Rebound One Productions at ACT

Through Feb 23.After suffering through another terrifically boring Sam Shepard play, I am forced to the conclusion that the cowboy bard's work is to the Seattle theater scene what wearing a black velvet catsuit is to anyone other than Uma Thurman--sexy, alluring, and oh-so-unflattering. Judging by the local wraiths limping around desultorily in their standard-issue shitkickers while mumbling their impenetrable thickets of text, Seattle's actors don't have what it takes. Maybe Shepard's allegorical characters are too cartoonish. Maybe his language is too fantastically lyrical. Maybe his work is a bunch of clichéd hoo-ha left on the back burner for about two decades too long.

Or maybe Seattle actors just don't have the balls. Maybe it's because Life is Better Here™ or because we're all too politically evolved, but when asked to summon unpleasant emotional states like murderous rage or sexual obsession, all Seattle's actors manage to do is politely flap their way through carefully choreographed tantrums.

And I, for one, am sick and tired of it. Therefore, I'm hereby wielding the awesome power afforded to me by my position as occasional theater critic at this paper and issuing a moratorium on any further productions of Sam Shepard's work anywhere in the Northwest. For at least a year, maybe five. No more A Lie of the Mind with a sleepwalking cast. No more True West flatter than linoleum. In fact, let's go all the way with this. No more scene work for acting class from Fool for Love. No more embarrassing audition monologues ripped from Buried Child. There, now doesn't that feel better? TAMARA PARIS

VIC: Spirit Made Flesh

Open Circle Theater

Through March 1.Winner of the 2002 Hugo House New Play Competition, VIC: Spirit Made Flesh is an ambitious attempt to narrate one of the many episodes that have been eclipsed by the more conventional histories of that extraordinarily bizarre age--the 19th century, the birthplace of everything we are now. This particular neglected story involves the first woman to run for president of the United States, Victoria Woodhull, who also co-managed an all-woman brokerage firm on Wall Street, published a weekly newspaper, believed in free love, and was associated with Susan B. Anthony and Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother. Because she was stuck in the 19th century, a point at which the very old and very new (religion and science, rural and urban, agriculture and industry) were in total conflict, her ideas were at once crazy and normal, popular and unpopular.

Written by Maria Glanz (who also plays Victoria Woodhull), the play reflects the heated delirium of this age of transition and pronounced contradictions. At one moment, Woodhull speaks in tongue to spirits; at another, she eloquently exposes the hypocrisies of her time in the most rational manner. The vacillation between rational and irrational mediums structures the play, which alternately collapses into the void of insanity or stands solidly on a coherent, democratic platform. The first part of the play is absorbed with the insanity of Woodhull's upbringing; the second part is organized by her constructive political and enterprising years. As a result, the second half is more fascinating than the first. Ultimately, the strange, forgotten story of Victoria Woodhull exposes the limits not of the actors (who all do a fine job), or the writer (ditto), but the space of the theater itself. Her story is too large for such a little stage. CHARLES MUDEDE

Far East

Mirror Stage Company at Richard Hugo House

Through Feb 23.Far East is a quality production--slicker than goose shit, thoughtfully executed, and boasting strong performances by strong performers (Susan House is perfection as the 1950s officer's wife, and Skot Kurruk was born to play the traitorous homo--in a good way). But "well done" doesn't always equal "wildly entertaining," and Far East still manages to wax narcotic. The gist: spoiled, smarmy Navy dude goes to Indochina, not much happens. I get more dramatic tension flossing.

When one of my snootier drama professors would opine, "The audience wants to see blood on the stage, you get me? Blood!" I thought he was being a big drama queen. But I see his point. This show, smartly done though it is, is bloodless. It meanders about in a miasma of polite, quiet conversation, sometimes mildly amusing, often pat, never juicy. Many guns are put on stage, so to speak, but none of them ever go off: the captain's wife's vindictive threats, the homo's deceit and capture--these events and others promise great dramatic conflict that never arrives. These characters live hurt, desperate lives, sure, but it's a quiet desperation. Way too quiet, if you ask me. Where's the blood? ADRIAN RYAN

Frankenocchio

Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab at Nippon Kan Theatre

Through Feb 21.Frankenocchio is a puppet show, but these hand-operated creatures are from a different side of the tracks than the do-gooders in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Co-presented by Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab (the group responsible for Drunk Puppet Nite at the Re-bar), these off-center puppeteers strive to "stretch the boundaries of what puppets can, cannot and should not do." The result is a dark, absurdist story of a little blue-haired head named Frankenocchio and his struggle to become reunited with his body.

Frankenocchio's journey leads him through a circus of crazy freaks--a knife-throwing Spaniard, Siamese twins, brightly colored poodles, a pinhead, a human torso, and an old man who bites the heads off chickens only to sew them back on. The story line is completely twisted, but the real attraction of this performance--along with the Circus Contraption band--is the puppetry. Varying from hand puppets to shadow-casting cutouts to dolls operated by a dark-clothed-and-hooded contingent, the art of making the tiny actors move becomes just as interesting as the story itself. Just be sure, if you go, to sit close enough to the stage to be able to see everything. JENNIFER MAERZ