Late Picasso

A friend gave me the book Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 1953-1972, and I’ve been pouring over it for a couple of weeks, going back to look again and again at the drawings and paintings.

The book was a catalog for a show at the Tate Museum in London covering his work during the last two decades of his life. Unfortunately, amazon.com lists it as out of print and unavailable.  They do, however, list Picasso: The Late Drawings
  -- used, two copies available, and  Picasso at Ninety – one new at $178.80 and 11 used from $17.99 and up, and two other books on his late work.

Critics universally damned Picasso’s late works. The conventional wisdom was that he just repeated himself, that he lost his touch – literally, meaning that he could no longer make those sure and delicate strokes for which he was famous – and that he had degenerated into a dirty old man obsessed with sex whose so-called erotic drawings and paintings were more like bad pornography.

The contributors to this book dispute those claims, and their arguments make a lot of sense.

Picasso certainly did repeat himself. The theme of the artist in his studio or the artist and his model was virtually the only thing he painted for the last 20 years of his life, albeit in thousands of variations. But painting variations on a theme is a far different thing than repeating oneself. In his countless variations he investigated and experimented with forms, shapes and meanings. He didn’t just paint the artist and his model, but he made visual commentary on the complex relationship between the two, and he investigated in its myriad forms the nature of art and reality. What is real and what is illusion? Does the artist make the art or does the art make the artist? And in the process he paid homage to, criticized and competed with the artists he most admired: Velasquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Matisse. The man had a giant ego. He was convinced he was the greatest artist in the world and he set out to methodically outdo all of the other greats by one-upping their own greatest works.

And did he lose his touch? The contributors to this book say he purposely tried to hide his facile touch. He drew badly in order to force the viewer to look deeper. Many other artists had done the same thing to various degrees, most notably, perhaps, Matisse. Even Picasso in his earlier works had striven for a cruder and more childlike look, but the smoothness, delicacy and sureness of his stroke showed through.  In these later works he succeeded in obliterating facile beauty. But to what effect? I guess that’s up to the viewer to decide.  Personally, I do not love every picture in this book, but I like a hell of a lot more than I dislike.

The cover illustration is a very crude looking painting of a woman’s face. She has a gargantuan nose that cannot in any way be considered attractive, and the odd black shape under her nose looks slap-dash at best, as if Picasso didn’t care what it looked like. But the whole thing is very compelling, and I don’t think it would have been if the drawing had been “prettier.”  And by the way, the cover illustration is not a complete painting; it is the face cropped from a full-figure painting called “Woman Pissing,” which is a variation on Rembrandt’s “Woman Bathing." The crude drawing matches the crudity of the subject and title. Love it or hate it, there is harsh realism here that reflects well on Rembrandt , whose own brand of realism was, for his day, as dark and unflattering as Picasso’s.

Picasso depicted graphic and uncompromising sexuality in many of his late drawings and paintings. And they were not pretty. They were humorous in a biting way, often making fun of men and their sometimes inadequate and clumsy attempts at love. The man in these drawings and paintings is typically Picasso himself, and the humor is at his own expense. They’re like drawings made on bathroom walls by naughty boys, graphic but never really sexy, with sophisticated humor and often with multiple meanings. Some critics said he had denigrated into a dirty old man drawing dirty pictures because he had become impotent. In fact, he was in his art courageously telling the world that yes, he was a dirty old man who could no longer perform. And in these drawings sex was a metaphor for art. The two were synonymous for Picasso.

Overall these late works may not be as good as some of his earlier works. There was certainly no “Guernica” among these works nothing so revolutionary as “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.”  But what do you expect of an artist in his 70s and 80s who had already accomplished more than any other artist in history?  He worked right up to his death at 91 and never ceased to be creative and provocative.

Imagine I’m a writer

Part 2 - Imprudent Zeal

For almost five years Gabi and I lived in and worked for an organization in New York called Everything for Everybody. We met there, and we got married there. I was 31 and she was 21. EFE was in an industrial building in the heart of the meat market district in Manhattan. If we went outside early in the morning we had to duck swinging carcasses going in and out our door.

