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A Child's Christmas in Wales

Seattle's Child Magazine

http://heraldnet.com/article/20091215/SCM0602/912159984

By Taryn Zier

The cast of A Child's Christmas in Wales.

I knew Stone Soup Theatre's production of A Child's Christmas in Wales had sunk in with my 5-year-old son, Nathan, when he exclaimed upon leaving that he was “super cold,” just like in the play when some of the characters were freezing and imagined themselves lost on a mountain. This was a minute detail from one of the stories, one that didn't stick with me, but did with him.

And that's the beauty of the show. Different people take different things with them because of their own interests and experiences. I wondered whether an hour-long play based on a poem, full of Christmas memories from Welsh writer Dylan Thomas' childhood in the early 1900s, would resonate with children born nearly 100 years later. But the rapt audience of all ages drew my curiosity to a close. It turns out we can all relate to Thomas' recollections.

Kids especially enjoy watching other kids perform. The cast is made up of four adults and 11 young people, ranging in age from 8 to 12 years old. At the start of the show, the youngest actors played and sang Christmas tunes and the audience tried to guess whether or not the carol was originally written as a Christmas song. Nathan said his favorite was Angela Blodgett, an 8-year-old girl who played an amazing Silent Night on the keyboard (and yes, this was originally a Christmas song, written by an Austrian priest in 1816).

From there we journeyed with the actors through Thomas' world – playtime in the snow, visits from eccentric aunts and uncles and a fire at a neighbor's house on Christmas Eve. He writes lyrically about the smells, sights and sounds of his holidays. Amusing moments such as Thomas making footprints in the snow with his friends – hoping someone would think a hippo had passed by – and pondering whether fish are able to see the snowfall, gave the production some levity.

Thomas' stories are interspersed with the actors' own holiday memories, Welsh music and carols. The two sets of stories were distinguished by a red plaid hat that signifies an actor is playing Thomas (most of the cast ended up with the hat at some point). This was lost on Nathan, but he enjoyed the production just the same. And having the modern stories involved, such as Starbucks saving the day after burnt Christmas cookies, helps us relate to the actors, who take pleasure in telling their tales.

The painted backdrop of a small Wales town and simple props serve the production well, yet Stone Soup's intimate 58-seat theatre is really what draws people into the play. It gives the feeling of an elaborate story time; a chance to cozy up and listen to narratives about the joys of the holiday season.

One of the benefits of live theatre is that it is a shared bonding experience that can open up discussion about our own lives. Sitting in the car after the play, enjoying breadsticks from Pagliacci Pizza a few doors down, Nathan and I got to chat about our thoughts. When asked what the show was about, Nathan promptly said "Christmas." And when asked what Christmas was about, he spoke of getting a tree and celebrating with people (not about presents, which I thought a probable response).

There are many wonderful ways to commemorate the holidays – with family, friends, food, reminiscing about Christmases past and thinking about how lucky we are today. As Director Kalon Thibodeaux reflects in the program notes, "Times may change, but each and every Christmas lives on as long as we each have memories to share."

Durang7

The Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2010263468_reviews13.html

November 13, 2009

By Misha Berson, Seattle Times Theatre Critic

Christopher Durang's quirky brand of humor ripples through his full-length plays ("Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You," "Beyond Therapy" et al).

But he's also a proud proponent of comic one-acts, a batch of which Stone Soup Theatre performs in "Durang 7," staged in a cozy storefront space of the rapidly expanding Wallingford company.

These quasi-absurd playlets reflect Durang's obsessions with theater, bullying authority figures and Catholic guilt.

The best-known, "An Actor's Nightmare," plunks a poor schmo into the middle of several conflicting plays he's supposedly starring in.

And "Desire, Desire, Desire" is a goofy sequel to "Streetcar Named Desire." (Cliff Notes may be needed.)

Staged by Maureen Hawkins, with very game actors, all these mini-works are amusing — though not equally so. One of the funniest is "Gym Teacher," with James Lyle as a brutal, macho, misogynist P.E. coach who makes you play dodge ball with bowling balls. Youch.

