Recent Additions: A Winter's Tale (Part II)

 All right, then. 

Last time in this space I went on way too long about the games that have accumulated here at Grubb Street over the winter months. The good news is that it gave me a chance to actually pick through the mechanics and learn a bit of the lore (which is something I enjoy doing, whether I play the game itself or not). The bad news is that I ended up getting in way too deep and these writeups got just a bit massive. 

And I'm still not done. So, as they say, FURTHERMORE...

Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game by Shanna Germain et al, Deep Nerd Media/Monte Cook Games, 424-page hardbound, Deluxe Edition, 2023; Dig Your Own Grave By Shanna Germain, 128-page Hardbound, 2025, All Your Gods are Dead by Shanna Germain et. al. 128-page hardbound, 2025, Backerkit.

So there's a delivery story here as well. I funded the original Old Gods Kickstarter way back when, and while I got the pdfs, never got the Deluxe hardbound U ordered. I sent a note to a friend and former colleague (have you noticed I have a lot of them laying about) who works at Monte Cook Games, and they were gracious enough me a regular copy (Thank you for that). Because I liked the game I more recently funded the two support products they brought out (shown here). And they sent out the two new products, along with the deluxe version of the RPG book I originally ordered. Apparently, I missed a memo on funding for delivery, so the Deluxe edition remained in the queue until I sprung for delivery of the new books. So that worked out. 

In any event, here's why I like the setting: I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, which made me "Appalachia-adjacent". I spent my summers in college working on a surveying team out in the countryside. I don't consider myself truly Appalachian heritage, but I am as reliable a commentator as, say, the current Vice President, and in many cases a better one.

 In any event, I stand by my early statements on the Old Gods, based on a horror podcast seeped deeply into the hills and hollows of Appalachia, but could expand as far as the bayous of e Sinners and similar films. The game uses MC Game's Cypher System, but takes it into a darker domain. The Deluxe edition is a glossy, classy, version of the original, with gold leaf edges and really nice dust cover, but it is what lies within that makes it special, capturing the folk tales and horrors of the time and place.

Anyway, the expansions. Dig Your Own Grave is pretty much a player's handbook expansion for the game, and adds a lot of stuff players can use more descriptors and foci, some of which lean more to the dark side of the Force. More equipment and options. And an Endless-Quest style background creator to give your character a bit more to worry about.  All Your Gods Are Dead is geared more towards the game master - new optional rules, creatures, artifacts and DM Advice. If you've got the original game, these are great additions to you toolbox.

The Lady Pirates Tarot created by Mustapha, Illustrated by Santiago, Baroque Publishing, Boxed tarot deck and booklet, 2025, Kickstarter. 

This is half a review in that it is half a delivery. Baroque Publishing does tarot decks of a variety of types, and in this case, a collection of female pirates, lusciously illustrated by the artist Santiago. There was supposed to be an RPG with the set, and they're still working on it, but delivered the cards early.

I've used Tarot before in games, and even created a version for the Realms, called the Talis deck (Yes, picked up by Dragonlance - go have fun with it, folks). I tend to use the Tarot personally as a device for reflection as opposed to a prophetic tool. It has helped me concentrate on what's really bothering me and provide some potential direction. And that's more useful that any mystical imbued powers.

The Lady Pirates Tarot is very Waite Ryder, the best-known of the modern tarot decks, strained through the filter of female pirates, real and fictional. Anne Bonny is here in the Major Arcana, along with Grace O'Malley and the wife of Zheng (Zheng Yi Shao), all portrayed in the golden age of piracy, regardless of when they really sailed the seas. The art is top-notch and well-rendered, and creates a interesting melding o the kinda-Medieval Waite-Rider with a piratical bent.

So, it looks good, and while I don't collect Tarot deck, I'm glad I picked this one up. I still want to see the RPG half of this.