We fed street people, housed the homeless, accepted and gave away donated clothing, toys and household items. We helped people find jobs and apartments and friends. We published a newspaper and threw parties, and Gabi and I slept on a loft bed in the back of the “store.” EFE was open 24/7 and worked in shifts with a staff that varied from half a dozen to a dozen people at any given time.

The guy who ran the place was a recovered alcoholic and a former seminarian who had been kicked out of the seminary for what the fathers called Imprudent Zeal – the final straw being when he pamphleteered against Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt.

For years after we left I wanted to write the story of Everything for Everybody, but when I attempted to write about it, it didn’t ring true.

When Gabi studied film and video in college she had to write a pilot for a TV series, and the idea she came up with was based on Jack Scully, the founder of EFE. Her twist on the real story was the main character was Jack’s daughter. He never actually had a daughter. She suggested I take that idea and use it for a novel.

I created a character named Scully McDonald based on Jack. I made up an imaginary childhood for him growing up in Albany, where he was a Golden Gloves boxer (Jack had never boxed, but I had, and I patterned the one boxing scene in the book on a match that I lost embarrassingly.) I made up stories about him joining the army and fighting in the Korean War and coming back home emotionally shattered after seeing his best buddy get blown to bits by a land mine. He became an alcoholic and fathered a child with a prostitute named Becca, but he never knew Becca was pregnant. She left New York and hitch-hiked cross country, eventually settling in Seattle, where her daughter grew up to be an art dealer.

In a parallel story, a young man named Lane grows up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where I lived from the age of 12 until after graduating college. Lane moves to New York where he stumbles upon Everything for Everybody and goes to work there, and there he meets Scully’s daughter, McKenzie, who has found her father after many years and is visiting him from Seattle, where she runs an art gallery.

This book has some complicated plotting with people from all over the country being brought together by coincident – something that is questionable in a novel but which happens all the time in real life. It’s also the closest I’ve come to writing an autobiographical novel. Way too much of Lane’s life is based on my life, and the chapters dealing with EFE are absolutely true. Only the names have been changed. On the other hand, Becca and McKenzie are completely made-up characters, and Scully’s life up until the founding of EFE is completely imaginary.

I have to thank my old friend Margaret Ward for her help on this book. I sent her the manuscript chapter by chapter and she went through it line-by-line correcting my grammar and suggesting changes here and there.

Here’s a quote from Lew Hamburg’s review in The Olympian: “This book is the great circus train wreck that was America from the 1950s to the 1990s. It moves not only in time, but also in space, from the Deep South to New York City and Seattle. This landscape is populated by artists, art gallery owners, possible saints and a prostitute redeemed by the love of a good man… More coincidences than a Dickens novel, but smoother and more believable.”

For more reviews and an excerpt go tohttp://www.claytonworkspublishing.com/imprudentzeal.html.

Watch what you ask for

 

Top: Ryan Holmberg and Gerald B. Browning; 

bottom: Alison Monda and Gerald B. Browning. 

Photos courtesy Harlequin Productions

Review "The Love List"

Harlequin Productions’ “The Love List." is one of the most insanely funny plays I’ve seen in a long time, Jill Carter’s set is outstanding as usual, the script by Norman Foster was witty and inventive, and each member of the three-person cast was phenomenal.

I don’t want to spoil any of the surprises in the story by outlining the plot – and there are plenty of surprises, although once you figure out the basic (crazy) premise, it’s easy to predict things before they happen which is great fun, because it’s so rewarding to be proven right and everything you suspect after the first act does happen, but always with a surprising little twist you didn’t expect. One little twist after another.

