Theater Review Revue

A touring production at 5th Avenue Theatre Through Nov
16.

People will look back at 2006 as the year the American musical
cracked open. That year, Broadway began waking up from its decades-long
coma of revivals, jukebox musicals, and

adaptations of Disney movies. Finally, the generation reared on
MTV—who learned about musical theatrics from Doctor Dre and
Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses—had grown up, figured out how to woo
producers, and started writing and performing intelligent, not-cheesy
musicals for young adults instead of octogenarians and children. Three
notable examples: Passing Strange, Spring Awakening, and
The Drowsy Chaperone.

The Drowsy Chaperone, which won five Tony Awards in 2006, is
the cleverest and most knowing of the three. It does three jobs at
once: It is an homage to cheesy, old-
fashioned musicals; a parody
of cheesy, old-fashioned musicals; and an apology for cheesy,
old-fashioned musicals. Its first line is “I hate theater,” spoken by
an agoraphobic, homebody musicals-queen in an oversized cardigan
(played with precise comic timing by Jonathan Crombie). He hates
theater, but he loves old musicals and gives the audience a tour
through his favorite, The Drowsy Chaperone, while making tea,
sipping brandy, and generally hiding in his small apartment. (And being
unbearably hilarious: “She had that wide-eyed expression of pained
confusion God reserves for older people on their birthdays. ‘Who are
you? And who am I? And why is this cake on fire?'”)

The musical is a ’20s wedding farce with punning gangsters, an
aviatrix (“what we now call a lesbian”), a Latin lothario, a
blindfolded roller-skating scene, the obligatory expository opening
number, and tap-dancing in two-toned high-top shoes. This touring
production is perfect, both embodiment and loving parody of America’s
goofiest art form. And it is a harbinger of great revolutions to come
in American musical theater. BRENDAN KILEY

ACT Theatre

Through Nov 16.

In Becky’s New Car, Steven Dietz’s sharp new comedy receiving
its world-premiere production at ACT, a perfectly ordinary woman
stumbles into an extraordinary opportunity: the chance at a brand-new
life. This new life is a universe away from her typical existence as a
middle-aged wife and mother and overworked auto-dealership employee,
but she’s not particularly hungry to escape; when she bothers to
notice, Becky realizes she’s content with what she’s got. Nevertheless,
when a well-greased rabbit hole opens up before her, Becky can’t help
herself from taking the plunge, and the twisty ramifications of this
sensible woman’s experiment with chaos speed this slick, sweet, but
far-from-shallow show along to a surprisingly affecting finale.

Considering the double-life/mistaken-
identity shenanigans of
its plot, Becky’s New Car might’ve glossed by as a whimsical
theatrical fantasia. Instead, playwright Dietz and director Kurt
Beattie ground the play’s characters in real, tangible life, with the
help of an exemplary cast. In lesser hands, Becky might come off as a
comedic symbol of midlife stasis; as played by Kimberly King in a
virtuoso performance, she’s a flesh-and-blood woman, the type you’d
bump into at an ATM and remember afterward. Equally good: Charles
Leggett as Becky’s sweet, schlumpy, “Soviet-hearted” husband, whose
experience of his wife’s impromptu, midlife rumspringa gives the
play its emotional weight.

But as with any new play worth celebrating, the ultimate star is the
author. Crafting a comedic confection that’s actually funny is
difficult enough, infusing such a confection with legitimate weight and
depth is nearly miraculous—and Dietz has done both. He has
written a 21st-century play that somehow makes the prospect of adultery
seem shocking again, in which a second chance at life with a schlub in
sweatpants feels like a fairy-tale ending. Go see it. DAVID
SCHMADER

Live Girls! Theater

Through Nov 22.

“Everyone at this table is speaking Sanskrit,” argues Ram (Agastya
Kohli), a translator of poetry, early in Love Person. He’s at a
bar, trying to impress Vic (Lisa Reynolds), a party girl he’s picked up
for a fling. Vic’s deaf sister, Free (Kim Nungesser), is having none of
it. American Sign Language, she signs, is a purer, more conceptual
language, not rooted in the verbal patterns of Sanskrit. It’s derived
from gestures, Free says, which predate the spoken word.

It could just be an ordinary bar conversation, but there’s so much
subtext between the characters, and the stakes keep going up. Soon,
Free is railing against poetry—why would you need poetry to
describe love, she signs, when we already have sex?—and her rage
threatens to throw all the relationships at that table into free fall.
It’s a marvelous script by Aditi Brennan Kapil, enjoying its Northwest
debut, and the direction, by Joy Brooke Fairfield and Dawn Stoyanoff,
captures the script’s complexity.

The way the three languages are translated make a perfect case for
the imperfection of translation. Sanskrit poems are projected onto a
wall in the original language as Ram reads the English translation and
Free signs them out. All three translations work in harmony, but the
rest of the play is a gorgeous jumble of languages and intentions. The
actors sign to each other, their subtitles are projected, and the
portion of the audience that doesn’t know ASL has to choose between
reading what the characters are saying or watching their faces to pick
up the nuance of how they’re saying it. The performances are roundly
wonderful. You respect and admire these characters even as they make
reprehensible decisions and then try to correct them, working together
to create a satisfying—and refreshingly hopeful—climax.
This is an intellectual play that isn’t afraid to be romantic, and
despite its different languages, in the end you can’t help but
understand perfectly. PAUL CONSTANT