This Week in Arts: Weekly Roundup (9/15)
This week’s shows make up the first wave of a busy fall theatre season, with solo performance, a big new musical comedy, new productions of long-running classics, and more.
Ticketing links for most shows can be found on the Performance Calendar page here.
Openings & Short Runs
Seattle Rep: Where We Belong (touring) (opened yesterday, closing 10/9). In this solo touring piece, a Shakespeare scholar seeks to reconcile her Native identity with the language of colonizers. At the Seattle Center (Mercer St. side). (Read NWT contributor Dusty Somers’ interview with the playwright-performer in The Seattle Times here.)
ACT Theatre & The 5th Avenue Theatre: Choir Boy @ ACT (in previews, opens tonight, closing 10/23). This recent Broadway hit follows a young Black, queer identity, and an elite prep school gospel choir. In Downtown Seattle.
Village Theatre: Little Shop of Horrors (in previews, opens tomorrow, closing 10/23, then runs 10/28-11/20 at Everett). An insatiable human-eating plant stars in this classic musical. In Issaquah.
The 5th Avenue Theatre: The Griswolds’ Broadway Vacation (in previews, opens 9/22, closing 10/2). The traveling family of film heads to NY in this brand new musical comedy. In Downtown Seattle.
Velocity Dance Center – Made in Seattle: Drama Tops – Boys, Boys, Boys! @ 12th Avenue Arts (opens tonight, closing 9/25). A new dance work looks at queerness, gender, and conceptions of masculinity. In Seattle (Capitol Hill).
Seattle Theatre Group: An Evening with Marlee Matlin @ The Moore (tomorrow only). Matlin discusses her work as a Deaf actress. In Downtown Seattle.
Monologues of n Women @ Theatre 4 (opens tomorrow, closing 9/25). Chinese women explore experiences and expectations in this devised theatrical work, presented in Mandarin with subtitles. At the Seattle Center.
Tacoma Little Theatre: Steel Magnolias (opens tomorrow, closing 9/25). The classic play of enduring friendship, with hair salon gossip and Southern roots. In Tacoma.
Edmonds Driftwood Players: The Mousetrap (opens tomorrow, closing 10/2). This Agatha Christie mystery has run continuously in London for decades. In Edmonds.
Tacoma Musical Playhouse: Singin’ in the Rain (opens tomorrow, closing 10/9). The stage adaptation of the movie-musical classic. In Tacoma.
Cafe Nordo: Down the Rabbit Hole (re-opens tomorrow, closing 11/19). Deep under the cobblestones, Alice finds cabaret and culinary delight in Wonderland. In Seattle (Pioneer Square).
Seattle Theatre Group: An Evening with Grace Jones @ The Moore (9/21 only). Jones discusses a life of experience as a revolutionary and cultural icon. In Downtown Seattle.
Closing Soon
ArtsWest: Here There Be Dragons – Chasing My Voice (streaming through 9/17). In storytelling and song, Felicia Loud paints a portrait of Seattle, Black communities, and pop culture through the decades. Online only (recorded from live performance in August).
Harlequin Productions: This Flat Earth (closing 9/17). Two middle schoolers, and the parents, try to make sense of a confounding world amid escalating gun violence. By Lindsey Ferrentino; directed by Aaron Lamb. In Olympia. See NWT’s review here.
Continuing Runs
Portable Performance Festival @ 18th & Union (various shows; festival runs through 9/24). In some 20 shows, Seattle-area artists tell stories (real and invented) through solo performances, staged play readings, dance, film, and music. In Seattle (Central District).
Bremerton Community Theatre: Sylvia (closing 9/25). A found poodle-mix drives a wedge between a long-married Manhattan couple. In Bremerton.
Olympia Little Theatre: Tiny Beautiful Things (closing 9/25). A writer takes on the duty of unpaid, anonymous advice columnist, and connects more deeply to her readers than expected. In Olympia.
Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 (closing 9/25). A Broadway show succumbs to backstage drama and murder in this comedy of mayhem. In Marysville.
Theatre22: Nonsense and Beauty (closing 10/2). The long-running theatre company’s final show looks at the decades-long same-sex romance of British novelist E.M. Forester and the lengths he went to in order to conceal it. In Seattle (Green Lake).
Can Can Culinary Cabaret: The Hitchcock Hotel (closing 11/27). The spooky season officially kicks off with the Can Can’s fall show, served up with dinner and drinks in the cabaret’s new location. In Seattle (Pike Place Market).
The Roundup is a weekly (ish) feature. For this month’s shows by day, with ticketing info and links, see the Performance Calendar.
Want to plan your show schedule further out? See NWT’s seasonal show lists — Fall (September & October) and Holiday Season (November & December) — which aim to list just about every theatre show in town.
Chase D. Anderson is Editor & Producer of NWTheatre.org.