The Wiz at Tacoma Musical Playhouse

Published in the Weekly Volcano, June 2, 2016

from left: Charles Simmons as Scarecrow, Jimmy Shields as Tinman, Alexandria Henderson as Dorothy, and Matt De La Cruz as Lion. Photo by Kat Dollarhide, courtesy Tacoma Musical Playhouse

The Wiz hit Broadway like “Soul Train” on steroids in 1975, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It was followed-up three years later by a popular film version starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. To ask any community theater to follow that is a tall order. Tacoma Musical Playhouse gives it a good try with an elaborate production that hits a few high notes but does not consistently reach the high-energy level the show demands.

What does meet high marks is the work of the technical crew and designers: sets by Bruce Haasl, lighting by John Chenault, and a whole lot of fabulous costumes by Jocelyne Fowler — from costumed Munkins on rolling chairs hidden by flared skirts to the costumed ensemble as a field of poppies and the yellow brick road and green-clad citizens of the Emerald City.

Having dancing actors as part of the set was ingenious. It originated with the Broadway show. Director Jon Douglas Rake said when he first saw the national tour he was fascinated by the Yellow Brick Road being played by dancers and the Tornado becoming a dance number as well.  TMP added crows to the Scarecrow number, which was not in the original show.

The magnificent giant wizard-head puppet build by Haasl was wonderfully designed and effectively lit. Congrats all around to the tech crew.

The Wiz was written for an African-American cast by William F. Brown (Book) and Charlie Smalls (music and lyrics). It is an urbanized retelling of Frank Baum’s classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. TMP’s cast is not wholly African-American but mostly people of color. It’s good to see such a racially diverse cast.

The show gets off to a rather slow start and doesn’t pick up until the first time they do the oft-repeated theme song “Ease on Down the Road.” Dorothy (Alexandra Henderson) has a beautiful voice, but she doesn’t begin to show her range until this song, which rocks the house ― as it should.

The true stars of the show are Charles Simmons as Scarecrow, Jimmy Shields as Tinman, Matt De La Cruz as Lion, and Jamelia Payne as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West. Shields, who is also co-choreographer with Rake, is one of the best singers in the show and has a helluva repertoire of expressive dance moves. Simmons also shows off some mean moves, and Payne’s earth-shaking guttural and gospel-tinged singing on “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” is one of the musical highlights of the show, along with Henderson’s final song, “Home,” nicely done as a front-of-the-curtain solo, a lovely change-of-pace ending for a show made up of large production numbers.

One thing different that I have to point out is that a major character was played by an understudy the night I attended. Marion Read usually plays Aunt Em, but was unable to perform that night, and her part was played by Lanita Hudson, who did a great job of filling in. Hudson is in the ensemble and was also a standout performer in a number of other scenes.

Despite overall excellent technical work, there were some uncomfortably long scene changes and, at one point, disturbing backstage noise during a scene change. Hopefully these problems will be worked out for future performances. Overall, it is an entertaining show.

The Wiz, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday,  2 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday, , through Dec. 20, $22-$31, Tacoma Musical Playhouse at The Narrows Theatre, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253-565-6867, http://www.tmp.org.

11^th Annual Student Art Exhibition at SPSCC

Published in the Weekly Volcano, June 2, 2016

 “When the Oceans Used to Sing” mixed media by Tanner Jenkins, courtesy South Puget Sound Community Collge.

I almost missed seeing the 11^th Annual Student Art Exhibition at South Puget Sound Community College. It has only another week to run. If I were cynical enough, and I admit that I often am, I could say, “What’s the big deal? It’s only a student show.” There’s some truth in that, too. It is not museum-quality art, but there is art in this show that is definitely worth seeing.

It’s good to see student work because student art provides a good barometer to what young people are thinking, and therefore what kinds of art you might expect to see in galleries in the next few years. Or, perhaps it just shows the influences of popular culture and of certain highly influential professors. Joe Batt, for instance. Batt teaches ceramics at SPSCC. His work is quirky, humorous, provocative, and wonderfully inventive, and I see a lot of Batt influence in the many ceramic pieces that are in this show. They’re on sculpture stands throughout the gallery, mostly small ceramic sculptures of comical-looking animals and human-animal hybrid creatures. For example, a pair of deliciously inventive ceramic creatures by Rider Drutz. One is a creature that looks a little bit like a water buffalo with a head that is a bleached white skull with big horns. It is riding — like a bucking bronco — a creature that looks like a hybrid alligator-turtle. Next to this is another ceramic creature by the same artist that looks like a headless woman on her back with an infant in her arms. Her head seems to have melded into an old rotting log. Stylistically these pieces are put together with rough little slabs of clay that remind me a lot of some of Willem de Kooning’s sculpture. If these pieces could be done large, they would be powerful.

