The Devil and Daniel Webster

Seattle Children's Theatre

Through April 1.

This play was weird. The guy with the violin was weird. It wasn't even a real violin. It wasn't. It was too small to be real and it was very loud. The man with the fake violin was the narrator. His name is Spark, he spoke in rhyme, and worked for the devil. Even the devil was weird. He bought a person's soul for however much he wanted, and the soul turned out to be tiny, and the person who once had the soul thought he was dead. The devil had gray hair. Some fire stuff came out his hands. I didn't like him and he didn't scare me. The main character, Jabez Stone, started out very poor and wanted to marry this one rich woman, but her dad didn't want them to marry unless the poor farmer gave him his daughter's height in gold coins. The poor farmer's horse had died, and his plow broke, so he couldn't make any money. He sold his soul to the devil for the money he needed to marry the rich man's daughter. The first half of the play was better than the second half. In the first half, things happened; in the second half, it was all about talking. The devil sues the farmer because the farmer wouldn't give up his soul after he sold it and got rich. My father tells me that the play is about the Civil War. Jabez Stone, the farmer, is America—a country that is generous on one side and evil on the other side, because its money came from the slavery system. The contradiction results in the Civil War. That's what my father says. EBENEZER DRAKE-MUDEDE, AGE 9

The Invisible

Jobaris Productions at Chamber Theater

Through March 11.

I thought The Invisible was a wry, if sometimes messy, satire of the movies until I talked to choreographer/director Jessica Jobaris. She said it was actually about the frustration of being an artist in the modern world. "But," she added generously, "there's room for interpretation."

The Invisible is a varied piece of dance theater with five characters from film history—Eadweard Muybridge, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Shirley Temple, and Erast Garin—who clown, roll, and pose on the stage in themed scenelets. They dance-fight in a lampoon of action sequences, chase and reject each other like a hacky romantic comedy. In voiceover asides, Garin (a Soviet-era actor) keeps reminding the audience that he's "very intense." Deanna Mustard (as proto-sexpot Brooks) spreads her legs, wiggles her tail, and slams herself viciously on the floor, over and over and over again. (It's painful just to look at her deep yellow bruises.) The Invisible uses dancers for actors, actors for dancers, and a soundtrack ranging from the Kinks to slamming doors in a confusing (usually delightfully so) performance hash.

Then there's the film bit, with its voiceover asking heavy questions about meaning and aspiration while the characters skate around an ice rink. The audience laughed—parts of it were very funny—which surprised Jobaris. "I think that part is really sad," she said. "Maybe I haven't, you know, learned—" I cut her off, saying any jerk can be lugubrious, but it's the rare artist who can translate depth into light, accessible performance—think of sad-but-funny clowns like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Superficiality can be an asset. BRENDAN KILEY, AGE 28

Cut!

Wing-It Productions at Historic University Theater

Through April 21.

The people who love improv most are, it seems, other people who do improv. Jerky laypersons like me can't help wondering: "Couldn't you have just improvised that offstage with your friends, written it down, and performed it later without the boring parts?" But no, you watch improv for the potential—because life's best jokes are usually the product of spontaneity, not labor. Those floundering stretches are just part of the craft.

In Cut!, a group of actors in various show-bizzy roles (Director, Producer, Key Grip, etc.) improvise a full-length production about the filming of a movie, all the while actually filming the action onstage, which they edit, during intermission, into a trailer for said fictional movie. There's the requisite audience participation (at the production I saw, an audience member dubbed the script The Skeleton Man), and a buttload of nerdy pop culture in-jokes (Wilford Brimley, Scientology, and Snakes on a Plane all got shout-outs). The final product—our very own The Skeleton Man movie trailer—was truly hysterical. But was the journey worth it? Well, depends on if you like improv.

Doug Willott, as the director and former child star (of such fictional sequels as Playground of the Blue Lagoon and Re-Escape from Witch Mountain) is all flawless Hollywood snark. The Skeleton Man's Ukrainian star, played by Dart London, spouts consistently funny foreign nonsense ("I will get you through power!"), and Keli Carender is spot-on as a heavily medicated starlet.

Cut! is good improv—it's funny, it's smart, it's quick. But even good improv is still, you know, improv. I'd love to see what these kids could do with a little preparation. LINDY WEST, AGE 24