"The Love List" offers comedic proof of the truism: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Bill (Gerald B. Browning) is a statistical analyst, a profession he admits is about as exciting as “an Amish keg party.” He’s just turned 50 and he’s divorced and lonely. His best buddy, Leon (Ryan Holmberg) is a cad and a womanizer who hates to admit he’s over the hill and no longer attractive to women. For his birthday, Leon signs Bill up for a dating service run by an old gypsy woman, the first step in which is to fill out a “love list” enumerating, in order of importance, the 10 most desirable qualities in a mate. As expected, they have entirely different ideas about what should be on the list, but they at least agree on number four. They keep changing some of the other items, but number four is sacrosanct. Hint: it has something to do with sex.

After Bill finishes filling out the list, Justine (Alison Monda) appears. She’s his dream woman, the woman who loves him unconditionally and has all 10 of the qualities he most desires – and she is the woman who soon turns both Bill and Leon’s lives upside-down.

This show is Browning’s Harlequin debut, and it is the first time I’ve seen him perform, even though he’s done work on area stages ranging from Centerstage in Federal Way to Burien Little Theatre and Seattle’s Second Story Rep and Public Theatre and has appeared in numerous film and television projects. He seems born for this role. He fits the character so well that I’m tempted to say he’s typecast even though I have no idea what he is like outside this role. He plays Bill as a man who is nervous, highly excitable and unsure of himself.

Holmberg is a young actor on a fast track to the top of the heap among area actors. I first saw him in a student production of “Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” at South Puget Sound Community College and was impressed with how easily he played nine different characters, and then I saw him as Bogle in “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” at Olympia Little Theatre, and I was sufficiently impressed to name him “Best Supporting Actor” in my annual Critic’s Choice column. At first – early on in the first act – I was uneasy watching him in this show. His posture, the way he held his arms and hands, and some of his facial expressions looked like a parody of a street gang member, which doesn’t fit with his character. But I soon got used to that and began to buy into him as a man who is arrogant and shallow on the surface but actually quite real and sincere.

The third actor and the only woman in the show – the character who truly makes this show sparkle and zing – is Monda, one of the most talented, versatile, and hardworking actors in the South Sound region. Monda is equally at ease in comedy, drama and musical productions. I’ve seen her as a zombie and a witch, and I’ve seen her rock the house in musical reviews – the recent “I’m Into Something Good” at Centerstage and “Summer in the Sixties” at Harlequin, for which she was another of my Critic’s Choice picks (Most outstanding singer (female) in a musical or music review). In this show she gets to demonstrate the range of her talent as she transposes herself into a variety of radically different personalities. She is sexy, she is demure, she is a weeping mass of insecurity, an almost Stepford-like housewife, and an ambitious career woman. At one point she burst into song in what people who saw her in “Summer in the Sixties” will recognize as self-parody, and she climbs on furniture and dances acrobatically. Watching her is exhausting but fun.

Set changes and transitions are often killers of otherwise good shows, but never at Harlequin – or, for that matter, never at Capital Playhouse. In this respect Olympians are fortunate to have two of the theaters that handle changes beautifully. Credit Jill Carter for both lighting and set design. Making it easy this time, the physical properties never change except for during intermission, and transitions between scenes are taken care of with some subtle but beautiful light changes and recorded music, mostly British rock. What’s not to like about interludes listening to the Beatles and Queen?

If TV sitcoms were half as good as "The Love List" I would never leave the house.

WHEN: Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through Oct. 22

WHERE: State Theater, 202 E. 4^th Ave., Olympia

TICKETS: prices vary, call for details

INFORMATION: 360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/

Note: Harlequin’s production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” previously scheduled for this time, has been postponed until a later date due to a serious actor injury shortly before rehearsals were to begin. Tickets for Cyrano will be honored for the “The Love List” without making any exchanges. Same seats, same performance.

Parkland is Burning

Art Chantry’s posters at Fulcrum

The Weekly Volcano, September 28, 2011

Fulcrum Gallery is packed with Art Chantry posters. Courtesy Fulcrum Gallery

  

  
"Art Chantry is a freaking legend."

