Play: En Garde!

 Athena by Gracie Gardner, Directed by Kathryn Van Meter, presented in collaboration with Salle Auriol Fencing Club, Arts West, Through May 4. 

Back to the Junction in West Seattle. Dinner at our favorite sushi place, a desert donut at the nearby Top Pot (which was also hosting a local distillery for a tasting for rye whiskeys and berry liqueurs), and the Athena at the Arts West on its opening Friday. A play about two young women. And swordplay. A lot of swordplay.

Mary Ellen (Anteia Delaney) and the aforementioned Athena (Allison Renee) are 17-year old fencers training for nationals. Mary Ellen is dexterous, gangly and introverted, fencing to make herself look better for college. Solo-named Athena is strong, loud, and pushy, fencing to prove herself the best. Mary Ellen is from the burbs and wants to impress her parents. Athena is from the city and has a rocky relationship with her father. Both are socially maladroit. They start practicing together. And the play is about their relationship as they cross swords and words and emotions.

They're seventeen, and all the emotions are on the surface. The conversations just tumble out nonlinearly, with whipsaw changes in direction and hummingbird levels of attention. And through it all you see the bonds growing between them, as they both want the same thing, and very different things as well. You're supporting Mary Ellen at the beginning (she's the underdog of the pair), but come to appreciate Athena as well.

The play is presented in collaboration with the Salle Auriol Fencing Club. There have been a lot of such team-ups in West Seattle's productions, usually other entertainment groups but this is the first one for a fencing club. The single setting is the piste - the long strip that combat takes place on. The action orbits around the field of combat, but centralizes there. And the fencing is ... real good, and carries the plot forward as both young women change each other. 

And the Athena is ... good. I liked it but did not love it, but then, I have never fenced nor been a 17-year-old girl. The Lovely Bride DID love it, because in her storied history she was both. I found it well-written, well-acted, and well-presented. Arts West has produced another excellent evening of entertainment. 

 More later,

The Political Desk Pops Off

OK, I'm going to be 'that guy'. The grumpy old man complaining about the responsibilities of the modern world. Blame the killer head cold that has been kicking me around since Gary Con, but I'm going to vent a little.

This past week a packet arrived from the King County Department of Elections with a ballot. And the ballot had one measure on it. One. The official title is Proposition No. 1 Regional Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Levy. Its to fund the King County Fingerprinting unit. Yep. Fingerprinting.

It's a replacement levy for the elapsing levy. It is a property tax increase, but at a lesser percentage than the previous one. Of course, your house is worth more at this point as well. but doing the numbers, it is an extra 20 bucks on top of everything else. And AFIS has done a pretty good job for the past few decades, has been really transparent about their work, and touts their successes on their site. And checking on the web, there is not even a statement AGAINST this measure.

But,

But,

But why are you asking US at this point? Shouldn't this be part of the rest of the budget? Is this worth sending out ballots for something like this?

Well, they're asking us because thems the rules. You want the county government to boost your property taxes (even by about a Jackson) without your OK? You want a chance to be a part of the decision -making process? Well, here it is. Being a separate item also protects it from being put on the chopping block for some closed-door budget cutting (like, say, the mounted police unit for Seattle itself, which met its end last year due to budgetary constraints). 

And the ballots have a lot more on them, just not stuff where I'm living. School levies on Mercer Island and in Enumclaw. Fire Protection issues in Renton, Duvall, and Woodinville. And some of this stuff can't really wait around for a November election. 

I'm actually an opponent of the proposals to bunch everything together in one mammoth ballot, and as a result am willing to put up with this "pecked by baby ducks" approach to government. And if it is a irritant, its the same sort of irritant as getting your oil changed at regular intervals, or separating your trash and recycling, or taking those two separate bins to the curb, even when it's been raining for hours and you're really rather be inside because you already have a nasty cold. AND hauling them back up the driveway. In the RAIN.

But I digress.

Anyway, go vote when you get your ballots. Its practically frictionless at the moment, and requires only a little effort on your part. It shows you're paying attention. Despite all my whining about the process, I'd say let's keep the AFIS, and vote Approved on this. 

S'allright? S'allright.

More later,

Book: An Elegy for Ellison

  The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison (with J. Michael Stracynski), Blackstone Publishing, 2024

Provenance: Christmas present from the Lovely Bride, purchased off Amazon.

