TeenTix Blog Reviews

Painted in primary reds, yellows, greens, and blues, the dozen chairs that make up the majority of The Suit’s set are unrealistically simple, impossibly bright. They’re the sort of chairs a child would draw for stick figures in a two-dimensional house, shallow and cheery.

The chairs are fitting for the home of Philomen (Ivanno Jeremiah) and his wife, Matilda (Nonhlanhla Khewsa). The two tiptoe around the delicate illusion they’ve weaved together. Playing house, they eat from an invisible tray, bathe in an invisible shower, and turn an invisible faucet. They pretend not to notice that two chairs make their bed, that a bare clothing rack serves as a wall. Philomen narrates his life in Sophiatown as if reading from a storybook approaching its happily-ever-after, as if he’s beyond the trials of South Africa’s apartheid and marriage’s pitfalls.

The Revealing Queer exhibit at MOHAI seeks to showcase queer — i.e. GSRM (gender, sexual, & romantic minorities) and LGBTQIA+ — history in the greater Seattle area. However, like many queer movements, have they focused too much on the L, G, and B and forgotten the T, I, and A?

The LGB letters in the popular acronym LGBTQIA+ (often erroneously shortened to “LGBT,” an acronym criticized for leaving out multiple gender, sexual, and romantic minorities) stands for lesbian, gay, and bisexual. And the exhibit showcased many issues relating to lesbians, gay people, and bisexual people, with parts of the exhibit including several panels on AIDS and the struggle of lesbian mothers in the Seattle area to historically adopt or even get rights to their biological children.

There’s a spaceship in the rafters.

At least, it looks like one. It’s white and ovate with jagged, tooth-like pieces of metal, conspicuously dangling among the stage lights overhead. I spent fifteen minutes wondering how an alien encounter could possibly fit into my painstaking research on the musical, the entire half paragraph of a Wikipedia synopsis that I skimmed beforehand. Then the house lights went dark, the twisted, purple wall onstage split wide open and a soulful trio of Skid Row Supremes (Nicole Rashida Prothro, Alexandria Henderson, Naomi Morgan) launched into the opening number. From that point forward, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the stage.

OK, so maybe it’s not the best show ever, but Worst Trip Ever IN ALL CAPS!!1! is certainly a fun and worthwhile way to spend your evening. This improvised show at Jet City Improv asks the audience to pick a place (anywhere in the world) and a category (attractions, restaurants, hotels, etc.), and then proceeds to find some of the worst reviews on TripAdvisor.com with these criteria.

Part of the fun of the show is hearing the actual reviews of bad experiences people post on TripAdvisor.com and the scenarios that ultimately led to the author’s urgent need to share such an experience online in the first place. From a covert mission in a museum in New Zealand to a strange gift of corn at a cathedral in Spain, the actors have the audience jet-setting around the globe with laughter as they experience the various misadventures that could have produced such terrible reviews.

I had the opportunity to visit Seattle Children’s Theatre and watch the newest adaptation of Pinocchio — and a new adaptation it was. The theater is known for it's well-acted plays for children and families. Having had the chance to enjoy several alongside my own family, I was excited to see what they would pull off this time.

As the story goes, Gepetto, a poor woodworker, makes a puppet from said wood and calls it Pinocchio. All Gepetto wants is for his puppet to be alive, to be the son he never had, you know the story. And in a short time that’s just what happens — poof, a live puppet! But what I apparently missed was that there was no magic, no fairy, nothing.

Get a taste of Southern hospitality by joining six women as they embark on a moving journey in Edmonds Driftwood Player’s newest production, Steel Magnolias. Each woman in this production comes with her own unique sass, flair, and outlook on life as they come together in Truvy’s home beauty salon. With secrets bigger than the hair seen in this show, get to know the gossip around town and get a first-hand look into these abstract women’s monumental life moments and the emotions that follow. Shelby, an ambitious Southern belle brings the group closer as she sets off the story on her wedding day when we slowly uncover Shelby’s medical secret, a potentially deadly one. It is Shelby’s constant drive and ambition that inspires and strengthens the group to journey out of their comfort zone and come into their own during the process. Whether you’re out on a girls night, mother-daughter date, or just looking for a quality story, join Shelby, Clairee, Truvy, Annelle, Ouiser, and M’Lynn through weddings, divorce, births, funerals. This touching performance reveals the beauty of friendship, through both prosperity and hardship.

