Michael Dresdner writes:

"The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened last night at Lakewood Playhouse, is undoubtedly the best of Oscar Wilde’s biting satires. It is, by any reckoning, an outstanding and completely enjoyable play to watch; flawlessly written, hilarious, and just dripping with those questionable British values Wilde saw as the underbelly of Victorian society, and skewered mercilessly.

"...a play of such perfection demands a director and cast equal to its brilliance. That is precisely what director Marilyn Bennett and her superb cast have given to us lucky Lakewood Playhouse patrons; a shiny, perfect apple of a comedy just bursting with juicy delight."

Read the complete review

And watch for my review in The News Tribune Friday.

The Weekly Volcano, June 13, 2013
Installation view of some of the Wayzgoose images. Photo by Ric Matthies Spring has sprung and it is now possible to enjoy the installations in the Woolworth Windows without standing in the cold and rain. And the current installation is filled with good humor and well-executed artwork.
Jennifer Zwick, and artist with attitude, says, “As though life weren’t anxious enough, we’re expected to get out of bed every single morning.” And her art, “Bed Dress” currently on display in the Woolworth Windows, addresses that question with sharp humor with what appears to be a beaver in a wedding dress standing up in a bed on casters ready to roll away without having to bother with actually moving.” Funny stuff, nicely executed. What’s even nicer are some of the inventive installations pictured on her website at http://www.jenniferzwick.com/, which unfortunately I have not seen in situ.
Wayzgoose print by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica SpringRachael Dotson’s untitled graphic works fill one set of windows with figures dressed in blue with their heads in the clouds. They are nicely drawn and, to me, reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s early graphic work. Plus, and this is sort of critical: Dotson’s windows represent pretty much the only true installation in the building. There’s a critical difference between an installation and an exhibition. An exhibition may fill a space nicely (as does, for instance a four-by-six foot painting over a couch), but the emphasis is on the individual work or works of art and not on the way in which they work together to form a whole, which relates thematically or visually to the space. The Wayzgoose prints are an exhibition, not an installation. Selections from Wayzgoose fill large parts of the windows and are Dragons by Beth Johnson. Photo by Heather Joydefinitely worthy of careful scrutiny. Wayzgoose is one of Tacoma’s most popular art festivals, a printmaking and book arts showcase named after a medieval guild celebration. This installation showcases giant linoleum prints produced by steamroller during the ninth annual Wayzgoose. Featured are prints by: Stadium High School Printmaking, Maggie Roberts, Audra Laymon, Beautiful Angle, Chris Sharp, CLAW, Ric Matthies, Chandler O’Leary & Jessica Spring, Charles Wright Academy Printmaking, Pacific Lutheran University Printmaking. 
The Wayzgoose installation is presented as a showcase without identification of individual artists. They are fun, funky and well executed. One of my favorite is a version of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” with the beauty on the halfshell posed in front of Tacoma’s waterfront in black and white with orange hair and orange flowers blowing in the wind.
Rachael Dotson, untitled. Photo by Heather JoyAlso fun and funky are Beth Johnson’s papier mache dragons. They are large and humorously scary. Her “Red Dragon” won Best of Show in the 2011 National Arts Program exhibit. Seen in the Woolworth Windows, it a long-snouted dragon head mounted like a taxidermy trophy.[Woolworth Windows] Broadway at 11th and Commerce, through August.

Samantha Chandler and Keith Eisner as Mary and John Brown

For the third time this season Olympia Family is presenting a world premiere, The Abolitionist’s Wife by local playwrights Barbara Gibson and Sky Myers. The other two world premieres, Wind in the Willows and Cinder Edna, were adaptations of popular children’s stories; this one is an adult drama based on the life of famed abolitionist John Brown and his wife, Mary. It is also the first fully staged performance in OFT’s Playspace in downtown Olympia.
Set in the turbulent years prior to the Civil War, the story focuses on the long-suffering spouse of the controversial abolitionist who lead the famous raid on Harper’s Ferry.
Gibson, a local poet and author, has long admired John Brown, the man who "killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights." From her work with NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality in Milwaukee in the 1960s to her ongoing civil rights activism, she has remained dedicated the pursuit of equality. As she studied Brown's life history, she decided to tell the story of John's wife, Mary Brown: their marriage, their life together, and her eventual rejection of violence. After working on this play for a number of years, she invited Sky Myers, an experienced playwright and director, to collaborate with her on bringing the project to fruition. The play is now a blend of both their efforts.
Myers has been making theater for 25 years. After graduating from Evergreen and then earning an MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen at the University of Arizona, she returned to Olympia in the 1990s to co-found  and manage The Midnight Sun Performance Space with Barbara Zelano. She had taken a hiatus from theater for a several years and now says she is thrilled to return to the world of theater.
Gibson says: “I have always admired John Brown: his many years of fighting to abolish slavery, his skill at enlisting others who had money and influence to aid in the struggle, and his absolute and personal dedication to the cause. A book by David S. Reynolds about John  Brown which has as its subtitle: ‘The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights’ renewed my interest in Brown, especially in light of my experiences in the civil rights movement in the '60s.  As I read more about John, I began to wonder about his wife, Mary. I knew that she was a woman whom John both loved and respected.  I visited their cabin in N. Elba, near Lake Placid, New York, where I got a vivid picture of their simple way of life. And eventually I began to imagine what happened between this man, obsessed with a righteous cause, and his wife, who bore him 13 children, several of whom died as infants, and who came to oppose his use of violence after his experiences in the bloody Kansas wars. Mary and John's life together came to a tragic end as a result of the unsuccessful raid he and his comrades waged at Harper's Ferry, for which he was executed by hanging.  But as we know from the popular old ballad, ‘John Brown's Body Lies A'mouldring in the Grave... But His Truth Goes Marching On...’  And Mary Brown's dedication to non-violence, and her interest in the independence of women, are issues of importance that remain unresolved today.”
Meyers says: “In mid-2010 Barbara had a draft done when she contacted me about essentially, ‘script doctoring.’ I read her draft of Scenes from the Life of Mary Brown and came up with a written plan/outline to strengthen the dramatic action throughout and develop cohesive character arcs for each of the main characters. The new outline called for writing a few new scenes and rewrites of a several others. Six months later when I contacted Barbara to see how the rewrite was going, she asked me to be more involved — to do the rewrite based on the things we both agreed the script needed. I began rewriting it in 2011, and we worked on it together on and off for about a year. Once we had a new draft completed, we held a public reading at the library with local actors and friends. It was at this time that I fully realized the power of the work, and the interest that everybody had in it. It was also clear that our voices had melded and the script felt and sounded like the work of a single person. We were both thrilled! Samantha Chandler and Keith Eisner were at that first reading. Both expressed interest in acting in the play and were later cast in the two leads. Samantha approached Olympia Family Theater where she is Managing Director, and they agreed to tag it onto the end of their regular season.  Barbara felt strongly that I should direct the play, so I agreed.”
Meyers also says: “Mary Brown struggled with issues that hold relevance to contemporary audiences, and I focused my attention on finding those bridges of experience. Mary questions whether violence is ever justified, stands up to racial injustice, and deals with those who return from battle traumatized. She endures impoverishment and the death of her children to violence. She asks whether or not any cause is worth that. She strives to reconcile her own beliefs with her husband's religious zealotry, and ultimately, she finds her own way. This is a great story and one that allowed us to be more imaginative. The historical facts became the context in which we imagined the play. It is, after all, imaginary.”
In addition to Chandler and Eisner, the cast members are: Sara Geiger and Hannah Sampson as John Brown’s daughters, Jeremy Holien as his son, Edsonya Charles as Mrs. Epps (free Negro and friend to Mary), Debbie Sampson as the famous Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott, Reneeka Massey-Jones as the runaway slave Savannah, Rick Pearlstein as a bounty hunter, and Tom Lockhart as a Southern man.
Musical accompaniment by the five-piece ensemble of Steve Mazepa, Molly Robertson, Michael Hays, Donna Pallo-Perez, and John Morgan will feature original arrangements of Negro spirituals and popular songs of the era.
The Abolitionist’s Wife opens Friday night, June 21 at 8 p.m. and runs through Saturday, July 6. There will be a pay-what-you-can performance Sunday, June 23 at 8 p.m. Performances take place at the Olympia Family Theater Playspace, 112 State Ave NE, Olympia.
Director- Sky MyersSet/Lights by Jill CarterCostumes Kathy AndersonSound Design John Manini