Review: I talked about Harlan Ellison the man back here. Let's talk about his "last work" - The long-promised collection of bleeding edge stories called The Last Dangerous Visions. 

I read the initial Dangerous Visions (published 1967) in hardback in our high school library, and purchased paperback editions of it and its two-volume sequel, Again Dangerous Visions (1972), in college. For a young person who had drifted into SF through the ABC axis (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke), the subject matter and writing was a bit mind-blowing. It helped codify the American New Wave of Science Fiction, went after a variety of societal taboos, and kicked down the doors of tradition bolts-and-rivets SF.

Then there was a bit of a lapse of about 50 years, and only after Ellison's passing did his executor, J. Michael Stracynski (the Babylon 5 guy), organize the remaining material Ellison had, added a few stories, and finally finished the volume. 

The result is a mixed bag. Some pieces have that urgent, nostalgic, whiff of the originals ("Assignment No. 1" by Stephen Robinett and "A Night at the Opera" by Robert Wissner). Some feel like political tracks that could appear in the Economist ("Hunger" by Max Brooks). Some were utterly frightening ("The Final Pogrom" by Dan Simmons, which combines the holocaust with American Ingenuity, made more poignant by recent events in this country). Some of the best feel like recent, post-Harlan additions. "War Stories" by Edward Bryant, dealing with weaponized sharks, was brilliant in both presentation and subject. "First Sight" by Adrian Tchaikovski mixes the tropes of first contact, alien cultures, and the limits of the senses in a nice little package. But more than a few were "meh" - OK, but not shaking the earth great. And there were short "Intermezzos" by D.M.Rowles that just completely missed the mark. The art (by Tim Kirk) is a wondrous call-back to the earlier volumes, but the Ellisonesque intros (telling you WHY this story and this author are worth your time) are mostly missing. Yes, and there some typos in the text, including the punchline of Ward Moore "Falling from Grace", which needed a bit more typographic love to make the story land.

The longest entry in the book is Stracynski's own introduction/eulogy of Ellison, two parts remembrance of a friend, and two parts why-this-project-is-late. He hits the good parts and bad parts of Ellison in his travel from Terrible Infant to Grey Eminence, and offers some reasons behind his personal actions over the years. But reasons are not a denial of responsibility, and Ellison the man, the writer, and the editor, has to accept responsibility. An afterword talks about earlier incarnations of the book, and seems like an interesting collection of stories in their own right.

And the end result is ... OK. This final volume would neither kick down the doors of traditional SF (which now continues, but no longer dominates, the marketplace), nor wade onto the shores like a Leviathan, sweeping all in its path. My mind is not blown, but then, I'm no longer a teenager, my high school has been completely renovated, and the world turns and moves on. Some of the dystopian futures are all-too-real. Others feel right around the corner.

But it's a suitable memorial to a mercurial talent. Thank you J. Michael. Rest easy, Harlan.

More later,

Recent Arrivals: The Gary Con Cache

 I was a guest last week back at Gary Con, a convention celebrating the life and works of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. It was held in the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It is one of the best-run, most-fun conventions in gaming. For me it is a chance to game, meet new gamers, and hang out with old friends from TSR. And I pick up some interesting stuff in the process. Only one of the items shown at the right is from a Kickstarter. The rest come from my experiences in beautiful Lake Geneva (hey, it didn't snow this time). Here's what is in the photo:

Echoes from Fomalhaut by Gabor Lux and others, 5 issues, First Hungarian D20 Society, Various page length, 'Zine  digest format, 2018-2022. One of the joys of the Gary Con dealer's area is the Black Blade booth which carries OSR material that doesn't always show up at the local game store, like Dungeoneer 'zines, Judges Guild adventures and Empire of the Petal Throne reprints. I picked up issues #1-3 and issue #10 of Fomalhaut last time out, and really enjoyed them. They have that old-school flair of early D&D 'zines, with a booklet format and separate maps, tucked in a simple paper envelope. This time out I expanded my collection with Echoes from Fomalhaut #s 4, 5, and 8, In The Shadow of the City-God (cool name), and EMDT #100, A Journey to Fomalhaut (opened and shown here). Cool stuff. Thinking about running adventures in Shadowdark using this setting and dungeon (see below).