Steel Magnolias Edmonds Driftwood Players February 14 - March 2

5th Avenue Theatre is currently putting on a spectacular rendition of Monty Python’s Spamalot. And after that, it will be done again with their high school-aged students (Go support teens in the arts too!).

Spamalot, written by Eric Idle, is a goofy spoof of the famous movie, Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Even if you’ve never seen Monty Python and The Holy Grail, this spoof is witty, hilarious, and performed amazingly by the 5th Avenue cast. In Spamalot, after King Arthur gathers troops for his round table — well, gambling table — he and his knights are sent by God on an absurd adventure to find the Holy Grail.

At the Sound Off! Semifinals #2 , the entire night built up, transmigrating itself from making one feel like bit of moss on the side of a tree on a warm, breezy spring morning to the hard-rocked, fiery hellfire that the Skychurch was always meant to be. It was fun as all damn. Sound Off! may have just been one of the best, most fun concerts I have ever attended, and, very possibly, one of the best I will ever attend — seriously.

After a late start of more than half an hour, the first act, Manatee Commune, went up to much praise for an act finally starting. Hailing from Bellingham, this electronic artist combines ambience and downtempo, along with some bright, contrapuntal synthesizer action to create a very airy, happy, peaceful, and overall chillaxed feel. Manatee Commune also played both electric guitar and acoustic viola during his live set, which was quite cool.

Picture a stage. Picture a baroque-inspired set with tall pillars and marble sets. Purple, blue, and green lighting illuminates purple, blue, and green-dressed dancers as the curtain rises, giving everything a slightly ethereal look. The music swells. The dance begins.

So starts Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of Tchaikovsky's iconic The Sleeping Beauty. A three-act ballet (with an additional prologue) based on the famous fairy tale, The Sleeping Beauty is a paragon of ballet.

A Great Wilderness tells the story of Walt, played by Michael Winters, who has spent his life counseling young boys out of their homosexuality at a remote summer camp in the woods. Walt is aging, and he is taking one last boy before moving into an assisted living home. This last boy, played by Jack Taylor, disappears, influencing the events that transpire during the rest of the show. This play features questions of aging, religion, and self-acceptance.

From the moment you walk into the theater, you are transported to a cabin in the woods. The set is so beautifully designed, with an amazing number of intricacies, that it is hard to pull yourself out of the play. The team at Seattle Repertory Theatre put good work into ensuring that the show was everything that it could be aesthetically. Furthermore, this is a beautiful, extremely well-cast play. Every single actor seems to have a deep understanding of their character, and the work put into making the show believable and compelling is apparent throughout. Normally, I am kind of put off by an excessive amount of overly-dramatic moments (e.g., frequent crying and deep conversations) because I believe they can get old fast and can make the important moments less striking, but I found that the drama was done so well in this show that I wasn’t bothered by the number of head-in-hands, let’s-talk-about-death moments. The cast is truly all-star, and I think that this group of actors could carry almost anything and do it well, but the writing is so good it could stand on its own as well. Playwright Samuel D. Hunter has written complex characters who are all but dull. I walked into this show expecting to see the story of a fanatic, hard-to-empathize-with, hyper-religious man whose entire life is dedicated to torturing away homosexuality. I imagined that this man would come to realize his wrong-doings with the help of a charismatic, intelligent young boy. This was not the case. Hunter writes characters who reject any and all stereotypes. They are not one-sided, black and white, or villains and heroes. I felt deeply for each character, and I came to understand each of their situations. This show does not feel like an attack on any belief system or group, nor did it seem to present an obvious moral. Rather it presents the audience with a question that is up to us to answer. I highly recommend A Great Wilderness to anyone. I think that it serves as a good catalyst for conversation and is truly one of the most thought-provoking theater experiences that I’ve had in a while. Every element of the show stands out — from the set to the actors to the writing — so please, go and see all three.

Have you ever thought of trying Oaxacan mole flavored cupcakes? Or savory wasabi cupcakes with framboise? American Wee-Pie invites you to discover the wonderful possibilities in life when you open up to new things, opportunities, and flavors.

Lisa Dillman’s American Wee-Pie takes place in a “dead end” town as Zed (Evan Whitfield) returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of his mother. As a middle-aged adult, Zed’s life is at the pinnacle of dreariness, with a sprinkle of despair. He is a textbook editor who seems tired all the time. As the play unfolds, little by little Zed learns to open up to new possibilities that will ultimately change his life.