Musings on nudity and eroticism in artdrawing by Paul CadmusStories with photos of bare breasted women on protest marches in Manhattan have been going around the Internet lately. The half-naked women were claiming their right to go topless. The story on policymic.com carried a picture of an attractive redhead with a lovely figure, breasts exposed. It was not an erotic picture. It was a joyful picture. There were also videos posted with more bare breasted women on the streets of New York surrounded by hoards of happy people, most with their cellphone cameras flashing. The topless women were nice looking. In different contexts or poses they would probably be considered sexy, but there was nothing sexually stimulating about those video images. They seemed to me wholesome, healthy and joyful, but certainly not dirty.
Reading about the protest set me to thinking about attitudes toward sex and nudity in general and, specifically, in art (and by-the-way, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that it is legal for women to go topless in the city).  
Le Sommeil by Gustav CourbetI remember when I was about 20 years old and as horny as any 20-year-old could be, and I somehow came into possession of a nudist magazine filled with photos of naked men, women and children of all shapes and sizes. Those photos were interesting but not arousing. It makes me wonder if our society would not have a much healthier attitude toward sex if nudity were commonly accepted. Taken out of sexual context, bodies are just bodies; we all have them.
In that nudist magazine there was one photo that I can still picture in my mind some 50 years later. It was the picture of a teenage girl leaping for joy with arms reaching heavenward. I thought she was as beautiful as any creature I had ever seen, but her photograph was not sexual in any way. Her picture did remind me, however, of some of Gauguin's paintings of bare-breasted Tahitians, which I thought were extremely sexy and tender.
Eroticism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Gustav Courbet, the father of realism, is also known as a painter of erotic imagery. His “Le Sommeil,” a painting of two naked women asleep with arms and legs entwined, is considered one of the more erotic paintings in Western art history, and it is often debated whether or not his “The Origin of the World” is pornographic. To me, “Le Sommeil” is somewhat erotic but also, like the Gauguins, very sweet and innocent, and I do not think “The Origin of the World” is pornographic; nor do I think it is particularly arousing. Some of the artworks I do find to be highly erotic are drawings by the sculptor Pierre August Rodin and paintings by Amedio Modigliani, and drawings and paintings by Cadmus drawings, who is about the only artist I know of who has made pictures of both male and female subjects that are tastefully erotic. Odalesque, acrylic on canvas by Alec Clayton 1985There is a dearth of male nudes in art history. Other than Cadmus and some contemporary gay erotica, most of which I’ve seen is of little artistic merit, there is Thomas Eakins, and then you have to go back to Rodin and all the way back to Michelangelo’s David and beyond that to Greek statuary to find beautiful male nudes. One thing that strikes me as I contemplate these things is that with few exceptions the artworks which to me are erotic are not realistic. Gauguin’s figures have a blocky, primitive look, Modigliani’s figures are simplified and flattened, with very little realistic detail, Cadmus’s paintings have a cartoon-like character, and his drawings and those by Rodin are loose and expressively drawn with more attention to the line quality than to the depiction of the figure. So what is the difference? I think it might rest with what I said in the previous sentence: upon what does the artist focus — the art or the figure? If the focus is on the art — line, color, value, shape, texture — the humanity of the subject comes across as real; but when the focus is on the body the subject(s) of the art become objectified, which makes it more pornographic than artistic and not really sexy, or certainly not in a healthy way. Rodin’s drawings are an excellent example. He did some explicitly sexual drawings in which the figure is obviously objectified, but they are not the more erotically stimulating of his works. His more erotic works are the drawings of figures dancing or in other natural poses with lyrical contour lines playing off against washes of color or gray tones and without the intentional attention to sexual parts.I’m meditating on these things now because of the stories about the New York protests and because this summer I am scheduled to show and discuss a film that deals with the subject. The film is called Open Studio. It was a class project my wife did as a film student at The Evergreen State College in 1988. At the time I was making art that dealt with sexual subject matter, not necessarily erotic art, although some of it could have been seen that way, but art that commented on our society’s attitudes toward nudity and sex. For the filming we hung a large selection of my paintings on the wall and invited a group of TESC students to look at them and discuss them with me.
We will be showing the film at B2 Gallery in Tacoma July 12 at 7 p.m. The film viewing will be followed by an open discussion. In the 25 years since the film was made my art and my attitudes have changed. I’m not even sure that I agree with some of the things I said back then. It will be interesting to re-watch that film with other viewers and then discuss it.The event will take place during the run of the exhibition Bathers of the Sun, Bathers of the Moon featuring the works of abstract-figurative artist Leonardo Lanzolla, mosaic artist Jennifer Kuhns, and printmaker Mary Pacios .The night of the film viewing, and that night only, I will also show a group of figure paintings, some of which have never been shown publicly. Hopefully we will have a lively discussion about nudity in art, about the difference between nudity and nakedness, and the difference between erotic art and pornography. When we get closer to the date I will send out invitations by email and on Facebook.

Hospital Update(From L to R Michael Cooper, Jeremy Thompson, Martin J. Mackenzie, Mark Peterson, Jefri Peters, Rachel Fitzgerald, Russ Coffey). Photo by Galen Wicks PhotographyIt was Saturday night of the opening weekend of The Laramie Project at Tacoma Little Theatre. We thought we must have arrived too early because there was only one other person in the lobby who was not theater staff. By the time the play started more had trickled in, but it looked like little more than a fourth of the seats were filled. If they had been doing The Sound of Music or a Neil Simon comedy the house would have been sold out. 
Director Brie Yost wrote in her director’s notes, “I was told by a fellow theatre colleague that ‘Tacoma is not ready for The Laramie Project.’” Tacoma? The Advocate magazine’s recent choice for gayest city in America? — If that is true then the people who are staying away have no idea what an amazing theatrical experience they are missing. I was astounded as I experienced moment after moment after moment of jaw-droppingly stunning dialog and memorable acting and staging. This is the fourth time I have seen this show, plus one performance of the ten-year-after show. I’ve seen it done by a high school drama department; I’ve seen a college production; I’ve seen it done by a community theater company and one professional company. — TLT’s production is hands-down the best I’ve seen.Aaron McKinney's Confession(From L to R Jeremy Thompson, Russ Coffey, Michael Cooper). Photo by Galen Wicks PhotographyIn 1998 on a cold October night 21-year-old gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo. He was found 18 hours later and rushed to the hospital, where he died five days later. The case was a media frenzy. Five weeks after Matthew Shepard’s death, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project of New York City went to Laramie, where in the course of the next year they conducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town. They wrote the play using the actual words of the interviewees, including people who knew Matthew Shepard and even his killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. A cast of nine actors play the roles of more than 20 Laramie residents, Kaufman and members of the acting company, with staging reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town — but unlike Our Town, this is not fiction. This is naked truth.EpilogueThe cast of THE LARAMIE PROJECT.   Photo by Galen Wicks PhotographyIt is beautifully directed and has a mood setting sparse set designed by Lex Gernon with spot on lighting by Niclas R. Olson. The use of overhead television monitors in the scenes where the media was swarming the town was extremely effective (reminding me of a similar use of monitors in TLT’s Frost/Nixon, which Yost also directed).The ensemble cast works in such harmony that it would be wrong to single out any one actor. They are each superb. They are: Jen Aylsworth, Russ Coffey, Mike Cooper, Rachel Fitzgerald, Marty MacKenzie, Jefri Peters, Mark Peterson, Tiffani Pike, and Jeremy Thompson, each playing multiple roles.What is truly amazing is the manner in which these actors change from character to character, often in a manner of seconds with no more than a simple costume change — sometimes in full view of the audience — more often than not consisting of a simple change of hats or a different shirt or jacket thrown over the black T-shirts they all wear, and then a radical change of voice, from the twang of a cowboy to the sophisticated tone of a college professor. As one of the audience members pointed out in the great talk-back after the show, method actors may live in character on and off stage for months at a time, yet these actors do the same thing while cycling through anywhere from six to ten characters each with the changes in the length of time it takes to put on a hat or walk from one part of the stage to another.I’m writing this on the day of the Tony Awards. Each of these actors deserve one of those, and Yost deserves one for directing.And you know what? This is not even a “mainstage” production; it is a “second stage” show, meaning it’s not considered mainstream enough to draw large audiences. The good thing about that is that tickets are merely $10.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday through June 23WHERE: Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N “I” St., TacomaTICKETS: $10INFORMATION: 253-272-2281, www.tacomalittletheatre.com.

