Patrick Brassell - Page 2

When you walk into the theatre, you're greeted by ticket takers, ushers, and assorted others all in Dickensian costume, all sporting English accents; a young urchin who looked to be about eight tried to sell me a raffle ticket in a voice that came right out of Oliver Twist.

The Mystery of Irma Vep has a plot, but I'm not going to bother you with it. It's an excuse for groanworthy puns, asides to the audience, and a few thousand costume changes.

It's a hot-blooded, passionate account, with sex, partying, and lots of blood, and it takes a strong company to pull it off. Luckily, Northwest Classical is up to the challenge.

Buried under all the quips, banter, and snark is an interesting play, with a plot that could really be moving and funny if played right.

The show isn't awful. It borrows good ideas from better shows, mixes things up in a mildly charming way, and sells itself as family entertainment, though I can't imagine a lot of the under-16 set being amused by an Elvis sketch or a song about rehab.

Twist Your Dickens is two hours of sketch comedy using Dickens's tale as a very rough basic structure but going off in dozens of different directions, from parodies of classic holiday TV specials (A Charlie Brown Christmas gets banged around) to rewrites of familiar carols.

When Crumpet (the character's 'elf name') gets annoyed with the other elves, the children, and their parents, Pierce doesn't get bitchy; he goes into full Shakespearean revenge mode, plotting his vengeance like Iago, and it's all the funnier for that.

Actors adore Shakespeare and can't wait to share that love with the rest of us, and it brings out the zest in their acting. And who doesn't want to watch actors having fun?

Thelma and Jessie have a messy relationship, and there are a lot of questions both women have for each other. Some get answered and some don't.

At first we think they do not know each other - they have the strained politeness of strangers who are forced into a situation together - but gradually we see connections between them, and past arguments begin to spill out.

The specificity of the Cuban immigrant experience is discarded in favor of a Survivor-style fight among the passengers to see who will control the boat's destiny.

The performances are all excellent, and they are all of a piece. You believe that these people all exist in the same time frame, the same culture, and the same place.

There are some dark laughs along the way, and some gross-out moments, but the action feels realistic, as if these four people were being besieged on all sides, and the stress was taking a toll on each of them in a different way.

Middletown is a frustrating play to describe because I want to tell you everything that made me love it, and yet I don't want to tell you anything about it. I want you to go see it and experience it for yourself.

There's so much plot crammed into the show, and so many songs (many of them performance pieces that have little to do with story or character), that it hurtles by too quickly for us to get to know the people we're watching.

As the mystery elements kicked in and the bodies began to pile up, I relaxed and enjoyed myself thoroughly.

the playwright has written the characters in a very even-handed way; at no time is either Mike or Margie completely right or completely wrong; we see them both as people trying to do the right thing, yet also trying to hold on to what they already have.

Lynn Nottage's play Intimate Apparel finds a way to make loneliness not only dramatic, but incredibly moving.

Their production of Wait Until Dark is based on a revised script by Jeffrey Hatcher that premiered in 2013. The original, by Frederick Knott, opened in 1966 and was set at that time; this version is backdated to the 1940s. The loot is slightly different, and there are a few four-letter words added to the text, but beyond these cosmetic touches the script is the same.

Whorehouse, for all of its naughty language and scantily clad cast members, is actually one of the most innocent shows around.