That's the opening line from an article in the Portland Mercury.

Chantry practically invented the poster art and album cover art associated with grunge. He's done album covers for Nirvana and Hole, and posters for Hempfest. His art has been shown in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian and the Louvre - or so says Wikipedia, and who am I to question such an authority? Right now, under the title Parkland is Burning, you can see a large selection of Chantry's work at Fulcrum Gallery.

Don't let this opportunity pass you by.

Inside Fulcrum there are three rooms loaded with Chantry's posters, representing 40 years of his art. You've probably seen many of these posters before, but probably not all at the same time, and never grouped together like this. Unless you are a fanatical collector I can almost guarantee you'll see many of Chantry's posters in this show that you've never seen before.

The best of this show is the back room, which is usually set aside for performance events at Fulcrum and seldom for displaying art. In this room we see not only some great posters, but the mechanicals the artist used to create them. Here you will see a poster for Chantry's show at the Seattle Art Museum in eight stages, as each color was printed separately. And you'll see four versions of the same poster in black and white with images from various sources - trashy magazines, ads and so forth - collaged onto clear plastic sheets.

Chantry's art is all about finding trashy images that border on offensive, often with implied - but seldom explicit - sexual connotations, and combining them with words in startling and effective ways. But let's face it: when you're advertising rock bands with names like Nashville Pussy you don't have to stretch much to border on offensive.

Yes, many of Chantry's posters are offensive as hell. He's the John Waters of poster art. Yet I can't recall seeing a single image in this show that includes total nudity or explicit sex or violence.

Chantry's posters are rough and gritty. They're designed to shock and titillate. Like, for example, the poster for a rock show featuring The Gits. It's a grainy black and white picture of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, shirtless and arm-in-arm with black bands over their eyes, looking like a gay couple on a muscle beach. Or like what may be the most famous of all Chantry's works, the safe sex poster with a photo of a cop holding a condom and the legend, "I take one everywhere I take my penis!" Both are part of Fulcrum's current Chantry exhibit.

Blank staring eyes are a common theme in Chantry's posters, eyes that are sometimes reduced to a round gleaming light. Very strange and hypnotic, like in the Breeders posters on display that features not only the staring eye but a face with a wonderfully bizarre haircut.

Chantry's colors are lurid; the images and the lettering are crude looking. There is nothing in an Art Chantry poster than can be considered pretty or elegant in any classic sense of those words. But they are art, and provocative, entertaining art at that. Not to mention that seen in a show like this they offer a look at the history of the past half-century, with an emphasis on Northwest culture.
Parkland is Burning

Through Nov. 17, noon to 6 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and by appointment, artist talk Thursday, Oct. 20, 6 p.m., Fulcrum Gallery, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, 253.250.0520

Blancmange a la mode

 

Photo by Kat Dollarhide

“Little Women” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse
Reviewed by Michael Dresdner


With “Little Women, the Broadway Musical,” Tacoma Musical Playhouse has managed to dress up a weak property with some outstanding singing, sporadic doses of good acting, and very respectable production values. Costumes are attractive and convincing, the set is both clever and effective, lighting is unobtrusive, and the music is solid and substantial, though it does wander into the realms of “too loud” and “out of tune” more often than is ideal. 

The musical itself is a meringue; a sweet, light dessert with no real substance. You get two and a half hours of wallowing in very pleasant and unchallenging songs with little in the way of plot, set-up, resolution or much of anything that evokes emotional commitment. It is light fare in its truest sense.

The music consists of songs that sound more alike than different. In fact, they mostly reminded me of the song Belle sings as she breezes through town in the opening of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” This is not great or enduring composing, nor songs that wrench the emotions. On the other hand, it is certainly pleasant enough to listen to. Think of it as an “easy listening” musical. 