Also see Michael Dresdner's review
.

glass art movement in Australia drops in on Tacoma"The Portland Panels: Choreographed Geometry," by Klaus Moje, 2007, kiln-formed and diamond-polished glass. {Photo courtesy of Glenn Ostergaard Glass Collection}

The Weekly Volcano, June 5, 2013


Little known to most Americans, there is a glass art movement in Australia that developed alongside the similar glass art movement in our area going back to the 1970s, spurred by artists from Pilchuck and the Bullseye Glass Company in Portland. "The connections between Australia and the Pacific Northwest are longstanding and fascinating, but the differences between the art of the two regions are just as intriguing," says Vicki Halper, curator of "Links: Australian Glass and the Pacific Northwest" at Museum of Glass.

The show at MOG features the works of 21 Australian and five American contemporary glass artists. The works are interestingly arranged in three galleries according to styles or themes.

In the first gallery are works with a predominance of striped and layered vases, bowls and panels in what seems to be a signature Australian style featuring variously colored bars or stripes fused together to create abstract patterns or landscapes as exemplified by Klaus Moje's massive "The Portland Panels: Choreographed Geometry," four panels measuring 74½ by 47½ inches with a network of intricately connected bars of yellow, black and dusty rose crisscrossing on the flat gray surface, or in Giles Bettison's vessels and baskets which look like Northwest Coastal Indian baskets in woven patterns of red and yellow.

The second gallery is filled with fun and funky works highlighted by portrait faces and other quirky works - some reminiscent of the great American artist Red Grooms - that are mostly humorous and light hearted.

The third gallery features subtle and nuanced pieces with very little color and delicately balanced abstract forms such as Jane Bruce's "Shift," three minimalist forms standing upright in front of a white "wall." Each of these little monolithic forms is white but with one edge colored: one yellow, one blue and one red. Or Gabriella Bisetto's beautifully formed and delicately balanced glass sculptures that look simultaneously massive (like giant bolders) and as delicate as thin-shelled eggs. From across the gallery they look like they're made of polished steel, but up close you can barely see that they are hollow forms with thin glass shells that look like they are lighting from inside.

Well known Americans in the show are Steve Klein, Dante Marioni, Richard Marquis and April Surgent.

This is the first American museum exhibition dedicated to the wide spectrum of Australian studio glass and the connection between artists and institutions in Australia and the Pacific Northwest. It is a show that should not be missed.

Museum of Glass will present 17 weeks of visiting artists, most of whom are represented in the exhibition, over the summer. A schedule of the visiting artist program can be found on the MOG website at museumofglass.org

"LINKS: AUSTRALIAN GLASS AND THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST," through January 2014, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, Museum of Glass, 1801 Dock St. Tacoma, $5-$12, 866.4MUSEUM

Jeff Hirschberg and Rebecca Lea McCarthy are terrific in the comedy Same Time, Next Year at Olympia Little Theatre. 
  Rebecca Lea McCarthy as Doris and
Jeff Hirschberg as George in the opening scene, 1951. All photos by Austin Lang

George and Doris in 1956
1965Hirschberg began acting in 2009. He played the ghost in Hamlet at South Sound Community College and was the voice of K-Billy in Theater Artists Olympia’s Reservoir Dogs. McCarthy is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts and has an impressive resume including work with the CBGB Improve Group in New York, but has never before acted in Olympia.Written by Bernard Slade and directed by Jim Patrick, this modern love story tells, in two acts of three scenes each, the story of George (Hirschberg) and Doris (McCarthy) a couple having an extremely long lasting affair. Strangely enough, the audience seems to readily accept their love affair as being perfectly fine, just as they’re willing to buy into the concept of a one-night-stand blossoming into a once-a-year rendezvous that starts in 1951 and goes until at least 1975. Like most of the audience for this show, as well as people who saw the 1978 film starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, I was happy to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy their escapades.Every year at the same time they meet in the same hotel room for a weekend of lovemaking. Lots of it. I don’t know when I’ve seen so much kissing and hugging on stage. There are no sex scenes, just talk about it before and after the acts with some graphic language, most notably about erections, and sometimes the lack thereof. The gist of their 24-year affair is played out in scenes that take place every four or five years, specifically 1951, ’56, ’61, ’65, ’70 and ’75, and every time they come together they have changed in response to the social and political climate of the day.Slade has written in some brilliantly repetitive bits such as at each rendezvous George and Doris take turns telling each other something good and something bad about their spouses, and each time they come together one or the other is conflicted due to guilt — but never enough to break off the affair.It is a sophisticated sex comedy with a good helping of soul searching, love and conflict.It is well directed and well-acted with nostalgic music and video projections of the various times periods smoothing over the transitions between scenes as Hirschberg and McCarthy cycle through a delightful parade of period costumes, including wigs for Doris who frequently changes her hair style and color. Audience members who lived through those time periods will enjoy the costuming by Allison Gerst and Carol Baque. I thoroughly enjoyed the give-and-take between George and Doris, and I’m pleased to see a couple of promising newcomers to South Sound stages.
WHEN: 7:55 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 1:55 p.m. Sunday through June 23WHERE: Olympia Little Theatre, 1925 Miller Ave., NE, OlympiaTICKETS: $10-$14, available at Yenney Music Company on Harrison Avenue (360-943-7500) or  http://www.brownpapertickets.com INFORMATION: 360-786-9484,http://olympialittletheater.org/

We saw Lynn Di Nino's "Tribute to Hostess" at Flow Gallery (although it was called "The Surivivors" then. And we saw it in the Foundation of Art show at B2. Now it's going to Seattle. Below you'll find an announcement lifted from Facebook and below that my review of her show at Flow. It's a fun show about an American icon that's going bye-bye.REMINDER FOR NEXT SUNDAY IF YOU'RE IN SEATTLE:See this show at the original Art Bar in Seattle:  TWO BELLS TAVERN.  They serve good food and it's a cool place which features. . . .  art.  This show will make you smile. . . TRIBUTE TO HOSTESSOpens June 9th, a Sunday afternoon from 2 - 5 pm(I'll be there of course)TWO BELLS2313 4th Ave in Belltown, SeattleThe show runs through July 31, 2013 Together with her team, artist Lynn Di Nino has recreated wall-hung vignettes depicting archeological discoveries of Hostess products from as long ago as Shackelton's 1914 aborted exploration to the South Pole.  In this exhibit, temperature- sealed and rare archival artworks each celebrate pristine pink Snowballs, Twinkies, Zingers, DingDongs, Cupcakes and more, in their found environments.              Lynn Di Nino’s 'The Survivors' at Flow GalleryMuseum-like displays of Hostess products and similar packaged food stuffs displayed in oddly shaped box-like structures The Weekly Volcano,  March 21, 2012 



Top: “The Hostess Ark: Two by Two”
Bottom: "Puppet Love"
Assemblages by Lynn D. Nino. Courtesy Flow Gallery
In October of this year a team of British researchers is scheduled to dig down through three-kilometer-thick ice to explore Lake Ellsworth in the Antarctic, in hopes of finding new species and clues about the future impact of climate change.

