Room
On the Boards
217-9888. Through Oct 14.
Wandering into the show, the audience sees a woman sitting, stiff and still and fully lit, in an aisle seat. Her chin is slightly raised, in the pseudo-intimidating posture shy people affect when they're feeling particularly vulnerable. After chattering theatergoers have taken their seats, this thin, wiry woman steps briskly up to the stage, where she stares out at us, startled, then comic: What on earth are we doing here in her room?
The room we've entered belongs to Virginia Woolf, whose writings were adapted for this 85-minute one-woman show. Woolf's room is three spare white walls and one chair. The fourth wall is us. Sometimes actress Ellen Lauren addresses us as Woolf addressed a group of undergraduates for a series of lectures on "Women and Fiction"; sometimes she addresses us as Woolf addressed her diary. Lauren also falls into trancelike states and recites passages from the most intimate and revealing part of Woolf's life: her fiction. At no point in her brilliant performance does Lauren attempt (in the pathetic way of too many historical one-person shows) to affect her subject's accent or physical mannerisms. Instead, she moves with a crisp, non-realist vocabulary of stylized movements. The effect is amazing.
For the most part, the script is glorious. In a few places, though, it disappoints--most notably in its direct discussions of Woolf's abuse at the hands of her half-brother Gerald Duckworth. Not only did Woolf never write explicitly about the matter, she never would have discussed how she consequently "feels about her body," as Anne Bogart's script makes her do. But this unfortunate nod to late-20th-century America's obsession with childhood sexual abuse is the only thing marring this script. The lighting, music, and set are subtle and evocative, and Lauren gives the best solo performance I've seen this year. REBECCA BROWN
The Story of the Bull
Macha Monkey Productions at Velocity MainSpace
285-9442. Through Oct 13.
Every so often someone drags out the classics for a fresh look, the thinking being that paying attention to the work of the past will teach us about the present. Perhaps it does--and perhaps not. I'm recalling Christa Wolf's 1998 novel, Medea, which recast the treacherous infanticidal villainess as a misunderstood New Age wild woman and healer. I have a profound allergy to old tales bent to new agendas; I wonder why evil, hubris, and fate aren't thought powerful enough to carry a story on their own merits.
The Story of the Bull, written by The Stranger's Bret Fetzer, takes a mostly brave stand against pop-psychologizing the old stories. It's a series of Greek myths presented vignette-style, with a cast of three taking on multiple parts, like an ancient Greek version of The Dining Room. It begins when the inventor Daedalus (well played as a stuttering savant by Dusty Warren) kills his sister's son for trumping one of his creations. Later, Minos' queen PasiphaË develops a violent lust for Poseidon's white bull, and in the guise of a cow created by Daedalus conceives the Minotaur.
From these evils spring the fate of a half-dozen characters, among them Ariadne, Theseus, Pirithoüs, and Phaedra. These are shown as tragedies in their own right, and the only fault I found was a tendency on the actors' parts to add a hammy spin to their roles. Theseus (Warren, again) is an oblivious fraternity dude; Heracles and Minos (the vocally flexible Kristina Sutherland) have a bit too much contemporary swagger. But Alycia Delmore, in most of the female roles, is tremendous, somehow mining PasiphaË's uncontrolled lust and Polycaste's insanity without descending into caricature.
This story is tragic simply because it's tragic, because the gods deemed it to be so, because the characters--when restrained--are fully realized. Despite, or perhaps because of, its thankful irrelevance to current events, The Story of the Bull is a challenging and (aha!) refreshing event. EMILY HALL
Little Murders
Seattle Public Theater
325-6500. Through Oct 28.
Jules Feiffer, known for his droll political cartoons, which appeared for many years in the Village Voice, wrote this biting satire about American violence and social decay in the mid-1960s. Seattle Public Theater shows prescience in presenting the work at this moment in history, though be warned: This play lacks a single likeable character. What's likeable instead is the satire itself, fueled by Feiffer's absurd sense of exaggeration.
Set in a gunfire-riddled New York, Little Murders suggests that violence and a lack of morality in society make families crazy. Patsy Newquist (Rebecca Lingfeller) brings her maddeningly passive boyfriend, Alfred (Nick O'Donnell), home to meet the family for the first time. On a set that replicates a middle-class home circa 1967, with the TV blaring The Danny Kaye Show, the Newquists' aberrations emerge. Director Todd Jamieson allows most scenes, including the couple's wedding, to be the wild jumble of action, tumbling bodies, and outbursts that Feiffer surely intended, and the script's minimalist one-liners ably complement the action (as well as faintly anticipate the work of David Lynch). Then there's the incredibly peculiar fact that the stage hands are present onstage as wedding guests, sitting awkwardly on the couch, their presence wholly unexplained. This bit of nuttiness is a true delight.
Other elements of Little Murders (e.g., a crossdressing character) are dated, and the occasionally hammy overacting gets annoying. But O'Donnell and Lingfeller play the lead roles adroitly, and the scene in which Alfred and Patsy try to understand why they were drawn together is lovely. As Lingfeller cries in one of the play's less comic moments, "Can someone explain to me why I think you're so beautiful?" Jamieson ensures that piercing, human lines like these aren't lost in this dark satire. STACEY LEVINE
