Play: Izzard's Shakespeare

 Eddie Izzard Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Adapted for the stage by Mark Izzard, Directed by Selina Cadwell, Presented by Eddie Izzard, Seattle Rep, Through 19 May

Wow. This was amazing. Just bloody amazing.

This is a one-person presentation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The one person doing the presentation is comedian Eddie Izzard. I haven't caught a lot of her material over the years, but the Lovely Bride had and got us tickets. This was not part of the Rep's standard season, and was held in the smaller Leo K. Theater. 

But, wow.

Eddie Izzard is best-known for her comedy, so I expected comedy. A light-hearted take on a classic. And boy, was I wrong. This was a spell-binding performance that held the audience rapt as she essayed Hamlet in its dramatic glory.

And she plays all 23 characters - Prince, King and Queen, Ghost and Gravedigger. And she does it with a subtlety and grace that enraptures, moving from character to character fluidly yet defining each one with their own voice. Watching the full-bore performances of the Shakespearean canon, I sometimes get lost among the characters, costumes, and pageantry. Yet on this simple, mostly bare stage (set designer Tom Piper), Izzard commands every inch. Creating a sword-fight from both sides without swords is incredible in itself, yet Izzard pulls it off.

There was a bit of humor here. I mean, we are talking Shakespeare. The Gravediggers contribute their lines, and Izzard presents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as hand puppets (oh-so-effectively), but for the most part Izzard plays it directly and honestly. The writer in me recognizes all the bits that we've since looted and turned into common phrases, but Izzard restores them to their proper place in the plot. And the soliloquies are pure and solid.

I've referred to a lot of Shakespearean performances as "Shakespeare-Adjacent" - revisions, modernizations, recreations, and inspirations. Examples include Fat Ham and Mac Beth. This isn't that. This is full-bore Shakespeare's plots, words and actions, but boiled down to their bare framework and presented in a natural, accessible style. Izzard's command of the language, accents, and the stage itself was simply marvelous, and the entire audience rose to their feet at the end of performance with hearty and enthusiastic applause. 

Now let me throw you the bad news - the rest of the performances (they already extended a week) are sold out, but there are SRO tickets available. But if you can, this one is worth catching.

More later, 

Play: La Risa

 Laughs in Spanish by Alexis Scheer, Directed by Damaso Rodriguez, Seattle Rep through 11 May

Short version? A pleasant afternoon and a pleasant play. Laughs in Spanish does not have high stakes or deeper moral meanings. But it is pleasant and amusing and sometimes that is good enough.

Mariana (Beth Pollack) runs an art gallery in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami. The night before the big opening, all the art is stolen. Mariana is not taking this particularly well. Her intern assistant, Carolina (Diana Garle) sees this as a chance to exhibit her own art. Carolina's boyfriend, Juan (Gabriell Salgado) is an officer investigating the case.  And in the midst of this, Mariana's mother the movie star (Diana Burbano) descends on Miami, with HER latest assistant, Jenny (Cheyenne Barton), who Mariana knew in school, in tow.  Jenny and Mariana had a thing back then, and may have a thing yet again.

Throughout, the emotions are high and the stakes are modest. Everyone has their own secrets, but they are not horrible secrets (I mean, not REALLY horrible). Jenny is bright and positive. Carolina is passionate about her art. Juan is a big-hearted lug, like Joey from Friends. Estella the movie-star mom is loud and over-the-top. And they're a good ensemble.

The weak link is Pollack's Mariana. The character is written as brittle and business-like, the boss confronting a disaster badly and arguing with everyone around her. She is put-upon throughout, and wants to stay grounded and realistic, but ends up inert and angry, trying to weather the challenges with a frosty disposition and a sense of universal disdain. And yeah, she does grow a little over the course of her travails with career, life, and mom, but the movement feels slight. In short, as a character she's hard to root for, and difficult to laugh at. 

The stagecraft is standard Seattle Rep - high-tech but not overly intrusive. Walls slide away, hidden patios are revealed, vehicles are brought onstage. It works, but does not overwhelm the actors. 

The play brushes against topics include career choices, the Latino experience in the States, and the conflict between business and art, but it is primarily about relationship between mom and daughter and Mariana's own struggle to escape Estella's shadow. And it works more often than it doesn't. Let me praise with faint damns - it is a pleasant play. And that's part of the nature of theater. Not every play has to be epic or hit it out of the park or twist your emotions. Were there laughs? A few, but a lot more wry chuckles. But "Wry Chuckles In Spanish" would not work as well as a title.

More later, 

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,

[UPDATE:] Proposition one passed, 58 to 42%. However, only 25% of the registered voters weighed in on the matter, which as always, a little sad. By the same token, a hotly-contested school bond issue on Mercer Island also passed, with 50% of the citizens weighing in. So, good going, Mercer!

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,