Midsummer Night’s Dream
(All Shows Bilingual in ASL American Sign Language / Spoken English)
Presented by Sound Theatre Company
Directed and ASL by Howie Seago, Co-Directed by Teresa Thuman
From April 19 – May 12
at 12th Ave Arts
TICKETS HERE
Shakespeare is overdone. There. I said it. You can come at me all you want, you know it’s true, I know it’s true and if I have to sit through one more bland self indulgent performance of Hamlet I’ll start burning theaters down.
NOT SO with Sound Theatre’s A Midsummer Nights Dream.
Everyone’s seen/read Midsummer so I will not summarize the play. If you don’t know Midsummer-go see this show! It’ll be a great introduction to Shakespeare comedies done right.
I haven’t seen an ASL performance in a long time. This is my first one in Seattle, and it blew me away.
Sound Theatre has put together the most wonderful cast to display Shakespeare’s most popular comedy. I’ve seen Midsummer a dozen times, read it more than I care to admit and this cast showed me new beats and emotions in the script I’ve never noticed.
As much as I would like to write a blurb on each cast member and what they bring to the performance, I doubt you want to read a 17-page review. The two people who stole every scene (in the best way, not overshadowing their fellow actors) are the delightful Elizabeth Ayers Gibson (Hermia) and hilarious Ryan Schlecht (Bottom). Both actors are so captivating you cannot take your eyes off of them.
Major praise for Margaret Toomey and Kellie Martin for a fantastic set. I absolutely LOVED the cast had a set with so many levels they could interact and play in. I personally would wear every costume Toomey and Kat Henwood designed for this production.
Please do yourself a favor and go see this show.
By R. H. Tyrrel
Downstairs
John Q. Smith is brutal in his attack on this role. Gerry’s first moment on stage is quiet and dangerous. I felt my panic rise as he stood on the stairs, simply watching and waiting for Teddy to notice him. It was like watching a predator stalk his prey. Simply by standing there, on the stairs, overlooking his domain, I was filled with terror. It is rare for an actor to enthrall and terrorize just by quietly standing, and he clasps this precious position of power steadily throughout the show. Gerry is an overbearing, abusive control freak intent on keeping the status quo- where he is the only one making any decisions – ie withholding job opportunities from Irene under the guise of being “traditional.” Teddy’s presence in Gerry’s house (which actually belongs to Irene) upsets the power balance and that is simply unacceptable.
Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine 
The Pride
Big Bad
My first impression was that Lock, Shock and Barrel had rounded up their friends and started a theatre troupe. Writhing from all sides of the theatre, haunting and scratching, the ensemble slowly assembled into the center of the space. It’s dark. And creepy. But of course these friends aren’t here to terrify you – they break and speak to the audience. They circle the whole audience around for story time in their original history of Little Red Riding Hood. From there, we’re volleyed between hilarity, despair, and grim horror asking the questions “what makes a woman?”, and “what makes a beast?”
Big Bad is an example of a really good idea executed brilliantly. With momentum off of the success of it’s first iteration at Ghost Light’s Battle of the Bards, this production has found a firm footing within the strange and eerie DangerSwitch! universe. The onstage storytellers elaborate a tragic story of several generations of women trying to survive through mixed media, performance art, dance segments, and shadow projection woven all together with keen poetic verse. I can say a lot of things I like about this show, but I really believe that it’s the people who you need to go and see. I heard their director Eddie DeHais one time talking about the basis of clowning, and let me tell you — these clowns run DEEP. With a dedication to their personal story, these artists are performing challenging and provoking material in a way that makes any audience curious for more. In my opinion, I think they’ve invented a perfect set of characters within a wonderfully nightmarish world. I would listen to these guys tell me just about any story. I know they’d do it justice.
Hooded Or Being Black For Dummies
The Fantastic Misadventures of Twisty Shakes
10 Minutes in the Forest 
Caligula
Truthfully, the text of Caligula is not generally one that people smile at. It is heavy, destructive, and at times, hard to watch. Joshua Jon and the team at Arouet however, make this show easier to process and take in as a modern audience. They bring these seemingly unbelievable circumstances into our contemporary world and show us how very, very close we are to this reality. And then, as soon as you have grimaced, they offer up laughs and incredibly beautiful moments that I have found myself replaying in my mind in the days following. These are actors reaching into the depths of insanity here and they do so with aplomb. Luke Sayler reigns supreme as the title role of Caligula, bellowing orders, brainstorming new madness at every turn and right when you think you couldn’t hate him more, he flashes you these unbelievable puppy dog eyes and…maybe we should hear him out? Danielle Daggerty as Caesonia is unstoppable, she begins as a calm, wise voice of reason and by the end of the show, she is almost unrecognizable. There were several times where I just wanted to reach out and hug her. Richard Sean Glen as Helicon is menacinly delightful. Helicon himself has nothing to loose so he indulges Caligula at every request, maybe as a way of surviving but we also get the feeling that he also finds joy in this madness as well. Some of my favorite moments of the show were the two of them scheming, Caligula and Helicon, matching wits back and forth and in a more tender beat later in the show, painting each others nails.
There are many moments of this show that almost, if you aren’t paying attention, come from out of left field. Fights break out, an impromptu interpretive dance piece, a poetry slam- but then also madness, cruelty, chaos, from out of nowhere. But therein lies the beauty of it all. There is order within chaos. We, the survived, the living, have to find it and bring it to the surface. Director (and Arouet Artistic Director) Joshua Jon is doing just that. He has choreographed this unthinkable cruelty, this total destruction of a country, to dance around the most tender moments in this show in order to find a brilliant balance. I was awestruck by the whole production.