I trust you know the basic story; it’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Set both in Massachusetts and NYC during the latter half of the Civil War, it is less a progression of events than a window into the lives of women of that period. Told by the eldest, it is the story of the four March sisters coming of age and seeking mates, or in the case of Jo, a career. Surrounding them are their mother, their rich neighbor and his nephew, their wealthy aunt, and their various suitors.

As is often the case, it seemed the cast was chosen for singing ability rather than acting skills. Jo (Brynne Geiszler) is the eldest, a tomboy who’d rather become a writer than a prim lady or wife. She’s the main character of this tale and narrator of the ones she writes. Her singing is beautiful, pitch perfect and strong, backed by expressive and energetic movement. In short, she’s just about perfect on stage, until she stops singing. Unfortunately, her acting lines between songs are often delivered in an almost sing-song cadence, as if she can hardly wait to get back to singing. 

She and the supporting cast are at their absolute best when they sing and act out Jo’s fictional stories, which happens in both the first and second acts. As she belts out the story in song, she acts it out as well. Each of her actions is mimicked simultaneously with flawless coordination by actors portraying her fictional story’s characters. They are seen through a rear lighted scrim cleverly hidden in the center section of the set, an effect that gives the image of watching a dream sequence.

Jo’s other three sisters, Meg (Lindsay Hovey), Beth (Samantha Lobberegt), and Amy (Claire Idstom), follow Jo’s lead by being very accomplished singers with mostly adequate acting chops. There are exceptions, though.

Marmee, their mother (Nancy Hebert) and Professor Bhaer (F. James Raasch) both brought an impressive combination of top notch acting and equally good singing. Their neighbor Laurie (Bryan Gula) was also a better actor than most, though admittedly not as strong a singer. Then, of course, there is the redoubtable Sharry O’Hare, whose skilled acting and powerful stage presence, as always, burst forth at every entrance to create a perfectly crafted Aunt March. 

The set design by Will Abrahamse is particularly clever. Three separate rotating segments with various additions and furniture quickly create a range of simple yet convincing sets. Copious musical support is provided by a 13 member pit orchestra led by musical director Jeff Stvrtecky. Lighting (John Chenault,) including a clever gobo that projects the time period of each scene on a side of the proscenium, was well done and suitably subtle.

Bremerton Community Theatre and Marianne Taylor take credit for costume design, which was mostly very attractive and period appropriate, with a few glitches and anachronisms. Amy’s dresses, for instance, which at first were hand-me-downs, looked appropriately ill fitting, but did not get much better once she got her own stylish designer togs. Jo unzipped a dress on stage, blithely unaware that zippers would not be available for another 30 years.  

All in all, with some less than stellar acting and more than stellar singing, it’s a pleasant enough musical. You won’t go home humming any brilliantly catchy songs, nor exhausted from emotional release, but you will have spent an entirely enjoyable evening.

Little Women, the Broadway Musical
Sept. 23 through Oct. 16, 2011
Tacoma Musical Playhouse www.tmp.org

Elizabeth Lord and Lord Franzannian

 

Pictured: the cast from last year's show. 

Photo courtesy Elizabeth Lord (seen in red hat and coat)

Yesterday I posted a review of the 5th annual "Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show!" Today I'd like to share a little information about the show's producer and master or ceremonies, Elizabeth Lord.

When Lord was a senior year in high school in Las Vegas she made up her mind that she wanted to be a professional storyteller. She had studied acting in high school and dreamed of becoming a famous actress but realized she could never "make it in the hardcore acting world of TV and film" because she was "not skinny and 'cute' enough."

But where could a young woman just out of high school study to be a professional storyteller? Where else but The Evergreen State College? So at TESC Lord studied folklore, world mythology, world religion, folktales, orality vs.literacy, and theater arts.

After graduation in 1995 she began "gigging" - getting paid to tell stories, and she's been doing it ever since. telling her stories for such organizations and groups as City of Olympia, Pierce County Library, Olympia School District, TESC, and many Washington State Agencies. She's built an impressive following for her original one-woman storytelling shows, including "Vegas Childhood," "Cheap Rent," "Smoking is Cool" and others.