Seattle Gay News

http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews37_45/page25.cfm

November 6, 2009

By Miryam Gordon, SGN A&E Writer

Stone Soup Theatre, a theater devoted specifically to one-acts, has put together what they believe is the first amalgam of seven Christopher Durang one-acts. One of Durang's most memorable plays is the very funny Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, a parody of a Catholic nun teaching her view of the world. Durang likes to meld comedy with painful subjects. His plays are "absurdist comedy married to real feelings," he says.

This evening of seven plays is produced by an ensemble of six: Maureen Miko, James Lyle, Zachariah Robinson, Natalie Saxon, Rebecca Parker-O'Neil and Laurence Hughes. It's definitely a mix of comic situations with some poignant subjects.

... (Click here to read full article.)

The evening bounces along as director, Maureen Hawkins, pulls together a solid ensemble with a great, versatile set by Jenna Carino and really nice costuming by Savannah Baltazar, especially for a theater that typically has not had money to pour into such areas.

The seven plays do show a range of sentiment and humor, so Durang should be pleased that these seven can be performed in one evening. A good job on stage leads to good times in the audience.

The Seattle Weekly

http://www.seattleweekly.com/events/durang7-800009/

November 4, 2009

By Margaret Friedman

These seven eclectic short plays by satirical funster Christopher (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You)Durang span themes of theatrical illusion, Catholicism, abusive authority, nightmare, improprieties, hypocrisy, and customer service. Director Maureen Hawkins and the game cast get the intersection of pomp, camp, and pathos just right. An understudy filling in for a lead actor must figure out what play he’s in. Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski are visited by a census taker while waiting for “Stellaaa!!!” A jocular creep of a gym teacher tyrannizes his 7th graders. Some of the plays arc, while others unravel into absurd pandemonium. Durang layers in many theater-history inside jokes, but the pieces can also be enjoyed at surface value. In a couple of the plays, the characters’ cartoonish desire to entertain us feels a bit desperate, but it’s a small price to pay for this generally palatable and well-executed tasting menu.

The Fremocentrist

http://www.fremocentrist.com/archives/025_10-28-09.html

October 28, 2009

By Kirby Lindsay

The MainStage 2009-10 season for Stone Soup Theatre kicks off Friday, October 30, with Durang7. This collection of seven one-act plays written by Christopher Durang promises a fast-paced romp through pieces of social satire, absurdist comedy and lampoons of classic theater.

Stories to speak to the heart of a Fremont sensibility, yet the theater – which sits just east of the Center of the Universe at 4035 Stone Way North – has yet to fully engage within our community. “Our audiences are very wide,” Maureen Miko, the founder of the theater explained, yet “something tells me we haven’t tapped into the neighborhood.”

Click through to the Fremocentrist to read the rest of this article!

Eleemosynary

The Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2008780793_zart25stonesoup.html

February 24, 2009

By Tom Keogh

Lee Blessing's somewhat overlong, 1985 one-act play "Eleemosynary" is intensely focused on the architecture of emotional neglect and abuse crossing three generations of highly-intelligent women.

Seen from another angle, it is also the story of how ties that bind even the most estranged people are never sundered, though at times it is intentionally hard to tell in this drama if that is more tragic than a clean break.

...

Stone Soup Theatre and director Mari Geasair's production of "Eleemosynary," mounted in the company's intimate DownStage space, skillfully modulates the ups and downs of understated hopes and ill-concealed disappointment that go on for decades.

...

... Still, the cast is uniformly excellent, delivering sharply delineated characters whose thoughts, paradoxically, are far from the truth in their hearts or, in Echo's case, are desperately chimerical.

The Seattle P.I.

http://www.seattlepi.com/theater/401156_theater24.html

February 23, 2009

By Tim Appelo

Northwest-spawned playwright Lee Blessing (Reed College, '71) has a gift for dramatizing the emotional side of intellectual matters. ...