Various Shadowdark Products by Kelsey Dionne, Arcane Library, saddle-stitched digest-sized booklets, 2023-2025. Shadowdark is the new hotness, an Old School Revival pitching into a New School Revival for FRPGs. I picked up a copy last Gary Con out and was really, really impressed with the simplicity of the game, the new twist they added, and the clean b/w presentation. This time out I picked up a recent versions of their 'zine, Cursed Scroll (64-pages) and latched onto a copy of the adventure Raiders of the Hidden Temple (26-pages) at the dead dog party Sunday night. Looking forward to digging through this, and should mention they are doing a MASSIVE Kickstarter for a campaign setting. 

Secrets of Morocco: Eldritch Explorations in the Ancient Kingdom by William Jones et. al.  Chaosium had a booth at the con, celebrating 50 years of the company (their first project, the White Bear & Red Moon boardgame came out a year after D&D, and introduced everyone to the world of Glorantha that would host Runequest). And they brought some old stock they found in the warehouse. In my case, this worked out well, since I was struggling with The Blessed and the Blasphemous, which was set in Morocco about twenty years later (B&B also caused me to start reading Destination Casablanca, by Meredith Hindley, a rich, well-told history of the region in WWII). History overlaid with the Cthulhu Mythos. Looking forward to reading the Chaosium version.

Runequest Starter Set by Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, Jason Durall and others, Boxed Set, Chaosium Inc. 2022. I've been impressed with what Chaosium has done with its starter sets such as Pendragon - they are heavy, meaty, affordable introductions to the game. This one is packed with four booklets (rules, campaign setting, solo adventure, adventure), character sheets, maps, and polyhedral dice. Runequest is a complex game set in a complex world, and this set pushes to make it accessible to newcomers.  

Wildspace Magazine issue #2 Elves of the Stars and #3 Groundlings' Guide to Spelljammer, Various authors, David Shepheard, Editor, Published by The Piazza, 2024. I'm delighted that people are still enthusiastically playing and expanding the original Spelljammer campaign setting. Last year I was presented with issue one, and this year with Pdf printouts of issues two and three. Issue two concentrates on the elves in the Spelljammer universe, which are pretty much the British Navy. Issue three is an excellent collection of articles on introducing Spelljammer to your groundling characters. These are free, well-done fanzines, clearly labors of love. Terry Hawkins, who gave me the copies, also gave me a draft copy of his adventure Race Across the Stars, a Spelljammer space race through a slew of Wildspace locations. As an aside, he's looking for someone to publish it. 

These mugs with those mugs

Game Lizard Mug. The first night before the convention officially started, colleague Ed Stark arranged a dinner at the Chophouse, which is the resort's upscale restaurant. Picture is to the left, and you may recognize some of the folk gathered around the table. Ed also invite Mark Jeranek, of the Order of the Owls, who run a large group  of fans continually through the convention. And Mark in turn brought some mugs he created, which are beautiful and have the original Greg Bell game lizard from TSR's early product on them (with permission of the artist). Really nice!

Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 200 ml. I'll be frank, I'm of mixed emotions about people giving gifts to the Dungeon Master. I mean, you paid to come to the convention and came all this way, you don't have to toss a coin to the GM. That said, I will not turn down a kindness from fans, and a small bottle of whiskey is greatly appreciated when I get back to rainy Seattle and the post-convention head cold. Thank you.

TSR Alumni totchies. Tim Calhoun puts together a gathering of old TSR employees every year, and his work is greatly appreciated. It is a chance to see old friends and catch up on what everyone has been doing (spoilers: We're all getting old). We had drinks. We had drink tokens. This year they were poker chips. They were so cool I forwent my normal third beer in order to keep this one. Also, former TSR colleague Kevin Melka does 3-D printing, and I snagged a black unicorn from him, which I gave to the Lovely Bride and is currently on her desk.

Orcus Dice Bag. I got this at the Gary Con Merch booth, which has a host of neat stuff - hats, tropical shirts, adventures, and yes, dice bags. This one features an truly old-school Orcus on it. I has been years since I got a new bag, and it pairs well with the whiskey to create my own Chivas Regal moment. 