Ticket to Ride: Sails and Rails by Alan R. Moon, Days of Wonder, board game, 2019, Christmas Gift. (not shown in the photo - the tabletop was too crowded)

 So there's a challenge with boardgame expansions in that you can eventually get to a tipping point, where expansions to the ruleset overwhelm the base game. This is particularly true of popular games with a strong core mechanic. An example of this is the classic original Cosmic Encounter, which had a really good initial game, expanded it with more alien powers and abilities, and then, well, jumped the shark with things like Moons (the humming moon in particular required all players to hum when it wasn't their turn). The Formula De racing game, on the other hand, expanded nicely not by changing core rules or adding new mechanics, but by adding more tracks to the base game.

Ticket to Ride has done both over its lifespan, adding new boards to build your rails across and adding new rules in its expansions, and it is getting close to that tipping point. In the case of Sails and Rails, it includes a two-sided board for playing the game on a map of the world (cool) and also playing on a more focused board of the Great Lakes (also cool). It expands the game by adding boat counters as well a rail cars, which increases the number of cards, pieces, and decisions that must be made. The end result is that you have four hands to manage - one for rails, one for sails, one for unfilled destinations, and one for finished destinations. And for anyone who has been drawing every turn trying to get the cards they need to finish a particular line, it is literally a handful.

But that's not the piece that can push Ticket to Ride over. In addition, they've added a new mechanic in ports, which have a complicated build cost (two matching color cards of train cars and two matching colors for ships, for four total), restrictions (can only be built on ports that you have a existing line into) and victory benefits (point bennies for each destination line you have going through that particular port. We've played two games, and each time, we needed to explain the rule several times to the table, and still folk were confused. 

Ticket To Ride at this point is a franchise, such that it is getting its own feature film on Netflix (I have no idea how that's going to work). And its gaming reach has moved in radical directions as well. And I will still play this, but the original still beckons to me with its familiarity and the fact that everyone in my gaming group knows the rules. 

Archeterica: The Invitation by Anton Relict, Illustrator Oleksiy Shcherbak, Imago Cult, Boxed set containing 52-page hardbound, 3 16-page saddle-stitched scenario books, Character sheets, scenario handouts, combat map, sheet of wooden standup counters, two six-sided dice in silk bag, 2025, Kickstarter. 

Woo. This entry from Ukraine has a pretty darn amazing presentation - very high quality materials including heavy paper stock, wooden-counters, and a nigh-indestructible box. It refers to itself as a "Game of Genteel Conspiracy" set in a Napoleanesque-era flat world with multiple occultish factions all contending for control. 

The game uses a lot of non-traditional mechanics. You don't have stats in the traditional D&D sense, but rather a collection of background, narrative attributes, talents and burdens, all of which are skewed more to storytelling as opposed to numerical mechanics. Combat is mostly contained to shooting and fencing, and the mechanics are more numerical, and need a lot more attention from this writer than I've been able to bring to bear. Tasks are achieved through a roll of 2d6, but the potential exists to flip the die to their opposite numbers. Damage is more condition-based than a listing of hit points. It is complicated set of mechanics, but not necessarily a complex one. 

Starter Sets are tough, and there are often choices to be made what you leave out and how you maintain the flavor of the game with those parts missing. Archeteria has a lot to it for a starter set, which is good because there is no full rulebook out yet. Their next release has been announced for a Kickstarter with more adventures - there are three currently in the Starter Box to get you started. A lot of the world is unexplained in the box, but they do have a website with a bit more lore. I had to do more than a bit of digging to figure out who these mysterious Outsiders were, for example (no, I'm not telling). 

I really like this type of game, and applaud the fact that they are taking a lot of different approaches to world and mechanics. I would have to clear my decks a LOT to come to grips with everything that is happening here, but applaud the imagination and production values of this, and yeah, want to see more, like a full-fledge ruleset. 

In Liberty's Shadow, for Rivers of London, based on the Novels by Ben Aaronovitch, by Helena Nash, Lynne Hardy, Adam Gauntlett et al, Chaosium, 206-page hardbound, 2024, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics.