There is also a project that some 28 ceramics students worked on together called “Woodard Bay Bat Commute Installation.” Some 3,000 bats of many different species roost together at an old railway trestle at Woodard Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area. The students made ceramic sculptures of many of the bats, and they are displayed on a stand in a corner and up the wall and across the length of the longest wall in the gallery, both on the wall and hanging from the ceiling. It is quite impressive — not so much in the individual pieces, which are naturalistic but not particularly outstanding, but in the cumulative effect of the whole swarm rhythmically flying across the gallery.

Another inventive ceramic piece that I particularly enjoyed was Sarah Farley’s “Summertime Shoe,” a blue ceramic sneaker that becomes a tiny doll house with a window and little pieces of doll furniture inside. This one is joyful. Not at all joyful is Suzanne Petrie’s “Woman’s Wall,” a tiny wall of white clay bricks that appears to have been bombed, and lying on the ground behind the wall is a woman in a fetal position who appears to be dead (and who also happens to have a head like a lizard). It is a deathly scene of desolation.

There are not many paintings in the show. One of my favorites is “Chiclets in Hand” by Emily Bullock. This one depicts a hand extended palm-out and holding a handful of multi-colored Chiclets. It is impressive for its heavily applied impasto paint and its glowing colors.

Also very interesting are two pieces by Tanner Jenkins (“When the Ocean Used to Sing”) and Minji Jang (“The Pumpkin Carriage”). I thought they were by the same person because of their similarities. Each is made of digital images cut into strips and woven together — something I’ve seen whole classes do as a class project, which I imagine is what was going on with these. The precision and intricacy of geometric patterns combined with more lyrical organic shapes in beautifully subtle color combinations make these works stand out.

Tanner Jenkins’ “When the Ocean Used to Sing” was chosen for the Gallery Committee’s Award, and Marsha Pluff’s “Canoe Journey” was selected by student representatives from the Diversity and Equity Center Student Peers Award.

South Puget Sound Community College, Kenneth J Minnaert Center for the Arts Gallery, Monday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. through June 10, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW. Olympia, 360.596.5527.]

NW Art Now at Tacoma Art Museum

Published in the Weekly Volcano, May 27, 2016

NW Art Now at Tacoma Art Museum is a big, colorful, and cutting-edge

“Orca Pod,” oil on canvas, by Karen Hackenberg, courtesy of the artist

exhibition of new and recent works by 24 regional artists. Included are 47 works in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, craft-based work, as well as conceptual, performance, installation, and digital projects. One of the more cutting-edge and/or conceptual aspects to the show is that a number of pieces are displayed outside the galleries, some in places where you might not even see them unless you diligently search them out. For instance, Dylan Neuwirth’s “Just Be Your Selfie,” a neon installation that hung over Pioneer Square in Seattle, now hangs high over the entrance canopy at TAM; and Lou Watson’s “Section of the I-705, on a Wednesday, for Electric Piano” is an audio and visual projection of a musical score based on the frequency and colors of cars passing by as filmed from the museum, displayed on the wall where visitors enter from the garage. 

Much of the show deals with issues of identity, social justice and the environment, and there are hard-hitting feminist and racial statements and works that explore media or combinations of media in innovative ways. The conceptual pieces are exactly what the name “conceptual” implies: art that may be more interesting to think about than to look at. And there are works that meld concept with image in beautiful and thought-provoking ways. Among these are two video projections by C. Davida Ingram, Seattle performance artist and winner of the 2014 Stranger Genius Award. Projected in alternating sequences are “The Deeps: Go Away from My Window” and “Procession” (a video installation with drone footage of four black women in hooded white gowns at the historical King Street station in Seattle). These, especially “Procession,” are among the more haunting videos I have ever seen.

"M is for Mak'Lak, W is for White" authentic NDN design, oil on linen by Ka'ila Faqrrell-Smith, courtesy of the artist.

Ka’ ila Farrell-Smith has paintings in the show that combine Native American traditions with abstract-expressionist paint application. In a statement on her website at http://www.kailafarrellsmith.com/, she writes, “I search for my visual language: violent, beautiful, and complicated marks that express my contemporary Indigenous identity.” Hard-edge precision, layering, scratching and splattering are interwoven in shallow spatial movement in her paintings “M is for Mak’Lak, W is for White” and “Noo’a Eqksil’ini.”  

