monday by appointment, 113 Fifth Ave. SW, Olympia, 360.628.0466]

Last of the Boys

Staged reading of play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author at University of Puget Sound

Readers of my column will recognize the name Scott C. Brown. He's owned the Best Actor category in my annual Critic's Choice awards -- sharing it with other outstanding actors the past two years. Last year I gave the award to Brown and his co-actor Brian Claudio Smith for their work in "Sins of the Mother" at Harlequin Productions, and the year before I picked him for his Randel McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at Lakewood Playhouse. Sharing the award that year was Anders Bolang as John in “Shining City” at Harlequin. And the year before he was my best dramatic actor pick for Salieri in "Amadeus" at Lakewood Playhouse.

Brown has recently sent me information on a reading of "Last of the Boys" by Steven Dietz, which he will be in along with Bryan K. Bender from Seattle; Meleesa Wyatt, Seattle actor and theatre faculty at University Prep; and three very strong UPS theatre students, Jen Davis, Mitch Knottingham, and Bryan Sullivan. According to the notice Brown sent me, the play is "moving, darkly funny and pitch perfect in its treatment of two colorful Vietnam vets coming to terms with opposing perspectives on the war and their part in it. All five roles are deeply drawn and richly interwoven.

The staged reading at UPS is a collaboration between Northwest Playwrights Alliance and University of Puget Sound Theatre Arts, to benefit the Dragoon Raiders Soldier and Family Fund. 7:30pm March 3, Stonegate Club, 5421 S. Tacoma Way; 7:30pm March 4, Wheelock Student Center, (Rendezvous) UPS, 1500 N. Warner; 9:30pm March 5, Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 North I Street. Information: UPS Theatre Arts (253)879-3330.

Understated insanity swirls in Lakewood Playhouse comedy

More believable characters: Even after 74 years, comedy remains relevant and hilarious

Published in The News Tribune, Feb. 19, 2010

The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy “You Can’t Take it With You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart has been sending audiences into paroxysms of laughter since it opened on Broadway in 1936.

It remains as relevant and as funny today as it was 74 years ago – its continued success a tribute to the writing talent of Kaufman and Hart.

The carefully constructed story line, which has served as a model for many of today’s situation comedies, has a wild assortment of kooks and eccentrics, denizens of the Venderhof/Sycamore household, living the kind of lives most of us wish we could live. Their message to us through the years has been a simple and universal one: Live life to the fullest without regard for riches because you can’t take it with you when you die.

This is the third time in three years I’ve reviewed this play. In the first two productions, the outsized characters were played almost as parodies of themselves with overly broad gestures and exaggerated quirks.

At Lakewood Playhouse, under the direction of James Venturini, their eccentricities are slightly underplayed. Rather than presenting the audience with crazy people doing crazy things, Venturini and cast let us see people we can relate to doing crazy things, which I suspect is what Kaufman and Hart had in mind.

Jane McKittrick plays Penny Sycamore as a very normal mother and wife who just happens to have been writing unfinished plays for eight years – because a typewriter was accidentally delivered to their house. Michael Griswold plays Grandpa with the shuffling walk and slight tremor of an old man, but does not exaggerate his twitches and quirks. His eccentricities lie in what he does (collecting snakes, going to commencement exercises, and foiling the IRS), not in the way he acts. And he is absolutely believable.

The only actors who play their roles in a more comedic/slapstick fashion are Michael Dresdner as the Russian ballet teacher Boris Kolenkhov and Nicole Lockett, who is masterful in the duel roles of Gay Wellington, a sexy but over-the-hill alcoholic actress, and Olga Katrina, a grand duchess before the Russian Revolution now working as a waitress. Seldom have I seen anyone play drunk so well or combine haughtiness and modesty so convincingly. As for Dresdner, as the imperious dance instructor, he always is himself – charming and blustery and lovable – no matter what character he is playing.

As the loving and relatively normal couple around whom all of the insanity swirls, Joe Kelly and Kat Christensen play the young lovers Tony and Alice as down-to-earth and self-controlled but real and fallible people. Christensen, a 17-year-old student at Tacoma School of the Arts, has been outstanding in a number of performances at Lakewood Playhouse, most recently as Becky Thatcher in “Tom Sawyer.” She makes the audience fall in love with Alice Sycamore. It’s hard to believe she’s only 17. Kelly plays Tony as a young man with intense passion and determination.

One other actor deserving of special attention is Jack House as Donald. His is a small throwaway role, but House makes Donald sparkle.

The one regrettable bit of casting is Katy Shockman as Essie Carmichael. She’s a talented actor. I loved her as a witch in “Macbeth” and as Shelby in “Steel Magnolias.” But she’s not right for Essie. Essie is an incompetent dancer. To dance badly and make it hilarious, as it should be, requires an excellent and athletic dancer. Shockman approaches her dance moves with the tentative stances of someone who has never taken a lesson, and it just doesn’t work.