But Tacoma artist Lynn Di Nino and her team of stalwart archeologists have beat them to the punch. And what did they find buried under the ice in Antarctica? Hostess cupcakes. Tons and tons of cupcakes and other Hostess products, plus many other consumer products that have been popular throughout most of our lives. Those damn cupcakes last forever, and that's the point of this art-as-archeology exhibition.

You can count on Di Nino to be cleverly relevant, and this show - like most of what she does - addresses important contemporary issues with wry humor. In this instance the issues are consumerism and environmental waste.

Called The Survivors, Di Nino's exhibition at Flow Gallery consists of museum-like displays of Hostess products and similar packaged food stuffs displayed in oddly shaped box-like structures covered with protective "glass." The "glass" being plastic packaging of the type manufacturers love to put everything from toys to apples in, the kind that clog our landfills, lakes and rivers. Di Nino's assemblages are like Pop Art versions of Joseph Cornell boxes but without the compartments. Each piece has a wall label that typically lists not only the media - concrete, wood, found objects, etc. - but also the ingredients of the food: bleached wheat flour, niacin, thiamine mononitrate (B1), riboflavin (B2), folic acid and so forth. The lists of ingredients are quite long.

"The Ark: Two by Two" has a little red Radio Flyer wagon loaded with packages of cupcakes, Sno Balls, Ding Dongs and Twinkies. "Puppy Love" has Howdy Doody on a shelf diving into a package of cupcakes. There are chocolate crumbs all over his mouth. "Ejectulation Confection" (yes, that's how she spells it) is rife with sexual symbolism. A Twinkies pack (had you ever noticed that they are phallic-shaped?) inserted into the vaginal, confetti-lined hole atop a Jack-in-the-Box.

I could go on forever. You get the idea. One more example: "Star Studded Cast" is an assemblage consisting of part of a Hills Coffee can, a yellow high-heel shoe, a Hostess cupcake and a pack of Camel cigarettes. The wall text next to it reads, in part: "These popular icons, as a group, seem to represent the U.S. in the '50s. Some have endured throughout time. Collectively they represent a walk down memory lane."

In Di Nino's art, concept overrides form. What the art says is more important than how it looks. But that does not mean she is not a fine craftsperson. These pieces are built with care, but don't go to this exhibit seeking aesthetic pleasure. Go for the message, for the clever and pun-filled wall labels and even - for those of a certain age - for the nostalgia.   

Scott C. Brown and Brittni ThoresonThe taut drama Two Rooms presented by Confrontational Theater Project at Eclectic Theater in Seattle has a very limited run – only through this Monday, June 3. Directed by Beau M.K. Prichard, it features Scott C. Brown, Brittni Thoreson, Taryn Pearce and Julia Nardin. It is a drama of political intrigue and personal conflict and anguish that is a perfect vehicle for a tiny fringe space the likes of Eclectic Theater, a black box space in the middle of Capital Hill that seats about 25 patrons.
Two Rooms was Time Magazine's play of the year in 1988, and is one of acclaimed playwright Lee Blessing's most recognized plays. A woman, Lainie (Thoreson), sits in an empty room and waits for news of her husband, Michael (Brown), who is being held hostage in Lebanon. She imagines conversing with her husband, and she deals with a representative of the State Department named Ellen (Nardin) and a member of the press, Walker (Pearce). Nardin plays the officious and not-at-all likeable state department staffer, and Pearce is brilliant as the feisty reporter who clashes constantly with Ellen while walking a delicate tightrope between consoling and challenging Lainie. 
This trio of women actors draws the audience in as they portray a range of devastating emotions. Thoreson is particular exposes the depths of emotion and conflict as she opens Lainie’s heart to the audience as she creates a space in their home where she can feel Michael, write letters to him in her head and speak to him. Nardin’s Ellen came across as too officious and off-putting. You would think the State Department would send someone who could empathize with Lanie a little more. Was that the writing, the acting, the direction or a combination? I couldn’t tell.
This play explores the personal cost of large-scale political conflict, and measures the power, or lack of power, that governments have over individuals. The State Department wants Lainie to stay quiet, to not get in the way of their ongoing negotiations. The reporter wants to share her story with the world. Lainie just wants her husband back, and she suspects that Walker is after a Pulitzer Prize and the State Department really thinks of her husband as an expendable tool in a larger war. 
Michael just wants to survive. He narrates his story of captivity while handcuffed and hooded so he cannot see. He feels his way in the dark speaking with Lainie – and to an audience he cannot see . With nuanced inflections of voice and subtle movements of his manacled hands Brown expressively conveys Michael’s hopelessness, fear and anger, and his love for his wife. 
Periodically the hood comes off as Michael and Lainie play out scenes that happen only in their minds.In this riveting performance Brown reminds me of why I have twice named him Best Actor in my annual Critic’s Choice award, first for his depiction of Salieri in Amadeus and then for his portrayal of McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The program does not credit anyone for makeup, but Michael has a bloody lip and bruises and his tight handcuffs cut into his bloody wrists so realistically that it was painful to watch. That is a masterful makeup job.
Two Rooms runs through June 3 at Eclectic Theater, 1214 10th Ave., Seattle.Tickets at http://tworooms.brownpapertickets.com/or at the door
Going on the Road for one night only
If South Sound theater goers can’t make it up to Seattle they will have one other opportunity to see Two Rooms when it goes on the road for a single performance at Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd.,Lakewood (253) 588-0042, on Sunday, June 16 at 8 p.m. -

“Muh Grog Zoo, is a Long Form Improvisational Theatre cohort that creates improvised plays. With an emphasis on strong character and story development, audience members will experience a range of emotions. Muh Grog Zoo provides their audience the opportunity to connect with Improvised Theatre on multiple human levels.   Adam Utley, Dylan Twiner, Paul Richter, and Sam Duchin are the founders and performers of the Tacoma, WA based group.”
Capital Playhouse is thrilled to offer Olympia audiences MUH GROG ZOO’s unique brand of Improvisational Theater. MUH GROG ZOO debuted recently at Capital Playhouse with a special late night showing, delighting the crowd with their special blend of comedy and on-the-spot entertainment.
 SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 @9:00PMADVANCE TICKETS $6.00 DAY OF SHOW $8.00

Tickets available at www.capitalplayhouse.comor by calling 360-943-2744.