Juventino Aranda’s three paintings in oil stick on wool mimic patterns of woven Native American blankets with floating bars of color reminiscent of Mark Rothko, which are homages to and, at the same time, lampoons of each. The texture and edge quality of the oil stick on wool is stunningly beautiful.

There is an impressive number of Tacoma artists in the show including Oliver Doriss, Christopher Paul Jordan, Jeremy Mangan, Asia Tail, Jamie Marie Waelchli, and John Sutton of SuttonBeresCuller, who was born in Tacoma and today lives in Seattle.

Doriss’s “Alpine Panel Study #1” is cast glass with silver botanical inclusions, a unique and richly textured forest in glass in the shape of Mt. Rainer. Mangan is represented with two hyper-realistic oil paintings of scenes that do not and probably never could exist in nature. “Even on the Most Still Days” depicts clever smoke writing over water, and “Pacific Northwest Desert Island” pictures a floating island with tall trees, a little lean-to and a campfire. The jewel-like painting of reflections in rippling water is stunningly beautiful.

I could go on and on describing the rich variety of art in this show. TAM has done many juried shows of Northwest art. Perhaps my memory of previous shows is not to be trusted, but I’m pretty sure this is the best one yet.

NW Art Now, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Sept. 4, closed Memorial Day, $12-$14, Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave. Tacoma, http://www.tacomaartmuseum.org/

A Year with Frog and Toad

Published in the Weekly Volcano, May 19, 2016

Kate Ayers as Toad, Harrison Fry as Frog. Photo by David Nowitz

Olympia Family Theater’s A Year with Frog and Toad is so joyous that watching it should banish all thoughts of election season politicking. For more than an hour all worries about war and poverty and climate change should go away.

It is the show Olympia Family Theater opened its first season with, and has become the company’s every-five-year anniversary show. This year marks the 10^th season for this most enjoyable children’s theater.

Based on the books by Arnold Lobel and directed by Jen Ryle, Frog and Toad is a celebration of friendship, following a year in the life of these best of friends. Kate Ayers is Toad. Toad is neurotic, often fearful and excitable. Harrison Fry is Frog. Frog is as different from Toad as different can be. He is calm and caring, a voice of reason, and he will do anything for his friend Toad.

Ayers and Fry are wonderfully matched. As Ayers has proven in so many performances — Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; Lyle the Crocodile; Busytown; The Monster Under the Bed; and more — she is among the most expressive of actors on South Sound stages, with broad facial expressions and wonderfully exaggerated physical moves. Plus she sings with a clear and lovely voice. Fry, who has been outstanding in everything from The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to Prince Rupert in Cinder Edna, is thoroughly loveable as Frog. He is the sweet calm in the storm.

Also a pure delight is Ted Ryle as Snail with the mail. Every time he walks across the stage the kids in the audience go wild. So do a lot of the adults. Who remembers Arte Johnson as the dirty old man on “Laugh In”? Every time Ryle carries the mail with his hurried-slow shuffle it is like Arte Johnson when Ruth Buzzi hits him on the head with her purse. It’s hilarious.

The set, props, and special effects are preciously cheesy-cheap. Admittedly “cheesy” and “cheap” are not usually complimentary terms, but in this show they apply purposefully and perfectly. Everyone knows the seeds in the box are going to sprout into flowers, and kids in the audience stand up and crane their necks in anticipation of seeing it. The snowy slope Frog and Toad sled down is nothing up a white sheet draped over some makeshift construction, but what they do with it is magical and ridiculously funny. And then there’s the puppet Large and Terrible Frog, and Toad’s puppet legs — you have to see it to believe it (credit scenic designer Steve Bylsma, scenic engineer David Nowitz, prop artist Rachel Ikehara-Martin, and puppet artist Sarah Lykins).

Also playing a huge role in the success of this play is the band: keyboardists Stephanie Claire and David Lane, bassist Matt Fearon, and drummer Theresa McKenzieSullivan.

The choreography by Amy Shephard is lot of fun and the costumes by Mishka Navarre are delightful, especially the colorful birds’ dresses, which make the quartet of singing birds look like a psychedelic girl group from 1962.

A Year with Frog and Toad is a show for children of all ages; i.e., parents will love it as well.

A Year with Frog and Toad,  Fri., 7 p.m., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m.  through June 5, pay what you can June 20, $13-$19,  http://olyft.org/tickets, 612 4th Ave E, Olympia, 360-570-1638

Bill Colby: The Sixties

Published in the Weekly Volcano, May 19, 2016

 “Tideflats East,” watercolor by Bill Colby, courtesy Matter.