Tower of Gygax, various authors, 50-page ringbound booklet, various years. A tradition at Gary Con is the Tower of Gygax. Oh, I'm sorry, it should be read TOWER! OF! GYGAX!  This is 2-hour public session where various DMs run players through a series of encounters, the bulk of which consist of an entrance, and exit, and something nasty and murderous in-between. I had the chance to run it with veteran designer Doug Niles at the other table, and we had a great time. My style of running, particularly in combat encounters, tends to be a bit ... flamboyant. If you get a chance at Gary Con, take it out for a spin. (Oh, and I got a button as well).

It belongs in a museum!

The Sanitariums of Lake Geneva by Sonja Arkright, Self-Published, 96 page square-bound digest 2024. OK, so this isn't from Gary Con proper, but rather found in the Lake Geneva Museum. Situated in the old Power & Light building where the lake's outlet creates the White River, the museum has a three major rooms - a hall that features typical furnishing and artifacts from the town's past, another vault of specific displays of local hisotry (like the old Playboy resort and the raising of the Lucius Newberry), and a room dedicated to Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. And one of the books I wrote (Manual of the Planes) is in the display. So now I have something in the museum. So I feel old.

ANYWAY, Lake Geneva was the site of several Sanitariums/rest homes/health resorts, the most impressive of which was Oakwood, a massive five-story brick structure just east of town. In fact, the apartments that the Lovely Bride and I lived in when we first moved to Lake Geneva (The Colonial View Condominiums) were built on the site of this sanitarium. I picked up the book for potential Call of Cthulhu history, but did not know this. Nifty little book.

Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme RPG (No it isn't!) by Brian Saliba and Craig Schaffer, Exalted Funeral/Crowbar Creative, 350-page Hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. OK, This is the only non-Gary Con entry this time out, and is probably the weirdest game I've seen in the last decade (and I have one where you play vampires wanting to drink Hitler's blood). Saliba and Schaffer have cheerfully plundered the entire Python corpus to produce a huge volume in which no bit of the comedy group's work goes untouched. Dead parrots, spam, the Spanish Inquisition, the whole lot, all wrapped around the core of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, there is a REAL RPG underneath all this silliness. A step-level approach to damage. Pendragonesque character traits.  A host of character classes. Character Personas for the Gamemaster (sorry - the Head of Light Entertainment) who can over the course of play be sacked and replaced with a randomly-rolled NEW GM (Sorry, Head of Light Entertainment). I find this one fascinating in its mechanics, but am going to have to dig down through all the spam to find them. The Kickstarter came with a box of dice (including a boulderous 30-Sider, a sash for the HoLE and some plastic coconuts). No, they hit every base on this particular license, with a playable game. It's kinda frightening.

And that's if for this collection of loot/swag/totches/kickstarters. More later,

Play: Brave Old World

 Mother Russia by Lauren Yee, Directed by Nicholas C. Avila, Seattle Rep through 6 April 13 April

If writer Lauren Yee has a "thing" that describes her plays, it's dark comedies set against authoritarian backgrounds. Her excellent Cambodian Rock Band featured a man literally playing for time against a bouncy, humorous  leader in the Cambodian genocide. The Great Leap Forward sent a US basketball team to China and ended at Tiananmen Square. And now she take on Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of Soviet Russia and the triumph of capitalism. And its a wild ride.

So, we're in St Petersburg in the early 90s, and we have three people for whom the great move to capitalism has not worked out so well. Billy Finn is Evgeny, a unemployed milquetoast who lurks in the shadow of his father, a former KGB bigwig. He's hired by an old school chum Dmitri (Jesse Calixto), who has used the new freedom to open a small, failing business, and has pivoted it into a front for a freelance domestic espionage operation. Their target is Katya M (Andi Alhadeff),a  former rebel rocker who was big in the secret listening parties during the bad old times, and left for America. She couldn't compete with Whitney Houston, and no one wanted songs about the gulags when the gulags were supposedly closed down, so she came back. They are all lost in this brave new world of MacDonald's filet-o-fish sandwiches, adidas swooshes, and Folger's instant coffee. Freedom of choice means little to them when they themselves are not chosen.

And punctuating all of this is the always-appealing Rep semi-regular Julia Briskman, who wanders onto the stage between scenes as the babushka-wearing old woman. She's the embodiment of old Russia herself, though she never comes out an admits it. She plies the audience with donuts to get them on her side, complains about how everything is different now, and describes the former leaders of the USSR as old lovers who come to woo her yet always disappoint her. 