So every couple months I take a mental health day from work and head (usually with Stan! Brown or Steve Winter) to Lacey Washington, near Olympia, to a Card, Game, and Comic store run by a former WotC person, Gabi. It is in a largish warehouse and has a ton of stuff, and I usually come away with a few new or old volumes. One of those volumes was an expansion for Rivers of London, based on the novels of the same name by Ben Aaronovitch.

 Anyway, I talked about the Rivers of London RPG here, which uses a version of Call of Cthulhu rules adapted to the world of the novels. This edition jumps the pond and deals with RoL adventures in the New World, which is significantly different in that the river spirits are weaker (because of colonialism), and the number of cryptids higher. The US's approach to magic in this world lacks the cohesive overview of the Folly as a unified force of investigation, and as a result the land is awash in various cryptid-hunting factions from a basement at the FBI to competing magical schools and a smattering of independent Scoobies. Sort of the opposite of what you see in Delta Green, where it feels like EVERYONE in the government has their noodly appendages engaged with the Mythos to some degree.

The book itself talks about changes between the two venues, but is dominated by two adventures, one set in Montana and one starting in Montana and moving to LA. It's modern-day (well, 2016 or so), but I kept setting it back about a hundred years, in part because it uses a Call of Cthulhu system, and in part because the cover itself shows what looks like a possessed cable car in San Francisco (yeah, there are still cable cars in Frisco, but I always push them back a buncha decades to a more classic era). Anyway, it is an interesting different flavor to the world, and if you're looking for an expansion area for the game (which I have not run yet), go take a look.

Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski and Richard Iorio II, Rogue Games, 274-page digest-sized softbound, 2008, Gabi's Olympic Cards and Comics 

The other great thing about Gabi's is it depth as far as RPGs. I can find things there that I cannot find elsewhere, from the major hitters down to the indies. It has an excellent backstock of older games. It's great for filling out spots in my collection or finding something new. Or in this case, old. 

James Maliszewski runs the blog Grognardia, which remains one of the best ongoing blogs on game design and pulp fiction that I regularly tag into. Thousand Suns was an early design of his, and he's currently in the process of revising and expanding it. This is the foundation document that he's working off of.

Thousand Suns is very much tied to its roots in "imperial interstellar" SF in the form of Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, and the first of the Dune novels. It shows direct descent in its game mechanics from Traveller, though it has its improvements modifications. It uses a 2d12 system of resolution 2d12 (roll low), plus, it has a non-fatal character generation system that allows you to set the level of expertise of your playgroup and Action Points (karma) as a way of jimmying the die rolls. . The books is very texturally dense, and tries to cover all the potentials of the genre - skills, psionics, starships, and a wide variety of technology. 

As far as specifics to a campaign, this volume concentrates on being generic enough within its genre to allow you run a number of different campaign types, from rebellion against an evil empire, exploration to brave new worlds, or Patrick O'Brien in space militarism, James is currently revising the game and its core setting, and has a Substack updating his progress and is running a Patreon as well. What he's doing is very interesting, and I look forward to the new edition. Go tune in.

And that finishes up the long collection over the winter here at Grubb Street. So I'm good, right? Well, not so fast. Because while writing this up, I went to two recent conventions (Gary Con in Lake Geneva and NorWesCon here in the Seattle area) and picked up STILL MORE games (and had a few new Kickstarters resolve as well. So I have to catch up on those (though I resolve to read less of them and make all these entries shorter - we'll see how THAT works out).

So as a result, More Later,

Recent Additions: A Winter's Tale (Part 1)

This particular edition is long. As in broke into two parts long. Over the winter months, games continued to arrive at Grubb Street. This particular batch has a couple stories attached to the entire delivery process. So you get to hear about them as well as the games themselves. I make no apologies (Well, I do, but not to yinz folk).

Further, because I've had these in-house for so long, I've read a bit more than I normally do for initial impressions, so I have more to say about the guts of the product. I have, as they say, opinions.

As a result of all this, the writeup on this got a bit ... long. I have a lot to say about the new arrivals. AND often something about how I buy and receive games. So this time I'm breaking it into two versions. So buckle up. Here's Part 1.