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Downton Abbey. I love all of the drama, romance, and, of course, the beautiful costumes. Jet City Improv’s new improvised take on the show, entitled Upside Downton, has all of these plus hilarious mockery of the show I love.

I know that Downton Abbey is over-the-top dramatic, and Jet City’s take on it made me laugh at that fact. I loved Molly Arkin’s hilarious turn as Lady Eleanor, a Lady Mary-esque countess who won’t reveal who the father of her unborn child is because she was too drunk to remember.

After walking into Town Hall Seattle and sitting down to watch the pre-performance lecture given by Rachel Barton Pine, a stunningly odd instrument revealed itself: a violin-looking thing with a multitude of strings and an awfully large head stock. What must it be? The viola d’amore! This instrument of the violin string family was born in the 1700s and popularized around the same time.

With viola d’amore in hand, Rachel Barton Pine — player of the night and virtuoso — baroque the house down! It was hard to Handel her amazing performance of Vivaldi and others.

14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival is a 48-hour festival in which 14 plays are written, cast, directed, rehearsed, scored, designed, and premiered all within those two days. The 14/48 Festival at ACT is renowned for its ability to produce a plethora of plays at a breakneck speed, being able to produce them quite well, and put on a great show all the while.

And last weekend — the first of two making up the entire festival — 14/48 did exactly that! The plays, each unique to the nights they were performed, were all very energetic, if not in movement, then in emotion and thematic progress. And they were all very well played-out, more or less. The 14 shows, as a whole, were a solid mix of both comedy and drama. Some were written better than others, I have to admit, but both nights began and ended well, that’s for sure.

What’s the first play you think of when I say Shakespeare? One of the tragedies like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth? Or one of the comedies, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing? Most likely, you don’t think of Richard II, a history play about the life and death of a king of England. Is that memorable yet? No? You’re right. If that was all there is to this play, I wouldn’t have much to say about it. But Seattle Shakespeare Company’s production of Richard II is one of the most moving Shakespearean plays I’ve ever seen. The poetic King Richard (played by George Mount) starts strong in his rule, but he slowly crumbles as the play progresses. The vulnerable ruler loses everything but earns the audience's attention with a final realization. Set in a classic time period with elaborate costumes, you don’t necessarily feel like you’re sitting through a history or that you’re learning something. Instead, it’s a moving drama with heroes, villains, and action. The set is a single throne that is moved, lit, and used dynamically throughout the play. The simplistic design of the chair with the lights is the perfect portrayal of the play. It’s a perfect piece to set the story around, as the crown and throne go hand-in-hand. As Richard falls from favor, he loses his place, and instead of sitting in the throne he lies, crumbled, before it. Even though I loved the entire production, you should know what you’re getting yourself into; it’s a two and a half hours long history play that is rarely performed. Though there are fights, sabotage, banishment, and even murder, you may find your focus wandering during some parts. If you’re looking for quick entertainment and drama, this may not be the best choice (maybe try The Bachelor). But if you’re up for an investment, you will find this production to be rewarding. Instead of a shallow plot and quick thrills, Richard II pulls you into the king’s story and his head. With poeticism and quick wit, this production is more than just a history play. It’s a masterpiece.

Richard II Seattle Shakespeare Company January 8-February 2

Have you ever seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show? If you have, and it didn’t scare you, then you’d probably enjoy seeing Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Moore Theatre (running for only 3 more days!).

Okay, I know all you’re thinking about right now is “What’s the angry inch?” But I can’t tell you. Not because it’s a big secret or anything — if you ask anyone else (particularly anyone from Jinkx Monsoon’s cult following), they’ll tell you immediately — I just can’t bring myself to type what it is.