And the set-up feels comfortable and little frothy, and you think you know what's coming, and you're right and you're also wrong. Yee throws in some delightful curveballs in the plot, and all the characters are both smart and incredibly stupid at the same time. Billy Finn is timid,  trying to strike out on his own, and get his father's love and respect while dealing with his own inner cowardice. Jesse Calixto evokes Jackie Gleason with his wide-eyed reactions and own cluelessness of his weakness. Both men were originally planning on moving up to the big leagues of the old regime in the ranks of the KBG, and are now lost in the wake of the Soviet Collapse. Andi Alhadeff carves her own path as Katya, with her own arc and goals which the others both miss.

Now, in Mississippi Moon I loved the music, but recognized its existence as a cover to the motions of a rotating set design. Julia Briskman's Russian Mom does the same thing here with monologues and complaints, but the rotating set design here actually works, going from inside the shop to outside to a bus interior to outside Evgeny's father's door neatly. In this case there is precious little downtime and without breaking the flow. The fact that Briskman is wonderful just adds to it.

And, like Yee's other works, there is a lot of bright spots and human nature against the authoritarian background, and while there are the horrors of the past and perils of an uncertain future, the performance sparkle against it. Some of it feels like a SNL skit from the same period, making fun of Russian interpretations of American styles, yet it peels away easily to reveal the vulnerabilities of three people who have been conditioned to hide their true selves by their government. And it is a bit uncomfortable at a time when our own authoritarians are seeking to remake the world in their image, so some of the laughter feels like whistling past the graveyard.

I'm going to mark this one as a hit, and am delighted that the Rep is pushing its own World Premieres. More of this, please.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: Winter Festival

 So, things have been trickling into Grubb Street for the past few months. Some are Kickstarter resolutions, while other a bit of retail therapy.

The current situation is a mess as far as new game offers are concerned. The raw mess that is tariffs and trade wars threatens this entire cottage wing of the industry. We're already paying 20% over the initial investment with increased shipping costs, and it is only going to get worse. In addition to the added cost is the fact that we now have another step in the process - you order, you pay, and then you have to confirm and pay again wherever the wheel of financial fortune shows up. When I worked for Amazon, we obsessed with the idea of reducing the number of clicks needed to get somewhere. We're not doing it here, and it's going to hurt us, badly.

In any event, here are the latest things from the outside world.

Hamil's House of Oddities by Jon and Brynn Hage , Sleeping Giant Games, 304-page hardbound, Kickstarter, and Shadow's Reach by Jon and Brynn Hage  Sleeping Giant Games, 252-page hardbound, Kickstarters. This is one of the more beautiful projects to come across my transom in the past year. The main book (Hamil's) is a 5E adventure, while the Shadow's Reach is campaign, treasure, and monsters/characters. There's not a lot of text on each page, but it has a calm, cozy look to it, and really nice b/w art. This is the sort of thing I look for in Kickstarters - nice, personal products. 

Playing at the World, 2E Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons by Jon Peterson, the MIT Press, 374-page trade softbound, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics, Lacy, WA. Hang on, didn't I already get the original Playing at the World? Well, yeah, but that version covered everything, from German Kriegspiels and HGWell's Floor Games to the almost-present day. This is both cut down to the "juicy bits" about D&D itself, and expands in that Peterson has gained access to previously unavailable information. I'm looking forward to a reread (though right now on my reading list I am obsessing over the various colonial struggles in and around what is now Pittsburgh).

Triangle Agency, Normal Briefcase Collection, by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland, Haunted Table Games, Boxed set containing 300-page hardbound book, 216-page mission book, ring-bound character sheet booklet, dice, 2024, Kickstarter. I don't think I've ever been as intimidated by a game as by this one. It arrived, I opened the "Normal Briefcase" box, found it completely packed, carefully put the components back into the box, and and set it aside for when I could properly examine it. That was about four months ago. Anyway, finally cracking the game, it is pretty impressive, and fairly daunting. It is a corporate supernatural game where you are employed by the Triangle Agency to investigate anomalies. The game runs off four-sided die, but only the 3s matter. The books themselves are laid out as orientation manuals for the new "employees", and are spot-on happy-talk versions you'd find when you start at Amazon. Impressive and a little frightening.

