Remember back in 2008 when I told you to remember the title Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson? And begged Seattle theaters to bring it to town?

Well, it has arrived—at the Public Theater in New York. Hopefully, somebody will eventually haul it out here.

As John Lahr says in the New Yorker review: "Musical theatre, like America itself, is undergoing a paradigm shift." And Bloody Bloody is a leading edge of that shift—it's part All the King's Men, part emo-rock concert, and part deconstruction of the American musical itself. And it's really, really fun.

Listen to some early versions of Bloody Bloody songs here.

Sometimes you have to take the initiative.
Sometimes your whole family dies of cholera.
Sometimes you have to make your own story.
Sometimes you have to shoot the storyteller in the neck.
Sometimes you have to take back the country.
Sometimes you have to kill everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone!

Populism, yeah yeah!

Closer to home this weekend, "Awesome"—also part of the musical-theater paradigm shift—premieres West at On the Boards.

From our Suggests for West this week:

Seattle hasn’t heard much lately from "Awesome," the seven-piece theater/art-rock/garage band that, over the past five years, has threatened to redefine the American musical as a place of moods and textures instead of hijinks and wocka-wocka-wocka. (Though they never forget the importance of being funny.) Their Delaware: A Subtle Spectacular was (obliquely) about a mermaid, loss, and whether Delaware exists. Their noSIGNAL was about bees, suicide, and office workers. Now West, directed by Matthew Richter, is about horizons, restlessness, and an ideal destination that does not exist. What’ll it be? Who knows? I can’t wait to find out. (Brendan Kiley)

And in this week's theater section—find out which Seattle actor told a story from the battle of Troy so freakishly well that one audience member stood up in the middle of the show and begged him to stop.