In contrast to the brutal cold weather on Bellevue’s Snowflake Lane, the Bellevue Arts Museum is immediately welcoming with its warm, fresh, and modern atmosphere. On the third floor awaits your transportation into a vast new world, “A World of Paper, A World of Fashion” to be specific. The first observation of the exhibition to be taken in — simple but significant — are the colors. A wide variety of deep reds, eccentric aqua, and accenting silver and golds are present on these beautiful articles of clothing. Stepping in to view closer (if you’re fortunate enough to not have security breathing down your back) an obvious realization hits, “Oh my gosh...this is entirely made of paper.” Isabelle de Borchgrave’s intricate folds, crumples, and molds make a cohesive collection of clothes any girl would desire to try on herself. Walking through each section is like taking a visit back in time to Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, African, and Islamic cultures. One type of dress that is very prevalent throughout the exhibition is the Delphos Dress (Grecian style wear). A delicately hand-pleated dress that elegantly falls to the ground is accessorized with a thin piece of overlaying silk. Photographs of Mariano Fortuny's designs hang throughout the room, so one is able to witness an almost identical resemblance with Borchgrave’s masterpieces. Who is Fortuny you may ask? Fortuny is, in short, the backbone of Borchgrave’s inspiration in this collection. Think of him as today’s Versace, Fortuny was the leading designer of the early 20th century (Fun fact: influential women such as Natacha Rambova, aka Valentino’s wife, were known to wear his designs!). He died known as a legendary textile and clothing designer, and fortunately through Borchgrave, his remarkable works (originally made with luxury textiles such as silk, velvets, and chiffons) are brought back to life through paper. I guarantee you’ll leave BAM with at least three distinct thoughts after experiencing this exhibition: How long did it take Borchgrave to make all of that clothing? How was it transported there?! I can’t believe that was all made from paper…

So go ahead and experience a history of fashion through the blend of Borchgrave and Fortuny at Bellevue Arts Museum, and leave not only mesmerized but hopefully inspired by the art of fashion — paper or not.

Goodie bags are usually given out at the end of a party, but goodie bags are just the beginning at SIFF’s screenings of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in Smell-o-Vision.

The little red bags, containing an assortment of seemingly random items, are the key to a scrumdiddlyumptious time. At first, the contents appear nonsensical, but everything falls into place as soon as the film begins. SIFF has perfectly orchestrated a viewing experience rivaling what Wonka might have created himself.

There’s plenty of holiday cheer filling up the Seattle Public Theater at the Bathhouse this season. Between its two holiday performances, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and The Santaland Diaries, Seattle Public Theater meets all wintery needs.

A very family-oriented show, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever offers the lightheartedness and caring the holidays are meant to inspire. It’s a show about understanding, giving, and empathy — the essential qualities often forgotten amidst Christmas chaos.

Seattle Art Museum has outdone itself once again after the Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion exhibition during the summer. If the past exhibition was a look out into the future, Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon is a look back into the past. Although the artwork in this exhibition represents three thousand years of history and showcases different cultures expressed in different forms, there is one underlying theme holding everything together: harmony. According to the exhibition guide, Peru’s ancient Andean civilizations valued the unity between two opposing sides — unlike other cultures around the world, which held more significance in the differences between things. In the exhibition, the ancient civilizations’ works are excellent examples of the efforts the artisans of the past put into showing this idealistic unity. The most prominent example is perhaps the Sican culture’s ‘Double-spout vessel decorated with human figures and snake heads,’ which melds two spouts into one vessel with delicate patterns and miniature statues. The most interesting point about this piece is the simplicity that prevails over the intricate and complex patterns. As I observed the piece, I was at first only able to pay attention to the details of the vessel, such as the shape of the holes. But when I took a step back and just looked, the patterns gathered together to form one simple, unified display. And the beauty of its simplicity simply overwhelmed me. As anyone would notice if they walked around the exhibit, a significant amount of the pieces on display are made out of flashy materials such as gold or silver. But it never seem like too much. Why is that? The “Frontal ornament with feline head and octopus tentacles ending in catfish heads,” otherwise known as Peru’s “Mona Lisa,” embodies the reason these pieces do not seem extravagant. Just like Mona Lisa’s ethereal smile, the ornament captures its audience through its geometric unity by the usage of decalcomania. The two sides are so identical with each other to the point that it’s as if the artist simply made one side of the ornament and copied it over — copy and paste, copy and paste. The appreciation of harmony seems to have been carried into the more modern day Peru. For example, the sculpture named “Virgin of the Fifth Seal” made in the 18th century showcases the balance between Spanish and Peru's native cultures. Although the Peruvian artist sculpts Virgin Mary, her appearance is unlike the ones from Europe. Other images of Virgin Mary were always with her in soft, light colors to represent her purity and ultimate good. But this piece chose to show the harmony between both good and evil; she is seen with both light and dark colors on and has fair skin with dark hair. This whole exhibit was an eye-opener for me. After the exhibition, I discovered a whole new world of unity in our own culture. For those who haven’t visited the exhibit, I would highly recommend it. Who knows? You might just figure out what all those gurus’ talk about yin and yang is really all about.

Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon Seattle Art Museum Through January 5, 2014