She has also acted in, narrated or directed many plays for Theater Artists Olympia and Prodigal Sun, including "Stop Kiss," "Parallel Lives," "Reefer Madness," "Don Juan in Chicago," “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” and "Cannibal!! The Musical." And she manages The Midnight Sun Performance Space. She is nothing if not versatile.

In 2001 Lord and others created BigShowCity, an organization dedicated to raising money to support performance artists, and they put on what they hoped would be an Olympia annual festival. They created a three-day, multi-venue festival. It lasted only three years. The first year 20-plus people helped organize and fundraise; the second year it was only Lord and Erik Fabian; the third year it was just Lord with help from an Evergreen intern.

The festivals could not be continued, but Lord didn't give up. She decided to do a one-night, one-venue variety show. Vaudeville, the original variety show format, seemed like the way to go, so in 2007 she gathered some artists together and created the first show. The main collaborators were Lord and Mark Franzen, a former member of The Audition is Dead theater troupe. "We decided to go with the old school Vaudeville show poster format which always put the producers name first on the bill," Lord said, "And so we created a fictional producer name, which is a combination of our names, Lord and Franzen, and the fictional character Lord Franzannian (played by Lord) became a character in the show.

The rest, as they say, is history. The 5th annual "Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show!" continues through this weekend at The Midnight Sun Performance Space. It's a lively, bawdy, and entertaining show that includes song, dance, comedy, burlesque and more.

   
Recomended for folks over the age of 16.

September 30, and October 1, 2, 2011 (Fridays- Sundays)

Showtime 8 pm
Two Shows on the Saturdays 8 and 10 pm!

NEW! October 2 is the special Youth Audience Show! Starts at 4 pm (now folks 15 and under can come see some Vaudeville!)

All performances at the Midnight Sun Performance Space
113 N. Columbia St. in downtown Olympia

Tickets: $15 -25 Suggested Donation (No one turned away! Pay more if you can, less if you can't - don't sweat it)

Available at the door night of show or go to www.brownpapertickets.com/event/126005 to reserve a seat.

Tickets $7 for those under 15 on October 2nd!

Lord Franzannian’s vaudeville show

This past Friday night was the muggiest night of the year in Olympia. The heat in the downtown Midnight Sun Performance Space was almost unbearable during the sold-out performance of Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show. The only thing hotter than the humid night air was the show on stage.

From Elizabeth Lord’s story of a milkman named Harvey – illustrated by fast-draw artist The Great Sylvester Simon – to Nani Poonani’s hot burlesque performance, to Lauren O’Neill’s reading of a letter of complaint to “Hmmmm Foods” – to the inimitable Vaude deVille, it was one hell of a show.

Earlier that afternoon I had mentioned to a friend that we were going to a vaudeville show, and my friend had two interesting responses: first, she said she didn’t know there was vaudeville in Olympia, and then she said, “I wish we had burlesque.”

Well guess what, Olympia – we have both. They’re both outstanding, and Lord Franzannian combines them in “his” fifth annual show. It’s a shame that only a handful of dedicated fans even know about this spectacular event. It should be more widely promoted and should fill major venues the likes of the Washington Center.

Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show is the brainchild of storyteller, actor and producer Elizabeth Lord. She came up with the idea years ago as a way to earning money to support local performing artists, and the host/master of ceremonies/ringmaster, Lord Franzannian, is none other than Lord in a fat suit wearing a big mustache and a bright red circus ringmaster suit.

From the press release: “Working in the tradition of vaudeville shows from the early part of the 20th century, this fast-paced variety show promises a little something for everyone. Dance, music, comedy, storytelling, burlesque, juggling, even feats of amazement! …Proceeds benefit working performers, and BigShowCity, a non-profit Performing Arts Organization whose mission is to help burgeoning artists realize their ambitions by providing financial and emotional support.”