The Weekly Volcano, May 30, 20132
I enjoyed visiting the student art show at Tacoma Community College. 
The first thing to catch the eye upon entering the gallery is a large, two-part print project created as a collaboration by printmaking students. A series of black and white prints — they look like etchings or woodcuts — fill two good-sized, unframed and unstretched canvases. The images range from Northwest coastal Indian masks to Beavis from the TV show “Beavis and Butthead” (or maybe it’s Butthead, I never can get those guys straight). It’s a strong and impactful graphic image.
The other drawings and prints in the show are inconsistent: some pretty good, some lame, and everything in between. The photos, some of the sculpture, and the commercial graphic arts projects are much stronger.Ali Abedi’s “Spring,” wood, paper and plaster, is disturbing and impossible to ignore. It is a blood-splattered plaster hand with cut-off fingers. A powerful image.
I like J. Gordon Rudolph’s “Musical Landscape With Trees.” Spoon-shaped metal objects are mounted on a board in a grid pattern. The board is painted in wavering bands of dark blue, purple, orange and yellow. The contrasts of colors and shapes and the slight variations within repetitive forms make for an intriguing image.There is a group of drawings of letters forming patterns in black ink on white paper. The best of these is Cindy Aldrich’s “Letter Vomit,” a cascade of the letters “h” and “y” that are solid black on top melding into line shading and to outlined letters at the bottom. It is interesting how the identical letters “h” and “y” depending on the way they are positioned.
There are a lot of outstanding photographs — I counted 34 in all — filling two walls of the gallery. Among the best of these are three by Zenia Rodriguez; a strong image of sunlight and shadows under a pier by Michelle Jackson; two photos by Logan Pederson, one of a figure standing in front of a market sign and another of a figure, feet only, standing on wet pavement with that same market sign reflected in the water; and a great picture of a woman seen from waist down seated on a concrete slab in front of a graffiti-filled wall.
There is a wall of graphic art projects including announcements for this show designed by Xavier Lebron and Kara Woodstock, and a design for a Museum of Glass logo painted on a car by Justin Holaday.My favorite piece in the whole show is a sculpture by Chris Nokes of a suspension bridge made of wood and metal. The towers from which the cables hang are anthropomorphized with “heads” like camera lens, and all of the wood framing is wrapped with some kind of parchment-like paper. It seems to simultaneously reflect ancient and futuristic cultures.
As in all student shows, there are hits and misses. The hits make the entire show worth visiting.
[Tacoma Community College, Student Art Exhibition, noon to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, through June 13, Building 4, entrance off South 12th Street between Pearl and Mildred, Tacoma.]

 Cinderella’s (Ingrid Pharris Goebel) coach arrives to take her to the ball. Photo by David Nowitz.
What a feat! What a coup! For the second time Olympia Family Theater is presenting a world premiere musical written by a local playwright. And it is fabulous!
Playwright and composer Ted Ryle adapted the play from the children’s picture book by Ellen Jackson. Guitarist Rich Sikorski, composer Miriam Sterlin and Ryle’s daughter Mandy Ryle all pitched in to help with the music.
Ryle says the project began more than 15 years ago when he and his wife, Jen (OFT co-founder) read the book Cinder Ednato their daughters, who are now all grown. It is a labor of love pulled together with a Kickstarter campaign and the help of many dedicated Olympia theater folk.
The favored son, Prince Randolph, (Xander Layden) can't imagine anyone finer than himself. Photo by Dinea DePhoto.The story is about Cinderella’s next door neighbor, Edna, who, like Ella, is a maid. But there’s a big difference between the two young women surviving degrading servitude and poverty. While Ella (Ingrid Goebel) is a self-pitying whiner who cries a lot and dreams that someday her prince will come, Edna (Carolyn Willems-Van Dijk) is a go-getter, an entrepreneur who bakes and sells casseroles and revels in telling jokes that are as silly as they are funny. And there is more than one prince, oh yeah. Prince Randolph (Xander Layden) is the most narcissistic character since Narcissus himself. He prances and preens and spends a whole lot of time looking at his most gorgeous reflection in the mirror. Prince Rupert (Harrison Fry) is the misfit in the royal family. He runs a recycling business, wears clothes pieced together from recycled materials and loves puns. And he may be the only person in the kingdom who thinks Edna’s jokes are funny.
Now matter how hard Cinder Edna's (Carolyn Fry) stepsisters (Meghan Goodman and Priscilla Zal) try, they just can't seem to make her life miserable. Photo by Dinea DePhoto.Everyone knows what happens when Ella goes to the ball. What’s not quite so well known is that Edna also goes to the ball, and she meets and falls in love with Prince Rupert.
It is a delightful children’s story played for adult laughs too with lots of topical humor and with 23 original songs, mostly done in styles reminiscent of pop songs from the 1950s, played by a six-piece band which provides scene transitions with perfectly-chosen pop standards like “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” and the wedding march at just the right moment.
Kate Ayers’ direction is spot-on. The set by Jill Carter is and gorgeous, with beautifully painted backdrops marvelously bathed in pastel colors — magical lighting also designed by Carter.
Cinder Edna (Carolyn Fry) and Prince Rupert (Harrison Fry) discover a true happy ending doesn't require uncomfortable footwear. Photo by Dinea DePhoto. Goebel and Willems-Van Dijk turn in outstanding performances as Ella and Edna. They’re both good comic actors and both sing well — and nobody cries like Goebel. Fry and Layden each make their characters absurdly believable.  
In supporting roles, Amanda Stevens and Priscilla Zal stand out. Stevens, who plays the queen and the fairy godmother and other roles has a great voice, and she achieves haughtily disdainful looks with style. Zal plays the voice and puppeteer for a smart-alecky parrot, and her expressively screechy parrot voice is hilarious.
Cinder Edna is a show for children and adults that fits beautifully in the intimate space of the Washington Center’s black box but could play equally well on a major stage. I can imagine it being a hit at Seattle’s 5th Avenue or Paramount. I’d love to see it go forward to productions in other venues, but don’t wait for that to happen. See it now while you can. You’ll love it.
Performances May 30 and 31 at 7 and 9 p.m. and June 1 at 1, 3, 4:30 and 6 p.m., The Washington Center, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia. Tickets online at http://olyft.org/tickets/ or at the box office. 360.753.8586

The Weekly Volcano, May 23, 2013Plaster and pastel sculpture by Caitlin McDonaldOf course there are a few clunkers in the 8th Annual Student Art Exhibit at South Puget Sound Community College, but there are plenty of impressive works as well. Most impressive of all may be a large cardboard forest against the back wall of the gallery. It’s a collaborative work by students in the 3-D Design class.
Also impressive is a small figure drawing in sharpie and vine charcoal by Colin Johnstone. It’s a reclining nude with a nice blend of expressive and lyrical contour drawing and flat shaded areas. The drawing and the position of the figure suggest exhausted collapse. It reminds me a lot of drawings by Rodin.
And then there is a group of three plaster sculptures by students Melyssa Wilder, Ashley Gunderson and Caitlin McDonald. With realistic heads and rough arms and hands, these figures hang on the wall and each is doing something thoroughly contemporary: talking on a cell phone, playing a Nintendo, napping with head on the keyboard of a netbook — good work both individually and collectively.
Hauntingly mysterious and atmospheric is a black and white digital photograph by Jennifer Watts of a group of figures that appear to be chess pieces, kings and knights and bishops, brought to life to wander zombie-like in a fog-shrouded world. The atmospheric mood is created by the artist’s use of selective focus.
Like some kind of iconic monolith, a cigarette butt stands upright in Brandon A. Cartwright’s digital photograph “Tree Cig.” It takes a strong imagination and artistic vision to create such a monumental image from a piece of trash.
One of the nicest works in the show is Winona So’s ceramic mug called “Graiff Mug.” I don’t know if the odd spelling was intentional or not, but I do know that the excellent graphic image of a giraffe with his neck as the mug handle is clever and enjoyable to look at. Another piece that’s definitely worth mentioning is Patricia McLain’s “Boy With Antlers, Experiments in Relief Printing.” It is a handmade artist book fanned out for display with on each page the same picture of a boy with antlers on his head, each printed in a different color. It’s an attractive piece.  You may not go to a student show with high expectations, but this one is certainly worth a trip across town to SPSCC.
[South Puget Sound Community College, Kenneth J Minnaert Center for the Arts Gallery, Monday-Thursday, noon-4 p.m., through June 6, and by appointment, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW. Olympia, 360.596.5527.]