Another thing that doesn’t work is the end of act two, which literally goes out with an explosion of fireworks but metaphorically fizzles while actors freeze in place and special effects fireworks go off for way too long.

Finally, accolades must go to the director and set designer Venturini for doing an excellent job at both. His set is warm and welcoming. The collection of artifacts, photos, musical instruments and other assorted objects that hang on the wall of the Sycamore house, including a boxing glove and a scythe, is as odd as the people who live there. And his ability to keep so many people on stage without falling into sheer chaos is laudable.

“You Can’t Take it With You” is a three-act play with one 15-minute intermission and one 10-minute “stretch break.” It runs about two hours and 20 minutes.

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 28
Where: Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd., Lakewood
Tickets: $13.50-$21.50
Information: 253-588-0042, www.lakewoodplayhouse.org

10 to watch

Up and coming South Sound artists

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Feb. 18, 2010
Pictured: "Tracks" 40" h x 47.5" w x 2.5" w latex paint on salvaged wood by Julie Haack

Here’s a list of South Sound visual artists to watch for in the coming months and years. Some have already made quite a splash on the scene, others are just beginning to emerge, and I can almost guarantee their success will grow. So file these names in memory, and when you hear that one of them is showing in an area gallery, check them out.

1. Jeremy Mangan - winner of the 2009 Foundation of Art Award Winner. What more need be said? He was also my pick as best artist in the Weekly Volcano’s “Best of Tacoma 2009.” At that time I described his paintings as surrealistic with a “brittle quality.” He even does ice sculpture. Can you beat that? See Mangan’s art at www.jeremymangan.com.

2. Holly Senn - installation artist and used book sculpture. I’ve watched Senn’s art expand and mature in bursts of creative energy over the past few years. Working mostly with old books scavenged from libraries, Senn creates sculptures that comment on history and the environment and which often reflect back on themselves. Her work is intelligent, environmentally conscious and well crafted. Learn more at www.ryksenn.com.

3. Sean Alexander - graphic artist. Tacomans know Alexander as the co-founder of the Helm, which for a short time was a showcase for emerging young artists and the happening place in downtown Tacoma. His drawings are edgy, biting and sensitive with a great touch for balancing objects spatially. Lately he’s had shows at Victrola Coffee in Seattle and the Fontanelle Gallery in Portland. I can’t find a Web site or any listing for current shows, but I’m sure he’ll show up around here again.

4. Tim Kapler - drawings/doodles. It’s been a mere two months since I discovered Tim Kapler. I reviewed his show of drawings at the Swiss. Kapler is young and self-taught. His inventiveness and skill belie his lack of formal training. I think Kapler has a good chance of making a name for himself.

5. Randy Hayes - Southern expatriate. Not once, not twice, but three times in the past few years a painting by Seattle artist Randy Hayes has been the one of many in a group show at Tacoma Art Museum to make a lasting impression. Combining painting and photo-montage, Hayes makes pictures that tend toward but transcend illustration. It doesn’t hurt that Hayes is an expatriate Southerner like me and that a lot of his paintings reflect that heritage. Call them Faulknarian. But it’s much more than that. Check out his painting Dying Light in Venice #1 in the show A Concise History of Northwest Art now showing at TAM, and see more on Hayes’ Web site at www.randyhayes.net.

6. Kathy Gore Fuss - reemergent artist. Kathy Gore Fuss was the second artist I met in Olympia when I moved here in 1988. She was good then. She recently went back to college to get her BFA in drawing and painting from the University of Washington, and now she’s even better.

7. Chauney Peck - I first reviewed Chauney Peck in a 2003 article called “Sexy Fish.” Since then her career has skyrocketed, and her work keeps getting better. Her more recent works are oddly shaped and relatively flat paintings on vinyl. See for yourself at www.chauneypeck.com.

8. Julia Haack - sculpture. Julia Haack’s wood sculptures have a similar look to Chauney Peck’s paintings on vinyl and cut-out plywood forms. Like Peck (I’d love to see the two of them in a combined show), her sculptures are mostly flat and work more like paintings with interlocking patterns within self-contained forms. They’re really beautiful. See examples at juliahaack.blogspot.com and at the Helen S Smith Gallery at Green River College in Auburn.

9-10. Shannon Eakins and Marc Dombrosky - The last two artists to watch are well known in Tacoma and almost impossible to categorize. Conceptual-performance-identity artists Eakins and Dombrosky, who often show together, do a little bit of everything. Their most recent show together in T-town, Phantasm Chasm at Fulcrum Gallery, featured a bullet-shot portrait of John Allen Muhammed. What more can you say? See http://marcdombrosky.blogspot.com and http://shannoneakins.com.

End Days added matinee

Harlequin Productions has added a matinee performance of "End Days" Sunday, Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. This show has been selling out so call first or buy tickets online while they last at http://www.harlequinproductions.org/tickets/tixdates/end/feb21.html.

Scroll down to see my review.