Hardly anyone alive today remembers what vaudeville was like in its heyday, but some of us at least remember the Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen shows on television, and we remember George Burns and Gracie Allen and Jimmy Durante, and those are Lord Franzannian’s predecessors.

Many of the acts are bawdy, some are lovely and nostalgic, and some are downright insane.

Vaude deVille, one of the founders of and a performer with Wrinkles of Washington, does song and dance numbers in the old vaudeville style. You can almost imagine him performing two shows a day at The Palace. He kicks off both the opening act and the second act with his smoothly expressive singing and soft-shoe dance.

The singing duo Birds of a Feather entertain with sweet romantic songs.

Lester Crafty the Bearded Lady is… well, you just have to see her act.

O’Neill’s reading of a letter of complaint is hilarious and graphic and filled with over-the-top references to vomiting and defecating, but read in a very underplayed and sweet manner. If I hadn’t seen O’Neill act and sing in other shows I might have been tempted to think there was no acting involved at all in her performance -- that it was just a straight reading. Oh, but it was a performance all right, with pitch-perfect inflections to clue us in that there is something deliciously wicked underneath her Little Bo Peep demeanor. The letter was so original that I had to ask: was it an actual letter with only the name of the food company fictionalized or was it written for this performance? She said it was an actual letter written by a friend to “Hmmmm Foods.”

Nani Poonani’s burlesque was funny, acrobatic and sexy. She has – in addition of a fabulous stage name – a beautiful body filled with tattoos, none of which (that I know of) are hidden from the audience. A second burlesque number featuring Frida Fondle as Peter Fondle is an inventive and comical routine that begins with a woman in drag as a fat man and ends with the traditional burlesque tassel twirling. Both performers are members of Tush! Burlesque in Olympia.

One of the most astounding acts was Soren’s buugeng performance to the accordion accompaniment of Rheanna Murray. I had never before heard of buugeng and had to look it up.  It’s a curved wooden instrument associated with martial arts that is handled somewhat like nunchucks. The performance was hypnotic, combining elements of dance and juggling (without tossing things in the air).

There were a couple of less than stellar performances. Brent Blakley’s stand-up comedy act had some funny moments but fell flat overall, partly due to a self-effacing, deadpan delivery that didn’t quite make it; and although the Gotta Swing dance troupe was lively not all of the individual dancers were quite up to snuff.

Most but not all of the musical numbers were backed up by the four piece band, The Vaude Zannian Playerz, made up of Scuff Acuff (band leader) on guitar/washboard and kazoo, Alison Metheny on bucket bass, Ethan Rogol on mandolin, and multi-talented  Rheanna Murray on accordion (of whom I wrote in my review of Olympia Family Theater’s February 2011 production of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” in which "she plays Alice with dignity and grace...")

Acuff and Metheny also performed in duet on a song about a “tight, wet, pussy cat” which was fall-on-the-floor funny.

Lord tells a different in every performance, inviting the audience to supply major story elements including who the story is about and then totally improvising the story with accompanying fast-draw illustrations by The Great Sylvester. So she’s told stories about a milkman, a red rubber boot that leaves the closet and goes on adventures, a London prostitute abducted by aliens, and a badger who travels to Australia and goes to the opera. In a stroke of genius Friday night Sylvester gave Harvey the milkman a shirt that said “Harvey Milk.”

With its near nudity and a plethora of sexual content and double entendre, this show is without a doubt intended for mature audiences only, but there will be a special performance added for an all-ages audience October 2 at 4 p.m.

Remaining shows are:      
Friday September 30 @ 8 p.m.
        Saturday October 1 @ 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.
        Sunday October 2 @ 4 p.m.
Ticket Price: $15-$25 at the door (however, no one will be turned away for lack of funds).
Special Youth Ticket Price October 2, under 15, $7.

Tickets available at door night of show, or to reserve a seat buy a ticket online at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/126005
Where: The Midnight Sun Performance Space, 113 N. Columbia Street in downtown Olympia.