For another student art show visit the gallery at Tacoma Community College and watch for my review of that show to be published in the Volcano May 30th.

 We need to hold back the surging tide of wall fodder.
What is wall fodder? It is art that is safe, bland, perhaps nicely done, but neither challenging nor exciting. Stuff you might hang on your wall if you wanted to be sure not to offend anyone — and match the couch, of course. I first heard the term used by Willie Ray Parish, a sculptor in El Paso, Texas. His wife, Becky Hendrick (a fine painter and art critic), informed me that he got it from her and that she got it from an LA Weekly article by Peter Plagens. I wrote an essay about it titled The Case Against Wall Fodder that is posted on my website and reprinted in my book As If Art Matters</.
"Reversal of Fortune" by Ric Hall is not wall fodder.Many of the pastels in The Northwest Pastel Society Invitational, which I recently reviewed for the Weekly Volcano, were wall fodder. They were skillfully done and most were attractive, but they were the visual equivalent of cotton candy or bubblegum music. When artists do this kind of work and galleries show it, they promote mediocrity. So why do they do it? Do they believe that a sweet little landscape that is essentially no different than millions of other sweet little landscapes is as artistically worthy as, for instance, a Picasso or a Rembrandt? Probably not, but it is likely that the gallery owners, like their customers, enjoy the sweet little landscapes. They’re comfortable with them. Furthermore, they surely know that such art will sell more readily than, say, an abstract painting by a little-known regional painter. Back to the pastel show, I noticed a lot of red dots indicating paintings that were sold. I also noticed that the listed prices were two-to four-times those of paintings of comparable size by artists of considerable regional repute seen in other area galleries. So maybe it’s a matter of making money. God knows, if they can’t make money we all suffer a lack of art.
I’ve talked to artists who separate art made with the hope of selling from art made for their personal satisfaction. I remember talking to a gallery owner who had works by some pretty gutsy contemporary artists, including the great Richard Diebenkorn, in his personal collection but showed much safer wall fodder in his gallery, knowing the stuff he collected would not sell. So I understand and sympathize, but still, catering to commercial concerns in art aides in the proliferation of bubblegum art. It becomes a never-ending circle: artists and galleries gear their art to the buying public, and young people who want to be artists see this stuff and think it’s what they should be doing.
When I was a child, I spake as a child ..but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I suspect that my development as an artist in some ways mirrored the development of Western art through history, as did the development of many of my contemporaries. As a small child I fell in love with painting and drawing and tried to make pictures like the ones I had seen in books. Through childhood, high school and college I worked at perfecting my ability to make a picture of a house or a man or a tree look like a house or a man or a tree. I never perfected it to the degree of a Vermeer or even a Phillip Pearlstein or Chuck Close, but I got pretty good at it. And I noticed artists such as van Gogh and Matisse and Picasso who didn’t try to make an image of a man look so much like a man, but changed and distorted images to answer other kinds of realities; and I studied what they did in an attempt to understand it, and making a house look like a house was no longer good enough for me. I was compelled to make art that did more than imitate nature; I was compelled to find my own voice. I imagine that every artist goes through something like that, but those who make wall fodder are satisfied with imitating nature (and by-the-way, abstract art can also be wall fodder). If art is to be something more than a hobby, then — with apologies to Henri Matisse who said he wanted his art to be something like a comfortable chair — I declare that artists must strive for something beyond making nice pictures. That so many of them don’t is something I attribute, at least in part, to the screwed-up nature of the art market.
Regional galleries cater to mediocrity. They pretty much have to if they’re going to stay in business. Risky, experimental and challenging art does not sell outside of major art centers. And trendy big-city galleries are sometimes just as bad, or they artificially inflate the value of their artists, making it almost impossible for artists, dealers and collectors to know what is good and what’s not. Ah ha! Maybe that’s where critics come in. Are you kidding? Have you read most of what passes for criticism these days? The reviews seem to be PR for the galleries that advertise in the magazines.
Even works by truly great artists are artificially inflated as collectors try to outdo each other by owning the most expensive baubles. The New York Times recently reported that one of Jackson Pollock’s classic drip paintings — “No. 19, 1948” — sold for a record $58.3 million, and it was reported on the CBS morning show that a Barnett Newman painting sold for more than $43 million. Charlie Rose and Gayle King made snide comments about the Newman, which showed just how stupid and arrogant they are. Despite Rose and King’s stupidity, these are great paintings, but the prices are absurd. No art should be worth that kind of money.
The problem with paintings selling for such inflated prices — other than the absolute absurdity of it — is that it takes the Pollocks and Newmans out of the museums and into private collections where only a few outlandishly rich people can see them. Already the public is limited in what they can see. There’s only so much in museums and many people can never afford to go to Italy to see Michelangelo’s “David” or to France to see the “Mona Lisa.” The only art the public in most places gets to see is what shows up in local galleries and reproductions in books where they can’t see the scale or surface quality or true colors. So the circle of mediocrity keeps spinning.

The Mechanics of Memory by Becky Hendrick, acrylic and alkyd on canvas; 45” x 45”Artist and writer Becky Hendrick painted a series on the Holocaust which she later wrote about in a book called Mechanics of Memory. Becky is a fine artist and a fine writer and, coincidentally, related to me. Here's the opening of her essay on the Holocaust paintings:

"During the 1980s, the art world boomed. It was Big Business, painting was hot, and we painters got spoiled by attention and sales. So when a collector asked to meet me and see my paintings, I was ready and eager to discuss the work: its intentions, the formal choices, the imagery and, most important to me, the content; relationships – causal, oppositional, complementary, paradoxical; that sort of thing. The themes I was dealing with were complex and consuming: choice, chance and consequence; the physics of change.
           'When the potential patron walked into the gallery, she was a living, breathing cliché; holding a fabric swatch, she wanted a painting to ‘match.’ I was probably polite and I probably did whatever was necessary to make a sale; my art may be oh-so-serious, but I am human. Privately, though, I still had enough liberal zeal to take offense at the contradiction between the content of my paintings and the spirit in which they were being bought and sold.
         " For a few years I had been considering the nature of pictures: whether, in an image-saturated culture, pictures still had the power to “work,” and if so, how. I began a series of Living Room Paintings in response to those people who shopped the contemporary galleries for their interior decoration needs. These paintings combined images of families displaced from their homes by war, poverty, or climate --- people with no living room --- with borders of decorative fabrics. My thinking was that if one has several thousand dollars to spend on something to hang over a sofa, that thing should be a constant reminder that owning it is a privilege!"

Please click on The Mechanics of Memory to read the complete essay and see more of her paintings.