Art entrepreneur Lisa Kinoshita, along with birdloft furniture (Jeff Libby and Adrienne Wicks) and rePly Furniture (Steve Lawler), have opened an exciting new shop on Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma. Called Matter: Tacoma made modern, the new shop is a showcase for furniture, woodworking and visual arts. For its inaugural visual arts show, Matter is displaying prints and watercolors by Bill Colby.

At 89 years old and an innovative artist who taught printmaking at University of Puget Sound, Colby is a revered elder statesman of the Tacoma art community, whose works are in the permanent collections of major museums.

The pieces selected for this exhibition are from the 1960s, shortly after he first came to Tacoma. The work on display, however, is not like the psychedelia and pop art of that decade, but is more like the more sedate work of the Northwest mystics: Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. There is a quiet, spiritual quality to it, and a sureness and economy of style, plus the muted colors reflect the colors not only of the Northwest mystics, but of the air we breathe.

Some of his prints display a bit of what I take to be influences from Coastal Indian art, not in subject matter but in style. This is evident in a piece called “Spring,” a woodcut that has a feel for landscape but is abstracted to the extent that I can’t recognize any intended subject matter. Native American influences can also be seen in “Ceramic Bird,” an artist’s proof drypoint etching of a bird in flight. The bird is more iconic and symbolic than naturalistic, with heavy dark-and-light contrasts and a strong feeling for sweeping movement. 

There are two lovely watercolors of Tacoma’s tide flats. “Tacoma Tideflats 1962” is the most naturalistic picture in the exhibition. There is marvelously rich blue water with dark, yellowish hills on the horizon and a gray sky that feels stormy and ominous without overly obvious storm clouds — Colby underplays dramatic effects. This painting looks more like a gouache than a watercolordue to its detail and opaqueness. 

By way of contrast, the other tide-flats painting, “Tideflats East,” is light and sketchy, a landscape with water, logs and posts in water in the foreground, and houses on the farther shore. It is done with a delightful economy of brushstrokes and appears spontaneous, as if dashed off in a matter of minutes. 

One of the more intriguing pieces is a silkscreen print called “Television Trance.” Done in broad dots and strokes of dull brown and ochre, it is an almost Pollock-like overall composition of quick marks that barely meld together into an interior scene with three figures watching television, apparently mesmerized by the screen.

This is a small show. The paintings and prints are neither large nor showy, but they are masterfully done. The furniture and woodworking by birdloft furniture and Steve Lawler are also nice to look at. Much of it would make a fine addition to any home.

Bill Colby: The Sixties, Matter, Monday-Friday 11:30-5:30, Thursday- Saturday and by appointment, through June 11, for appointment call Lisa Kinoshita 253.961.5220, 821 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.879.3701. mattertacoma.com

Review: “The Language Archive”

Published in The News Tribune, May 13, 2016

from left: Pat Sibley as Alta, Aaron Lamb as George, and Russ Holm as Resten

Alyssa Ky as Emma and Aaron Lamb as George

Russ Holm as Resten and Pat Sibley as Altaall photos courtesy Harlequin Productions

“The Language Archive.” It’s a title that conjures up dusty old libraries and esoteric and pedantic discussions between intellectuals. It is also a little-known but wonderfully quirky play now running at Harlequin Productions in Olympia. Be it ever so odd and intelligent, it is not just a play for intellectuals. It is a play that is easily understood and that can touch the hearts of all. It begins as a comedy that – especially when Russ Holm as Resten and Pat Sibley as Alta first appear – is insanely funny. But it does not remain solely comedic. It becomes a sweet and touching love story that looks at all sides of love and language and the barriers that prevent human beings from speaking from their hearts.

George (Aaron Lamb) is a linguist who knows many languages but has no words to speak to his wife, Mary (Caitlin McCown) when she says she is leaving him. The implication from Mary is that he has never been good at speaking to her. She’s not very good at communicating with him either. The best she can do is to leave strange notes to him in strange places. He calls her notes bad poetry.

George can say “I love you” in Esperanto, but he doesn’t know how to say it in English, at least not to anyone he actually cares about. Mary does not know how to speak from her heart either, nor does George’s assistant, Emma (Alyssa Kay). As it turns out, the only people who are able to communicate are Resten and Alta, the last two people in the world who can speak a dying (fictional) language. They can also speak in English, but only in anger, as they do in a great absurdist comical scene, because to them English is the language of anger.

