Scott Bush

Do you enjoy a peanut-butter and pesto sand­wich? How about an ice-cream sun­dae cov­ered in vin­daloo? Ever seen a hilar­i­ous Shake­spearean com­edy fol­lowed by a dark and mur­der­ous Greek tragedy? That was our expe­ri­ence (the plays, not the strange food com­bi­na­tions) in Dec. and Jan. as we attended the first two entries in the Seat­tle Shakespeare’s Company’s 09–10 sea­son: Twelfth Night and Elec­tra.

The two plays could not have been more dif­fer­ent, but I’ll start by men­tion­ing how they were the same: pro­fes­sional. If you’ve never been to an SCC per­for­mance, you should check one out. The the­atre, located in the bot­tom of the Seat­tle Cen­ter, is inti­mate and wel­com­ing. The sets are usu­ally sparse but ade­quate to sup­port the act­ing, which is always top-notch. My wife and I have been season-ticket hold­ers for four years now and after 14 plays I’ve yet to see an actor trip, appear out-of-character, or miss a line (that I could tell, at least). This troupe is, in one word: excel­lent. (more…)

It’s been quite a while since I wrote about a play at the Seat­tle Shake­speare Com­pany. My wife and I have been sea­son ticket hold­ers of SSC since were mar­ried and really enjoy the company’s per­for­mances. This past Thurs­day we took in The Tem­pest, the last of SSC’s 2008-09 sea­son. It was quite good, as they usu­ally are, but I must say that of the four plays we saw this sea­son, The Mer­chant of Venice was the stand­out. The last scene when Shy­lock demands his pound of flesh… whoah, intense.

If you’re not famil­iar with The Tem­pest, you can read a sum­mary on Wikipedia or take a peek at SSC’s own one-page “Jump­start” PDF or lis­ten to their pod­cast. We enjoy the pre-show jump­start (only avail­able on the sec­ond the sec­ond Thurs­day of the pro­duc­tion). It’s an hour-long intro­duc­tion not only to the play but the pro­duc­tion itself. Sort of a Cliff’s Notes to get you in the mind­set for the per­for­mance. I learned that The Tem­pest was the last Shake­speare wrote on his own, and fol­lows Aristotle’s three uni­ties: unity of time, place, and action, unlike his other plays. The entire story takes place between 2 and 6 o’clock, on the same island, and has only one main plot. The other thing I learned about the play was that schol­ars believe that Pros­pero, the pro­tag­o­nist, prob­a­bly rep­re­sents Shake­speare him­self. When Pros­pero breaks his staff at the end of the play, it (might) sig­ni­fies Shakespeare’s retirement.

This pro­duc­tion was sim­ple, but had some stand­out per­for­mances. I really enjoyed Ariel, the good spirit serv­ing Prospero–played by and as a female, not as a male as the char­ac­ter was writ­ten. The music was good and was appar­ently writ­ten specif­i­cally for this pro­duc­tion by Jesse Sykes. The char­ac­ter Cal­iban was played by a very agile and well-made up actor. His per­for­mance reminded me of Gol­lum in how he crouched and jumped around the set, espe­cially with that long braided hair. The most strik­ing per­former was Pros­pero, how­ever. Extremely well acted by… so famil­iar… had I seen him in an SSC per­for­mance before? No… I couldn’t fig­ure it out until Act 4: It’s Tay­lor! Tay­lor from Gilmore Girls (yes, I’ve seen Gilmore Girls… I’m mar­ried, so it’s okay). It struck me and from then on I couldn’t stop think­ing of him as the uptight town coun­cil­man. But Michael Win­ters is clearly an excel­lent stage per­former, too.

Oh boy. Just got back from the Seat­tle Shake­speare Com­pany’s pro­duc­tion of The Miser and man, it was hilar­i­ous. I’ll let Wikipedia do the explain­ing of the plot and char­ac­ters of this play and Seat­tlest review the per­for­mance. Why bother writ­ing a post if I’m going to out­source all the writ­ing? Because this was the fun­ni­est damn play I’ve seen them pro­duce. The pro­duc­tion was mod­ern­ized and local­ized in parts, includ­ing Harpagon ref­er­enc­ing sub-prime loans and demand­ing all of Bal­lard being hanged and refer­ring to Seattle’s Mayor Nick­els. I nor­mally wouldn’t like that, but it really worked well in this pro­duc­tion.  I’d tell you to rush out and see it, but as the last play occurs April 6, I doubt you’ll have time. Pity.

Thurs­day evening Crys­tal and I attended the Seat­tle Shake­speare Company’s Com­edy of Errors. What a blast! They set it in a Louisiana bayou with a pirate theme. It’s Shake­speare, so just about any locale can work. The act­ing was excel­lent, though my favorite char­ac­ter was Dromio of Aeschy­lus: he had me rolling. Plus, our seats are in the front row of an inti­mate the­atre so we were right in the action. In fact, I was poked with sword as one of the Antipho­luses ran up the aisle next to me.
This is our sec­ond sea­son as ticket hold­ers and we’ve really enjoyed it. It feels great to be a part of the the­atre com­mu­nity as sea­son ticket hold­ers. We’ve been noth­ing but impressed with SSC and plan to con­tinue sup­port­ing them. The best so far, iron­i­cally, wasn’t a Shake­speare play, but Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Berg­erac. Wow, what a play!