"Reversal of Roles," pastel by Ric Hall The Northwest Pastel Society's 27th Annual International Open Exhibition at American Art Company features works from 58 artists from across the United States and Canada. Almost half the gallery is taken up with nice little landscapes that are amazingly similar to one another, and about a quarter of the gallery is filled with portraits and other figurative works that are also a lot alike, but not as much so as the landscapes.   There is one nude by Paul Barton of Olympia that is nice in that the figure is not idealized and there is some dramatic play of light and dark. There are a couple of Pop/photo-realist images by Kari Tirrell of Gig Harbor that are technically amazing. Tirrell’s “Train Wreck” is the juror’s pick for Best in Show. There’s a painting of race horses by Joe Mac Kechnie that looks like a Leroy Neiman sports illustration (Director’s Award); one purely abstract painting by Barbara Noonan of Seattle that is atmospheric and nicely executed; and a clever painting by Cinda Sue Dow of Friday Harbor of two zebras standing in the middle of a landscape that is an amalgamation of van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and “Wheat Fields” (without the crows).
The absolute best thing in the show is Ric Hall’s “Reversal of Roles,” a picture of a family seemingly huddled together in fear in a claustrophobic room with an open door. A kid with a head that is weirdly disjointed from his body clings to his father; the mother, dressed in a blue knit suit with matching handbag, seems anxious to go shopping, and there are strange colors and eerie triple shadows. It reminds me of Max Beckman and Emil Nolde. If only there were more works of this caliber in this show.
Tacoma art lovers will, of course, recognize Hall as half of the duo Hall and Schmidt who normally collaborate of their eerily surrealist pastels.
Another of my favorites is Janie Hutchinson’s “Frosty,” an attractive winter landscape of orange trees in snow-covered fields.
Almost every work in the show is beautifully done with either a softly layered surface quality or admirable realism, but the imagery is far too common. The show sorely lacks creativity. The President’s Award, Laurie Potter’s “Facing the Day,” has to be the worst award choice I’ve ever seen.
 [American Art Company, Northwest Pastel Society’s 27th Annual International Open Exhibition, Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday 10 am. to 5p.m., Third Thursday until 8 p.m., through June 15, 1126 Broadway Plaza, Tacoma, 253.272.4327]

Front: Jesse Smith, back: DuWayne Andrews, Jr., Zack Wheeler,
Bobby Barnts. Photo by Michele Smith LewisWhat do you call eight men and women with impressive training and experience in musical theater, solo performance, and even opera, singing and dancing their hearts out for two-and-a-half hours? You call it rock and soul — a soul-stirring evening of some of the best of the music that defined an era.It’s Only Rock and Soul at Centerstage Theatre in Federal Way brings is an evening of favorite hits of the ’60s and ’70s that is well worth a drive. We drove up from Olympia and it was a late night for us, but if it had gone on for another hour that would have been just fine with me.All but two of the cast are Seattle and South Sound favorites. Those two, Trista Duval and Zack Wheeler are newcomers to the area with strong professional backgrounds in other parts of the country. Duval has performed professionally in Massachusetts, Florida and Texas. Wheeler has performed in film and on stage in New York. He even performed in benefits for Bill and Hillary Clinton and for Al Sharpton.DuWayne Andrews, Jr. was in Seattle Opera’s Porgy and Bess and has been seen at Tacoma Musical Playhouse in The Color Purple and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He sings and dances with power and energy. He’s mesmerizing on “War,” the powerful anti-war anthem written by Edwin Strong and first recorded by the Temptations.Stacie Calkins, queen of soul in the South Sound, starred in Dream Girls, The Color Purple, Tommy, and many of the Purple Phoenix Productions including The Lena Horne Songbook and Aretha at the Apollo. In this show she does a great medley of Aretha Franklin songs and a stunning rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” in duet with Jesse Smith.Bobby Barnts is making his Centerstage debut in It’s Only Rock and Soul. He’s an opera singer, having performed with both Seattle Opera and Tacoma Opera, but he proves in this performance that he can belt out rock and roll and tender ballads with the best of them. His amazing call-and-response duo with Wheeler on “Hello It’s Me” and “Desperado” leaves the audience breathless.Centerstage audiences know Smith from his lead role in Tommy and Ain’t Misbehavin’ and their previous summer rock extravaganza, I’m Into Something Good. His acting, his joyful smile, his energy and his smooth voice draw the audience in and make them feel like they’re a part of the songs.Ashanti Mangum’s previous outing at Centerstage was in Ain’t Misbehavin.’ In Seattle she’s performed at Intiman, the 5thAvenue and Seattle Opera. She is absolutely spellbinding in that great heart-tugger from Hair, “Easy to Be Hard” and in the haunting “Whiter Shade of Pale.”Meg McLynn. Photo by Michele Smith LewisMeg McLynn starred in Purple Phoenix Productions Patsy Cline tribute and Tommy and the English Panto Pinocchio. She does a knockout “Angel in the Morning” that segues into Janice Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” and her rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” complete with psychedelic lighting is one of the highest of highlights in a show filled with highlights.Rather than doing the songs chronologically, they are grouped by theme and style, with a “chemical sequence” (recalling the ‘60s drug culture), boy-group and girl-group medleys, and songs of war and peace. The five-piece band led by David Duvall is outstanding as always, and Duvall’s arrangements are masterful, especially on some of the chemical sequence numbers and the Beatles medley and a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that’s unlike any I’ve ever heard.
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. through May 26, 3200 SW Dash Point Road,
http://www.centerstagetheatre.com/

The musical Legally Blonde at Capital Playhouse is high-energy escapist entertainment with some great music, and delightful but fluffy humor.
Elle Woods (Bailey Boyd) is an airhead sorority sister in love with Warner Huntington III (Patrick Wigren), a Jack Kennedy wannabe student whose goal is to become a senator by the time he’s 30. Before leaving UCLA to go to Harvard Law School Warner dumps Elle because she’s not “serious” enough and would not be a proper mate for an up-and-coming lawyer/politician. Determined to win him back, with a little help from Delta Nu sister Kate (Erin Snodgrass), Elle applies for and is accepted into Harvard Law — highly unlikely but hey, this is a musical.
Bailey Boyd (center); from left: Megan Tudor, Jen Ropella, Erin Snodgrass, Kristin Burch, Alessa Daniel, Jesika Westbrook, Samantha Eagle – photo by Dennis Kurtz At Harvard Elle transforms herself into an exemplary student with the help of — again, highly unlikely but it’s a musical — a divorced hairdresser named Paulette (Stephanie Nace), an imaginary Greek chorus cheering squad from her old sorority, and a nerdy but nice law teaching assistant named Emmett Forrest (Pauls Macs). Emmett is a character we’ve seen in countless romantic comedies, the nice guy who falls in love with the heroine.
Elle wins a coveted internship and joins a team of attorney interns defending a famous fitness instructor, Brooke (Kristin Burch) accused of murder.
The set by Bruce Haasl and Matt Lawrence’s lighting are outstanding as usual, and the costumes by Kellen Dixie Krieg and Lauren Cook are fabulously outrageous — notably Elle’s red dresses (which I wish were pink) and her drum majorette outfit, some of the clothes worn by the punk/hip-hop boys in the ensemble, and everything worn by Paulette.
Boyd carries the show, but not alone. Petite and perky with long blonde curls and big black eyelashes, Boyd was a great choice for this role. She’s a firecracker of energy and charm with a winning smile, and she sings beautifully.
Bailey Boyd, Pauls Mac – photo by Dennis Kurtz If this were a serious show Nace’s Paulette would provide the comic relief. Maybe she’s the comedy in the comedy. I’ve seen her in many roles at Capital Playhouse, and she always throws herself wholeheartedly into every role she plays. She plays Paulette as gutsy and streetwise, but also vulnerable.
Warner is a stuffy and arrogant character who turns out pretty nice in the end, not the kind of character that allows for Wigren to display his considerable comedic skills, but he plays him nicely.
Macs, an actor/director from Seattle, makes his Capital Playhouse debut as good-guy Emmett. He sings well and acts the part convincingly and his physical appearance is ideal for the role.
Burch stands out in the ensemble throughout most of the first act and then truly explodes with energy in the rope-jumping song “Whipped Into Shape.” Like Boyd, she brings so much energy and expressiveness to the part that she’s practically exhausting.
Another supporting role that is perfectly cast is Gregory Conn as Professor Callahan. Olympians will remember him as the emcee for the last two Capital City Pride festivals. As an actor he is sure and confident and he has an amazingly controlled voice.
Other notable supporting roles are Christian Carvajal in a great wig as Ella’s father and in other roles. He doesn’t sing much, he doesn’t dance, but he’s fun to watch — especially for people who are used to seeing him in highly dramatic roles such as Claudius in Hamlet and the professor in Oleanna. Also Alayna Deatherage as Enid Hoopes the outspoken feminist-lesbian student.
I recently saw Legally Blonde at Tacoma Musical Playhouse, and while I don’t like to compare different theater’s productions of the same show, seeing this in the smaller, more intimate space of Capital Playhouse has both advantages and drawbacks. Seeing the actor’s expressions up close and personal is great, but the drawback is there’s not enough room for the big song-and-dance numbers. Smaller numbers like the afore-mentioned “Whipped Into Shape” with only three performers right in the audience members’ faces are exciting, but the larger ensemble numbers lack the sweep and grandeur of a large stage, which this particular musical calls for.
For a delightful evening of fun-filled entertainment you can’t go wrong with Legally Blonde.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through May 26Where: Capital Playhouse: 612 Fourth Ave. E., OlympiaTickets: $28-39More information: 360-943-2744, capitalplayhouse.com