Balancing somewhere between lyrical romance, fantasy and farce, “The Language Archive” does not attempt to portray reality. Actors step out of scenes to speak directly to the audience (the first time George does this, Mary says, “You know I can hear you, don’t you?”) and characters and scenes roll in on a revolving stage in a way that lends to the entire production the feel of a silent movie. Except, of course, it’s not silent; it is filled with words.

The five-person cast is splendid. Lamb plays George as a bumbling man with many uncomfortable tics who can wax eloquently when speaking of his love of languages but who is tongue-tied when trying to speak to Mary and Emma. A veteran of many challenging roles at Harlequin and elsewhere, including leading roles in To Kill a Mockinbird, Jekyll and Hyde and The Mating Dance of the Werewolf, Lamb displays skill at bringing a wide range of characters to life, as he skillfully does once again in this production.

Holm and Sibley play outsized characters with comical voices and gestures worthy of a Marx Brother or a member of Monty Python, not just as the very loveable Resten and Alta, but also as a baker and Zamenhof, a famous linguist who is actually dead (both played by Holm) and as a language instructor and a train conductor (Sibley).

The set by Jeannie Beirne is ingenious. The stage is absolutely bare except for a screen at the back wall. Furniture, appliances, and other set pieces come in and out on a revolving stage and lovely little watercolors of libraries, kitchens, train stations and other settings are projected against the back wall to simulate various settings. Looking something like New Yorker illustrations, these distinctive scenes were painted by Beirne.

There are also unlisted stagehands and probably dressers who are not listed in the program but who do a monumentally heroic job backstage swapping out large set pieces and helping bring about quick costume changes, and doing it all in utter silence. These are the people who are seldom acknowledged but who are responsible for the magic and wonder of live theater. In this show they work with stage manager Michelle Himlie and assistant stage manager Laurie Hubbs.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday,  2 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m., through May 28

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

TICKETS: $20-$34

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

Seven Was to Get There

Published in the Weekly Volcano, May 12, 2016

Clockwise from left: Robert McConckey, Brian Jansen, Gabriel McClelland, Scott Douglas, Brian Hatcher and Heather Christopher. 

Playwright Bryan Willis’s riveting play Seven Ways to Get There premiered a year ago this month at ACT Theatre in Seattle and is now being performed by Theater Artists Olympia. It was good in Seattle, and it’s even better, perhaps — more intense and more engaging in the intimate performance space at the Midnight Sun.

Co-written by Dwayne J. Clark, the play is based on Clark’s experience some 17 years earlier when he took part in men’s therapy group. Michelle, played by Heather R. Christopher, is a therapist facilitating, for the first time in her career, an all-male group therapy session. Not surprisingly, some of the men question her ability to run an all-male group and complain that they can’t open up with a woman present. The men are a mass of neuroses. Throughout the play the group teeters on the edge of total chaos.

Anthony (Christian Carvajal) has severe anger issues. He attends the sessions under court order and constantly lashes out at and belittles the other men in the group, especially Richard (Robert McConkey, who is addicted to pornography and has urinary issues and is an infuriating sticker for following the rules most of the others ignore.

Mel (Brian Hatcher) can never make up his mind about anything. His “decider is broken.” Seated next to Mel in most sessions, Peter (Scott Douglas) is severely shut down, but when he finally does speak it is a flood of self-loathing.

Mark (Gabriel McClelland) is an artist who is just beginning to gain success. His self-esteem is in the toilet thanks to a wife who scorns him and whom he is suspects is having an affair with her “ugly” rock-climbing instructor.

Vince (Brian Wayne Jansen) is a likeable enough fellow who claims to have had sex with more than 2,000 women but never really cares about any of them, usually feels empty after sex and can’t even remember the women’s names.

And finally, a late-comer to the group, Nick (Michael Christopher) is rich, arrogant, and believes he can buy off anyone, but underneath all his bluster is fear.

The writing is superb, probably Willis’s best play yet, and pacing, blocking and interaction of the seven men and one woman is like the smooth running of a complex machine — thanks in large part to excellent direction by Pug Bujeaud.

This play is a showcase of ensemble acting at its best. No one actor stands out, and each is in top form. Beginning actors would do well to watch this play multiple times and observe how intensely each and every actor stays in character and totally engaged even when the others are speaking, their personal and often highly personal reactions when other actors are “on camera,” be it hiding within themselves, slouching is disdainful inattention, or listening with hyper attention (and often reacting violently).

There is violence, a gunshot, a lot of foul language, and a surprising amount of outlandish humor.

Seven Was to Get There, Thursday-Sunday at 8 p.m., through May 21, The Midnight Sun, 113 N. Columbia St. Tickets: $12-$15, Available at door night of show or online at http://olytheater.com/.