Three generations square off in the play. Dorothea (Stone Soup founding director Maureen Miko) married and became a mother way before she was ready, and rebelled by embracing a wacky persona. ...

But Artie holds Dorothea responsible for screwing up her life, so she becomes a hyper-rational high achiever. And when Artie gets pregnant, she abandons her daughter Echo (Kayti Barnett) with grandma Dorothea. ...

Echo gets along famously with granny Dorothea, but not with her AWOL mom. Dorothea pours her thwarted ambition into Echo, teaching her Greek at age 1. Echo grows up to be a spelling champion. What they all need to learn is the meaning of eleemosynary: charity, a giving and forgiving attitude.

... Barnett's Echo is radiantly cute, until we discover she's just as scary as her forebears. Miko plays Dorothea as a dazed, New Age Auntie Mame. Whitney's Artie is convincingly frosty, but too inert.

Seattle's Child Magazine

http://www.seattleschild.com/article/20090220/SCM06/902209987/-1/SCM

February 20, 2009

By Laura Spruce Wight

As director Mari Geasair points out, Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary is above all else, a story of hope. This makes it a fitting play to see during these tough times. ...

On a simple stage with a crossword painted in the background hiding words such as forgive, worthy and home, the story of these women and a journey that embodies these three words unfolds. There’s something for everyone in Eleemosynary, but it would strike a particularly sentimental chord with mothers and daughters (young and old). ...

...

While Eleemosynary deals seriously with the heartache of strained relationships, there is plenty of laughter, mainly at lines that speak those universal truths that we can all relate to.

The title is the final word Echo spells in her bittersweet National Spelling Bee win. It means charitable. As the economy places stresses on families that can strain relationships, the word serves as a reminder that even in the most trying times, each of us holds this simple power.

A Stoppard Duo

The Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2008345581_zart03stoppard.html

November 3, 2008

By Nancy Worssam

After Magritte

...[After Magritte] offers hilarious proof that perception and memory are not always to be trusted....

...Director Mary Machala has masterfully paced this lunacy to reinforce the delight of each unexpected happening. Courtney Bohl and Matthew Middleton play the couple with spot-on British upper-class hauteur, making their bizarre circumstances even more humorous. Aaron Ousley as Inspector Foot is bumbling arrogance played to perfection. And it's all done on a set that's straight out of a Magritte surrealistic painting....

...The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, directed by Roger Tompkins, is to slapstick what Magritte is to absurdity. It's played by a group of zany clowns in cabaret costumes. Hamlet is a leggy blond bombshell (Kat Schroeder). Gertrude (Nick Mathews) is bearded and husky. The set change between the two plays is the most creative I've ever seen.

So keep your eye on Stone Soup. It has begun the season in fine form.

Seattle Weekly

http://www.seattleweekly.com/events/a-stoppard-duo-514302/

November 3, 2008

By Nancy Smith

After Magritte ... is one of the most quintessentially British things I've ever seen-a perfect example, it seems, of how the Brits pull off absurdist humor ...

SeattleActor.com

http://www.seattleactor.com/news/modules.php?name=SeattleReview&rop=showcontent&id=245

November 2, 2008

By Jerry Kraft

The 15 Minute Hamlet

"A Stoppard Duo" is the first production in Stone Soup Theatre's attractive, intimate new theater. This company is dedicated to the one-act play and they could hardly do better than to produce the dazzling wordplay and theatrical inventiveness of Tom Stoppard.

...this production understood that the script requires enormous restraint and self-containment to keep its diverse and ridiculous elements bonded. Director Mary Machala got that dead right....

I look forward to more good work from this company.


An Evening of Albee

QUEEN ANNE NEWS

http://www.pacificpublishingcompany.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=19315793&BRD=855&PAG=461&dept_id=517907&rfi=8

Happy birthday, Edward Albee

February 20, 2008

By Nancy Worssam

Alex Samuels and J.D. Lloyd in "Zoo Story"

Every once in a while you see a stage performance that is so riveting, so incredibly right on, that you are stunned by its power. There's one of those performances in Stone Soup Theatre's current production of two short plays by Edward Albee.