from left: Joey Fechtel as Stumpy, Anna Richardson as Lexi and D. Nail as Latham. Photo courtesy Harlequin Productions

Harlequin Productions’ love affair with playwright Israel Horovitz continues with Gloucester Blue, billed as “a dark comedy of modern manners and menacing power tools.” It’s a story of class struggles, murder and sex.

Harlequin co-founder and managing artistic director Scot Whitney has wisely recognized that Horovitz is one of America’s most intriguing living playwrights. Fortunately for Olympians, the playwright has a daughter who lives here, and it was on the occasion of one of his visits a few years back that Whitney and Horovitz connected and teamed up to produce Sins of the Mother, which was followed by Six Hotels, Unexpected Tenderness, and My Old Lady (a film is now in the works starring Maggie Smith and Kevin Kline). What a string of powerful, provocative, often hilarious and always dramatic plays culminating, for now, with this surprise-filled tale.
Horovitz is a master at capturing the lifestyles and speech patterns of working stiffs — especially if they happen to live in the seaport town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where many of his stories are set. He’s also a master at mixing outlandish comedy with gritty drama. Imagine an amalgamation of Tennessee Williams and Tom Stoppard.
Gloucester Blue takes place in an upstairs apartment in an old industrial building owned by Bradford Ellis IV, aka Bummy (Tom Dewey) and his wife, Lexi (Anna Richardson). Steve, also known as Stumpy (Joey Fechtel), has been contracted to paint the apartment, and he has hired Latham (D. Nail) to help him. As the play opens Stumpy and Latham are up on ladders scraping and spackling and sanding the walls to the tune of Aerosmith who is blasting away on a boom box. Stumpy hates the music and says he is more of an NPR type of guy, thus setting up a kind of class struggle between these two workmen that in interesting ways mirrors the class conflicts between them and their wealthy, high-society bosses, Lexi and Bummy.
Lexi is spoiled and sexy, and Bummy knows she’s having an affair. Bummy is equally spoiled. He says he knows how to read Greek and Latin but doesn’t know how to do anything —including, it would seem, how to confront his wife over her affair. He’s weak and easily manipulated.
standing: D. Nail as Latham, on floor: Tom Dewey as Bummy. Photo courtesy Harlequin ProductionsLatham seems contented in his working-class status. He is the most deeply layered character in the play. He has an amazing knowledge of everyone in town, their pasts and their relationships to one another. He is alternately sassy and gruff and menacing, has a mysterious past, and nobody is comfortable with him and nobody knows how to deal with him.
Sex happens and murder happens and there is one of the most horrendous and realistic fight scenes I’ve ever seen in live theater (kudos to fight director Robert Macdougall). That’s all I’m going to say about the plot except to say there are surprises that I never suspected.The quartet of actors is good. One of the four, Nail, is stupendous.
Dewey quickly had me feeling disdainful toward Bummy — good acting in a tough role to master because he is not a likeable or particularly engaging character. There were a few moments when I felt he was overdoing it. When Bummy falls to the floor in a melodramatic gesture I couldn’t tell if it was the character, the actor or the director (Scot Whitney) who was overreacting. But he certainly made it believable that his wife would betray him.
Richardson creates a believable, strong and sexy Lexi. I had no problem believing she would do the things she did. Fechtel embodies the character of Stumpy. And excuse the word play but Nail absolutely nails Latham. His performance is engrossing. He makes this most complex of characters simultaneously loveable, creepy and frightening.
Linda Whitney’s set is great. How they manage to scrape, spackle and paint the walls, knock over ladders without spilling paint all over the stage and each other, and almost complete the paint job during intermission is beyond comprehension. Perhaps I should have stayed to watch instead of stretching my legs in the lobby, but that would have messed with the magic of the stagecraft. And to think: they have to restore it to its original condition before each new performance.
This is a great play. But be warned: it is tough, gritty, violent and filled with harsh language. It is not for the squeamish.
WHEN: Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through June 1WHERE: State Theater, 202 E. 4th Ave., OlympiaTICKETS: prices vary, call for detailsINFORMATION: 360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/

The Weekly Volcano, My 9, 2013
My admiration for Lisa Sweet is growing. I was impressed with the pieces she had in the recent “Finish” show at The Evergreen State College and even more impressed with her work in the current show at Childhood’s End Gallery.
The show is Printmakers: The Art of the Hand Pulled Print. It features prints by seven artists: Sherry Buckner, silkscreen; Kristen Etmund, woodblock; Stephen McMillan, aquatint; Mimi Williams, linoleum block; Yoshiko Yamamoto, linoleum block; and etchings, engravings & woodcuts by Sweet.
Sweet is known for her somewhat surrealistic paintings of saints and biblical figures and others that combine contemporary imagery with a fine Northern Renaissance painting style. Technically her painting is exquisite. I’ve never before seen her prints. She has three pieces in this exhibition. 
“Doubt” is an engraving of two figures, male and female. The man’s face is a negative image as if cut out from the print to reveal the white paper underneath. Hanging above them as if on a clothesline or like pots in a kitchen or carcasses in a butcher shop is an array of body parts and various objects. I cannot presume to interpret what this picture may mean if the objects are intended as metaphors, but it is a powerful image.
“Saint Joan” is a two-part color reduction woodcut & matrix double portrait of Joan d’Arc. Her expression is haunted, her face harsh but pensive with high cheekbones and a strong chin. The contour lines are heavy and sure. The shading is nicely done. 
In addition to these two pieces Sweet has a set of four tiny etchings of a woman called “Unidentified Boiled Saint” printed on tea bags and displayed in a recessed area in heavy black frames.
I also like Susan Aurand’s set of nine altered monotype landscapes titled “MorningFields.” They are abstract scenes of fields and sky with rectangular bands and vibrant pastel colors. And Mimi Williams’ nine linoleum block prints. They depict various scenes such as swimmers, a boy reading, a roller derby, and fish. They have an early American feel and strong contrasts between black and white markings and bright colors. One called “Pet Store Dreams” cleverly has a fish aquarium underwater in a stream — an image that recalls the kind of odd juxtapositions Rene Magritte is famous for.
One nice thing about this show is that prints can be sold much more cheaply than paintings or sculpture, so this show offers a chance for people of modest means to acquire some art for their homes.


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[Childhood’s End Gallery, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, through May 31, 222 Fourth Ave. W, Olympia, 360.943.3724]