In “Everybody,” Jacobs-Jenkins dispenses with the Christian morality of “Everyman” but doesn’t know what to offer in its place. He seems to be at a loss, and this sentiment is echoed by his characters. The third-wall-breaking narrator, Usher (Sarah Lucht), opens the play by saying, “We are dealing with some really ancient material, so let’s trust it to be really wise and meaningful, okay?” and closes it by concluding, “I have no idea what that was, but it’s very old, so please be respectful.”
A medieval morality play gets a contemporary twist in ‘Everybody’
Author: benwater
Review: Topdog/Underdog
Sibling rivalry can be brutal, as anyone who has one can attest, but brotherly envy and resentment are rarely so dark as in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, “Topdog/Underdog.” Street Scenes’ production at the Chapel Theatre in Milwaukie is an intimate, upsetting look at injustices of family, poverty and history.
Two abandoned brothers share bad blood in intimate, upsetting ‘Topdog/Underdog’
Review: _____ the Wolf
In “_____ the Wolf,” director Samantha Van Der Merwe explores desire, oppression and despair through the story of Little Red Riding Hood, decoding the fairy tale’s lessons on sex and violence in an inventive and often beautiful 90-minute journey through a very dark forest.
Shaking the Tree’s ‘_____ the Wolf’ is a haunted house of desire and despair
Review: Ordinary Days
There’s a lot to like in this intimate and entertaining take on young adulthood in the big city. Between the cleverly written lyrics and a tear-jerking third-act twist, I can say with some confidence that you will both laugh and cry. What more could you desire?
In ‘Ordinary Days,’ young strivers find extraordinary connections
Review: The Tempest
Rather than make up for the story’s slack with spectacle, director Mary McDonald-Lewis embraces the play’s laid-back pace, allowing room for meaningful looks and pensive pauses that give viewers space to appreciate Shakespeare’s gag-heavy dialogue.
‘The Tempest’ is more sweet than stormy in Speculative Drama’s mellow version
Review: The Secretaries
The time is 1994; the place is Big Bone, Oregon, a company town run by the Cooney Lumber Mill, an old-fashioned firm with a high fatality rate and, for reasons never quite explained, a reputation for employing only the best secretaries in the world. They are, by their own admission, a clique, dressed in pink cashmere sweaters and pencil skirts, slurping SlimFast and communicating in giggles and chittering chipmunk noises. Also, once each month, they murder a man and chop his body into pieces.
There’s blood in the typing pool in Profile Theatre’s ‘The Secretaries’
Roundup: Ten great restaurants and bars in Vancouver
Good things are happening in downtown Vancouver. Like Portland, our northern suburb let its once-vibrant center become a bleak desert of parking lots and pawn shops for decades after I-5 bisected the city. Major efforts at revival starting in the late 1990s filled in many of downtown’s vacant lots with condos, and organic growth has followed. While empty buildings still abound these days, the areas east and north of Esther Short Park are now home to excellent breweries, cafes, restaurants and bars. Here are a few that are worth crossing the Interstate Bridge for—traffic allowing, of course.
Review: The Thanksgiving Play
“The Thanksgiving Play,” a biting new comedy by the Sicangu Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse, exposes the uselessness of good intentions. Its yoga-practicing, privilege-checking, farmers-market-shopping characters know that performing Native characters in “redface” is wrong, that the Thanksgiving narrative is “problematic,” that the history of the United States is one of oppression and subjugation, but they’re blind to the arrogance of their enterprise.
‘The Thanksgiving Play’ is a biting satire of white progressive posturing
Review: The Mermaid Hour
Given the awful violence all too often perpetrated against trans people, I watched the first half of “The Mermaid Hour” with a growing sense of dread. I needn’t have worried; this isn’t that sort of show. Though there are plenty of tears and self-questioning — when Pilar realizes the hormonal treatments Violet wants will make her sterile; when Violet is rejected by her gay best friend, Jacob (Kai Hynes); when Bird admits to missing the son he thought he had — everyone winds up pretty much OK.
‘The Mermaid Hour’ explores ups and downs of parenting a transgender child
Review: Between Riverside and Crazy
“I may look how I look, but that don’t mean I am how I look,” Lulu tells Walter as they share a joint on his balcony, and she speaks for everyone in the show. “Between Riverside and Crazy” rejects predictable narrative and neat morality. It celebrates self-liberation but acknowledges the harm one person’s freedom can inflict on others. It reflects the grime of real life but teeters on the edge of fantasy.
‘Between Riverside and Crazy’ looks at the cruel cost of moving on