Changed Stars by Patrice Daniel Long, Leland Andercheck, Dieselshot Express, 304-page hardbound, 2023, Kickstarter. This was definite whim purchase, but I'm pretty happy with it. SF set in the future of the Orion Arm, where humanity expanded out, acted like a bunch of militaristic a-holes, lost the war and was transformed into less a-holes. Original system, diverse alien species, lots of cool-looking ships, a very Star Trek Next Generation meets Traveller vibe. Merits a more thorough read-through.

Aetherial Expanse: Setting Guide by Joe Raso (project lead) and James J. Haeck (Story), Ghostfire Games, 294-page hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. This one has an interesting provenance - it is the campaign setting book for a series of pdf adventures. But it is also another take of D&D IN SPAAAACE, so I'm naturally interested in it. Space in this case is an astral sea dotted by various island nations. They look like they've expanding in how to handle ship movement and combat within the D&D system (though I've been partial to the methodology laid out in Secrets of Saltmarsh, no one else seems to have picked up on it). Ship hit points seem a bit light, but I can do a bit more digging on that.

The Grey Knight by Larry DiTillio, Moon Design Publications, 84-page hardbound, 2024 (original 1986), Gabi's Cards and Comics, Lacey, Washington. I can't say a lot about this one, since a colleague is running the original version of this adventure using original Pendragon rules (character generation was complex for the time). This looks like it has added some additional material and tied it in more tightly with their starter set. The graphic quality is high. But I'll wait until our current campaign wraps before delving too deeply into it.

Arkham by Mike Mason, Keith Herger, Bret Kramer, Chaosium, 268-page hardbound w/ two full-color maps and a facsimile newspaper, 2023, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics. Another whim purchase and a good one. Arkham was HPLovecraft's setting for many of his stories. He did a sketch map for it, which was expanded by others (most notably cartoonish Gahan Wilson), each new version adding stuff to it. Chaosium has done several editions of the town, and this one is probably the best yet. Not only does it have a lot of the characters, locations and creatures of the haunted city, but also a lot of good info on how to use all this information and playing characters in the 1920s. Eminently browsable. 

Urban Shadows by Mark Diaz Truman and Marissa Kelly, Magpie games, 320 pages, 2024, Kickstarter. This is 2nd edition of the game, the first being 10 years previous, much like the current D&D. Powered by the Apocalypse, and hews more tightly to all the options presented there than, say, Brindlewood Bay. We have moves, we have play books, we have a lot of player empowerment. Has a heavy scent of the World of Darkness in its urban fantasy with factions as different character ancestries. The interior is very, very purple, but it is an impressive volume, 

Swyvers by Luke Gearing and David Hoskins, Melsonian Arts Council, 96-page hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. This is an odd and amusing little duck. deep in the alleys of a Londonish fantasy city. Players are thieves and knaves of the worst sort. The rules are light and portable, and the book is filled with random tables. Also, you play blackjack to cast spells. Yeah, this is not too deep, and good for making stuff up as you go. The included adventure involves cheese thieves. Production values are nice and fit the setting well. Worth trying out once or twice. 

Found Worlds by Todd Lockwood, 352-page hardbound, Gift from a Friend. An art book? Here? Sure. Todd Lockwood is a brilliant artist, and an excellent heir to the classic TSR Artdogs. The book covers the full career, but of course the stuff that connects with me is the TSR/WotC material, particularly in crystalizing the look and feel of 3E. Heavy stock, beautiful colors, captures the detail o his art.  

That's if for now. I'll be heading for Gary Con next week in beautiful Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and may have a bit more after that.

More later, 

Theatre: Anniversary Plays

Covenant by York Walker, Directed by Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Arts West Through 2 March.

Blues For an Alabama Sky by Peral Cleage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Seattle Rep through 23 February

The Lovely Bride and I have crested 42 years of marriage this past week (thank you, thank you), and to celebrate, we decided to hold a "staycation" where both of us took off work. As a result, we played games (I lost several games of Wingspan), ate a lot of good food (Chestnut Cafe, which is the LB's favorite's lunch spot, Lobster Shop in Tacoma, Mashiko Sushi in West Seattle, and Toulouse Petite near the Seattle Center). And, as fate would have it, we had two plays scheduled over three days - Covenant at the Arts West, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Seattle Rep.

