Theatre: Woman, Waiting

Penelope, based on the writings in the Odyssey by Homer, Music, Lyrics & Arrangements by Alex Bechtel, Book by Alex Bechtel, Grace McLean, and Eva Steinmetz, Directed by Kelly Kitchens, Arts West, through December 19.

A second musical in a mere matter of days, but Penelope serves other ends than the big-ticket Come From Away. It is small, intimate, and personal, a one-woman performance based on Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Penelope is the one left behind when Odysseus goes off, first to war, then on his adventurous perambulations to get back home. Homer presents her as the prize at the end of the journey, but she is also just as cunning as her husband. Most notable is her putting off her would-be suitors by weaving her mourning shroud in the day, and unraveling it again in the evening. But she is all that and more. 

Chelsea LeValley is Penelope, and Penelope waits. She worries, fusses, prays, runs the city, bats away the oafish suitors, rages, raises a son, longs for her lost mate, and sustains. LeValley pulls it all off not only with an incredibly strong voice but through her physical actions - weaving, prostrating herself before the gods, and ranging from angry challenges to residing in the single chair in the center of the stage, a small table with a decanter of whiskey and a single glass. LeValley is one of the most gifted singers I've heard at the Arts West, which regularly does musical shows, and she dominates her material and her character's emotions.

She is literally backed up by on-stage musicians at the back of the stage, dressed in black, that serve as the Greek (of course) chorus and the voice of the goddess when she confronts the deities that have denied her news of her husband. Consisting of violin (Amanda Spires), Viola (Lauren Hall), Cello (Kumiko Chiba) and Drums (Mitchell Beck), and led by Music Director/Artistic Director Matthew Wright on the keyboards, they are ever-present and but reserved, letting LeValley take command of the proceedings. 

The songs themselves are clear, emotional and emotive. They have a folk-pop quality to them that verges on country, and LaValley's delivery feels grounded and midwestern. Accessible. She rolls through her emotions and uncertainties in every song, as she makes her way to her own fulfillment. The songs vary through the spectrum of emotions, an LaValley delivers every note perfectly. 

Penelope's domain is a raised circular stage in the center of the room, with stairs leading off at the third-points. The theatre put small tables around it, creating a cabaret feel as LeValley descends and wanders among the audience. There's a problem there, in that the tables (and their occupants) blocked the front rows of the audience, a lot. A small woman sitting next to me was totally stage-blocked by a very tall man at a table in front of her. I offered the woman my seat and clambered over the back of the seats to a higher, empty perch (The Lovely Bride, seated next to my original position, had a perfect seat, front row center with no one in front of her). 

The stage was relatively bare, giving LaValley the space she uses to the fullest, the musicians lined against a backdrop that both reminded me of a Maxfield Parish print and a Jeff Easley underpainting. Her gown matched the rich copperish browns of the backdrop, signifying it as Penelope's land. Before the performance, there is the audio of the waves crashing on the rocks beneath Penelope's home, reminding us both of the proximity of her husband and his distance. 

The plot does not follow the plot of the Odyssey save in its initial situation - this is Penelope's story, not her husband's. She is no prize to be won, but rather her own fully-formed character. Her story is about the emptiness of loneliness and the unknown fate of a loved one. It reminded of me when I have, twice now, left the Lovely Bride to join a company far away from her, leaving her to manage everything behind me as I went off to new adventures. Kate loved the performance, and I liked it a lot.

Penelope is about a woman, waiting, but also about a woman, sustaining, and discovering her inner strength against the fates and the gods and the emptiness in her bed and her life. Well worth attending.

More later, 

Play: Revival of the Fittest

 Come From Away by Irene Sankoff & David Hein, Directed by Brian Ivie Seattle Rep through Jan 4

So in the face of the atmospheric river pummeling the Seattle area, the Lovely Bride and I bundled ourselves out to the second performance for the Seattle Rep season, a revival of a musical we saw way back in 2015. OK, its a revival, I thought, I've seen more than enough versions of the same Shakespeare play, or works by August Wilson, so I thought I could manage a new version of a feel-good musical about 9/11. I can do this fairly dispassionately.