As Jerry in "The Zoo Story," Alex Samuels shuffles onto the small stage with a three-day beard, hair unkempt, shirt hanging out from unpressed trousers and dirty red Converse high tops on his feet. Stumbling into and past a garbage can, he stops before the well-groomed Peter (J.D. Lloyd), who sits on a park bench reading. Jerry begins a conversation that can't end well.

The scene is set near the zoo in Central Park. Peter is a cultured, solid member of the upper middle class, taking a break from his busy week. Jerry clearly is not of his class, nor of his sound mind.

Samuels has the right New York street accent, the right look and an increasingly frightening persona. His opening lines are, "I've been to the Zoo. You'll read about it tomorrow in the papers." Eventually we'll find out what that means; now it just seems part of his instability, hinting as it does at something untoward. "Mind if I ask you a few questions? Every once in a while, I like to talk."

And so he does. Jerry grills the fastidious Peter, who for his part seems riveted to his bench by politeness, or perhaps disbelief. Then Jerry launches into a stream-of-conscious outpouring-about cats eating birds, his attempt to kill his landlady's dog and class differences exemplified by descriptions of the people at the bottom of the social scale, the ones Peter would never know.

This is powerhouse theatre, beautifully directed by Mary Machala. As Peter, Lloyd provides a perfect foil for Samuels' deranged Jerry. He is dressed for his part in argyle socks and the casual business attire typically found in New York publishing houses in the 1950s, when the play was first produced. Lloyd effectively expresses the noblesse oblige so many in his character's social class exhibit toward the "less fortunate."

As with many Albee plays, this production explores issues of class in the United States. In "The Zoo Story," however, Albee is asking us to consider issues of alienation and loneliness as well.

"Finding the Sun" in February 2008

"Finding the Sun," the program's other one-act, is not as effective. Stone Soup's stage is quite small, and productions with small casts work best in such a space. But there are eight characters in "Finding the Sun," and when they are all on stage at the same time, it's just too crowded.

Another problem is the fact that the play is just not as compelling as "The Zoo Story," despite the fact that it was written a quarter century later. It's themes are familiar ones for Albee, addressing issues that have haunted his life and his work: love, aging, mortality and living with the choices we make in life

A Trilogy of Terror

SEATTLE WEEKLY

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-10-31/arts/opening-night-pericles-trilogy-of-terror.php

Opening Night: Pericles, Trilogy of Terror

October 31, 2007

By RICHARD MORIN

Stone Soup Theatre's tiny performance space [...] engenders an uncommon intimacy between watchers and watched that can be an actor's best friend.

Eric Reidman in "Trilogy of Terror" Fall 2007

Witness Eric Riedmann's performance as the mentally dislodged narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror story "The Tell-Tale Heart." [...] He perfectly captures the high-strung, erudite madness of Poe's writing; his words gush out in an avalanche of horrible self-delusion and acute suffering, and his body is coiled tightly, ready to spring forth at the slightest provocation. Director Julie Beckman uses minimalistic lighting and an offstage chorus of terrifying whispers to create a wonderfully tense atmosphere of foreboding that mirrors and exacerbates the narrator's inner turmoil.

Opening the trilogy is Lucille Fletcher's short study in alienation and murder, "Sorry, Wrong Number." [...] Stone Soup founder and artistic director Maureen Miko takes the lead role as the invalid Mrs. Stevenson, a nervous, neurotic kvetch whose only connection to the outside world is through her bedside telephone. Here the theater's diminutiveness works almost too well: Mrs. Stevenson, after accidentally overhearing a two-way phone conversation that may or may not reveal her hubby's plot to off her, spends most of the play caterwauling into the phone, and Miko plays her to the hilt, her voice pitched in a loud, high, warbling whine.