Let me get to the heart of the matter - Covenant was the best play and the best performance I have seen in Seattle for years, Arts West has been putting together bang-up seasons for the past couple years, and this one fired on all cylinders. The writing was top-notch, the performances were amazing, the direction was fantastic, and set design was grand. The small nature of the theatre brought an intimacy that allowed the actors to reach out across the void of the forestage and grab the audience by the collective shoulders and give them a good shake. The play is mythic and suspenseful and fully engaged.

Covenant is about secrets. It is also about faith and superstition, but it is most of all about secrets. The setting is a small town in Georgia, 1936. Johnny (Donavan Mahannah) comes back to his home town. He left town a stammering boy in the wake of his older brother's death. He returns now without the stammer, a master musician with his guitar, and possessing a smooth self-assurance. Naturally there's suspicion he made a deal with the devil. He came back for Avery (Simone Alene), who was just a friend but now something much more. Avery's Mama (Felicia V. Loud) is a god-fearing woman who does not approve of Johnny and his juke joint antics. Little sister Violet (Deja Culver) and family friend Ruthie (Kaila Towers) round out the ensemble. They're all brilliant.

And I don't want to say more because I don't want to do spoilers here - it's that good. Each character gets their turn to tell stories and reveal secrets, as well as sparking off each other in meaningful relationships. And the writing is SO GOOD, of the level that I was left thinking "Man, I wish I had written that" and "Man, I wish I could write like that". There is a not an ounce of fat in this play - even the most cast-off line has meaning and subtext, and is delivered in such a natural and engaged fashion, that over the course of the play as you realize (often to your horror) what is really going on here. All questions are resolved, even the ones you didn't know you had.

And part of that is the direction (Nicholas Japaul Bernard) and the dramaturg (Marquisa 'QuiQui" Dominguez. The players maneuver perfectly a two-tiered stage, the back stage being Mama's dining room, dominated by a cross, which the forestage was open for a variety of purposes, including a general "theatre space" as the actors share secrets with the audience. The sound design was excellent, accenting the action on the stage. Even the stagehands, the black-dressed theatre ninjas moving props onto and off the stage, were used perfectly. 

I rarely say that something is a near-perfect play, but this is it. Get yourself out to West Seattle for this one. 

Sunday we decamped for the Seattle Center and Blues for an Alabama Sky. And I will be honest - it was good. And if I saw it on its own I would probably give it greater praise. But it suffers in comparison with Covenant.

We're still in the 1930s, but this time in Harlem. Angel (Ayanna Bria Bakeri) is a hot mess of cabaret singer who just lost her job, her living space, and her boyfriend. Guy (Jamar Jones) is her gay best friend from Savannah, who is a costumer and is sure that Josephine Baker will sweep him up and invite him to come work for her in Paris. As he is trying to navigate a drunken Angel home, they're aided by Leland (Ajaz Dontavius), newly arrived from Alabama in the big sinful city. Delia (Ester Okech Lewis) is the prim neighbor from across the hall who is working to bring a family planning center (read: birth control) to Harlem, aided by a boisterous local doctor (Yusef Seevers). The five of them struggle with life and survival in the wake of the fading Harlme Renaissance.

And it works, mostly. The first act feels like it drags a bit, Checkov's gun makes a requisite appearance, and you can see some of the twists and turns coming a ways off. Some personal revelations and traumas show up rather late in the day. And there is a huge amount of name dropping going on - Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Adam Clayton Powell (Jr and Sr), Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, none of whom show up on stage. 

The music, however, is haunting and delightful, with Nathan Breedlove on the trumpet acting as the ghostly spirit of the city itself to show time passing. Which is a good thing, since the stagecraft involves a turntable set that shifts back and forth to show what apartment we are in. I would wonder if the play would work better in a smaller confines, or, on the other hand, if Covenant would fade if thrust onto a larger stage.

Yet, it all comes together. The actors are fine. It is the best of three revivals at the Rep this season (it was originally produced 30 years ago). Given a choice between this and the Super Bowl, I'd definitely choose Alabama Sky. But seriously, go hunt down Covenant and prepare to be impressed. 

More later,