The Front Page
Annex Theatre at Capitol Hill Arts Center
Through Oct 22.

As a burlesque of ambulance-chasing, scandal-hungry journalists, The Front Page is fantastic. As a piece of comic theater, it's middling—the show bears the stamp of an overwhelmed director.

The Front Page was the source for the Cary Grant movie His Girl Friday. The original play about corrupt journalists, cops, and politicians in 1920s Chicago is much ruder (the casual racism and misogyny are a little shocking to modern ears) and much funnier. The newsies drink and gamble in the pressroom, waiting for the execution of cop killer Earl Williams (Ben Laurance). Wunderkind newsman Hildy Johnson (Scott O. Moore) has found a lovely fiancée and it's his last night on the job before he tells his publisher Walter Burns (Brandon Whitehead) to stick it and heads to New York. Then Williams breaks out of jail and pandemonium ensues.

The Front Page is a monster three-act play with an 18-member cast, but director Ed Hawkins can't successfully wrangle the beast. The weaker members of the ensemble are left to mumble and drown for the first third of the play, while the strongest actors give powerful, but messy, performances. The usually solid Kate Czajkowski blasted the audience as a prostitute who stands alone in defending Earl Williams, but she was all fortissimo and no buildup, which numbs us to her pathos. Whitehead is always funny, but his snarling, cigar-chomping editor shtick was too monotone. Better orchestration would have kept us alert for the ensemble bits and meted out the star power more judiciously.

But the set! This is Annex Theatre's first production in its new home at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. CHAC sets are always interesting, as are sets by Brad Cook of Annex. Now they're the two great tastes that taste great together. It looks like a fantasy of a 1920s Chicago pressroom—the floors, the desks, the big windows, the old wire wastepaper baskets, the old candlestick phones. Annex hung a false ceiling to tighten the action and focus our attention into the confines of the pressroom—a brilliant move. With a little more time to smooth out the acting kinks, The Front Page would have been impeccable. BRENDAN KILEY

The King Stag
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Through Oct 22.

The premiere play of David Esbjornson's premiere season at the Seattle Rep begins with—improv? Out-of-towner Michael Urie kicks off the production by introducing himself to audience members (four rows of whom have been seated on stage) and riffing: They're bald, they shop for recreation, they've got fancy names. Then we're treated to lovely comic commedia dell'arte performances by some of Seattle's leading actors, including Sarah Rudinoff, Charles Leggett, and R. Hamilton Wright. Esbjornson clearly wants to break with the Rep's stuffy reputation and kick out the jams.

The King Stag is vintage 18th-century commedia, so summarizing the plot would take a full page—suffice it to say, it's a romantic comedy with fantastic settings, masks, turns of fortune, and moralizing. Urie, Leggett, and Rudinoff are endearingly funny, while Wright is appropriately nauseating as the bilious prime minister of the fancy kingdom where the story happens. The King Stag's theatrical spectacle is its most impressive feature. The king emerges in an enormous white cone topped by his head and the finale—well, if you can't enjoy "Sweet Caroline" and a veritable weather system of bubbles, you're made of metal.

One note sounded throughout: This ain't your grandma's Rep. BRENDAN KILEY

Menopause the Musical™
ACT Theatre
Through Nov 6.

Of course the tremendous irony is that someone dragged me to see Menopause the motherfucking Musical™, and, although it is indeed merely precisely what it is and absolutely not one iota more... it kicked the shit out of fucking The King & I and fucking Money and Run. What mad world is this?

So, why? What makes this toweringly formulaic and very demographic-specific crap about dusty uteruses even moderately bearable? The consummate cast was ferocious and fast—they rush in, slap you around with jokes about memory lapses and no sex and saggy boobs that you can't help giggling at, and then they rush out. Ninety tight minutes of an insane, colorful, and sometimes actually laugh-worthy little train wreck that stops just before it starts to hurt. They don't delude themselves into thinking they're worth two and a half hours of anyone's attention, plus intermission. Bless them.

I'm not telling you to see this damn thing; please expunge that conclusion from your brain. Unless, of course, you are a menopausal mom with nary a smattering of self-consciousness or shame. Or you're one of those rare and special fans of reworded pop songs detailing the magic of hot flashes.

But, oh, Lord! Did I mention the grand finale? The cast drags half the audience (which was 260 percent female) onstage and forces them to dance and sing in perplexing celebration of their dwindling estrogen reserves—a great pagan parade of eggless egg sacks! I swear they were trying to kill me. I'll never forget it. ADRIAN RYAN