Not really. I was in tears after the first five minutes, and kept quietly weeping at points throughout the play. Looking at my original review, I had been emotionally touched, but it felt harder this time. Maybe its post-tramatic stress, maybe it was old memories being excavated, maybe it was just some things going on in my personal life, but I tired of trying to surreptitiously wipe the tears from my eyes and just let them run down my cheeks. The heck with it.

Everyone has their own 9/11 stories, like my parents had Pearl Harbor stories (coming home from church and hearing about it on the radio in the living room). And seeing the performance on Pearl Harbor Day may have had something to with my reaction as well. The one thing I haven't mentioned before about it in this space was the silence in the skies in the week that followed. We are on the opposite hill in the Green River valley from SeaTac, and just south of both the Renton airport and Boeing Field, so while we don't get a lot of airplane noise, there is enough of a background rumbling from time to time to make us aware of its existence. But in the week that followed 9/11, there was nothing. And oppressive silence. It was a ghost in my memory until the play brought it all back to me.

Anyway,

Come From Away is a feel-good musical about 9/11. After the four passenger jets hit, all air traffic was grounded, and planes in the air had to land ASAP. A lot of the transatlantic flights, like 38 planes, include jumbos, had to come down in Newfoundland, in a small airport near the town of Gander (back in the day before jet travel, planes would fly to Newfoundland, refuel, and make the jump across the Atlantic. My father went to war on a bomber that refueled there). So the airfield was larger than was then-needed for the present day, until 38 planes had to touch down and 9000 passengers were grounded for the better part of the week.

The musical is about those passengers and the nearby towns (Gander and others) who suddenly had to take care of the new arrivals. It is a normal day until all hell breaks loose as the passengers worry, panic, try to get in touch with loved ones, and find out what happened, while the townies struggle to get basic support for the new arrivals, with no idea how long the emergency would last. There are all sorts of stories spinning out of the situation - the pilot that can no longer fly, the mother whose son is fireman in NYC, a couple gets together, another couple breaks up, a rabbi has to set up a kosher kitchen, the local ASPCA has to deal with all the animals trapped in the luggage compartments (including a couple chimps). 

And the actors pull it off incredibly well. The cast - a massive (for modern theater) dozen actors, plus a six-member band are on stage for the duration of the performance, and move effortless between characters, such that I did not recognize them when they transformed. Accents and mannerisms are added and dropped with each costume changes. And a lot of the folk on stage are locals that I have seen at other performances in the Seattle Area, though even many of them are making "Their Seattle Rep debuts".  And that's something I love about local theatre, particularly if they create such strong performances.

And the performances are strong, the songs are excellent, and the action moves swiftly from beginning to end. There is not any dead spots here - most of the scenes are frenetic and even the slow songs have an emotional weight that pushes them through. There are strong Celtic/Irish/Nor'easter flavor to the music, including a lot of stomping and dancing. And the actors play their own instruments on-stage, which is something I don't remember from the original. It is a conceit that works incredibly well.

Is there one actor to single out? Not really, because they are ALL that good, and put everything out on the stage to a packed house. It was really an ensemble job, and all of them were frankly amazing. 

Can I quibble about anything? Sure. The revival felt over-produced as far as stagecraft. The original we saw (pre-Broadway) worked from a mostly-empty stage, with chairs and boxes brought on from the periphery. This version set up the framing device of a 10-year reunion by physically setting it in the Gander high school gym, complete with basketball hoops folded up along the walls. I don't know if all that was needed, since the action at the center quickly took hold and dominated the space.

So, is there a moral here? People pull together in times of stress and heartbreak? Canadians are basically nice? I can't exactly say, but this is revival that you should attend. It is more than worth it. Good job, mates. 

More later,