Blue Planet: Recontact by Jeff Barger and Greg Benage, Biohazard Games and Gallant Knight Games Slipcase with two hardbound books; a 328-page Player's Guide and a 358-page Moderator's Guide, 2024, Kickstarter. 

So there's a story here (hey, I warned you). I kickstarted the game and kept up irregularly with their updates over their campaign. One of their updates in early December said that their US deliveries had been complete. I realized I hadn't gotten a copy yet. I checked through the links provided and they said yes, they had shipped it, and yes, UPS had delivered it and yes, here's a picture of it my porch stoop. But I don't remember picking it up and opening it. I assumed porch pirates, and contacted Gallant Knight at the address provided, and they kindly said they'd send me a replacement in January, after they had wrapped up all their deliveries. Which was nice.

Except ...

I HAD received my copy of the game. I got it with some presents I had ordered online for the Lovely Bride for Christmas and without thinking had put it into the closet to be wrapped. Upon discovering that I did have a copy, and it was NOT porch pirates, I contacted Gallant Knight again and told them I was an idiot. And they said, "Don't worry, that stuff happens to us too." But the whole way they handled it was professional, friendly, and, well, nice. Good going, Gallant Knight

Anyway, I LOVED the original Blue Planet from 1997, so I was really looking forward to this one. The original was a testament to hard-SF world-building. Here's the deal - Earth finds a wormhole at the edge of the solar system. It leads to another solar system, which has a habitable world, Poseidon, which is mostly water with a scattering of archipelagos. Settlers are sent out. As they set up shop, the Earth governments collapse under environmental disasters and Poseidon is cut off. Finally, Earth recovers enough to establish recontact. And a slew of new settlers, corporations, and political factions arrive, which puts more stress on the already established human settlers as well as the native life, including what may be intelligent life. 

The new version? All that and more. It is a deep dive (that's a pun there) on the world, its natural history, and the various factors. This is mostly about the world-building - the game rules don't show up until page 265 of the Player's Book. The mechanics are straightforward and have a whiff of old school Traveller to them, but the world-building is the star here. It is a really good setting if you hanker for that hard SF style. 

Flott's Miscellany Volume Three by Thaddeus Flott, Imaginary Alchemist,  by Andrew Devenney, Alisha Forest, Rich Forest, and Bill Spytma, 36-page Pamphlet, Superhero Necromancer, Kickstarter, with fulfillment on Backerkit, 2025. 

These have been a series of pamphlet-sized zines dealing with another world under water. In this case, the Rainy City: a ramshackle town that is the last relatively dry spot in the world. It has its own share of refugees, natives, and weirdness.

And it deals with a miscellany of things, which can be neatly looted for other campaigns - beneficial aid societies, gargoyle lore, and the closest thing to an adventure area that I've seen. It is rules-agnostic, which adds to its portability, but, like Blue Planet, it is about the world-building, though on a much reduced scale. It would frankly make a nice home base in a Ravenlofty Domain of Dread.

Downside? The cost of shipping was an additional one-third of the original cost. Yeah, that's turned into a debit on Kickstarters, in particular for 'zines. And after a few of these, it's probably time to gather everything together under one cove, make an editing/development passe and OGL it for the latest edition of your favorite RPG edition - I'd favor a D5.5/Blades teamup.

Forgotten Realms Heroes of Faerun by Jason Tondro et al, Wizards of the Coast, 192-page hardback, 2025, and Forgotten Realms Adventures in Faerun by Jason Tondro et al, Wizards of the Coast, 192-page hardback, 2025, Alt-Cover editions, both purchased from Midgard Comics, Games & More

I picked up the alt-cover versions at my local comic shop, which also hosts RPG and MTG nights. And  what attracted me to it was the dynamic style of the covers, which were very different from either the traditional 5/5.5E covers, or the previous art-style covers. I think their art-deco design is cool, though I wouldn't want it on every book they release.

And I should note that I paid for these books, as opposed to getting them from WotC. That's cool, too, and they did give me and Ed Greenwood a thank-you in the credits. But just so you know, I'm predisposed to them, but owe them nothing as far as a review. Oh, and they made serious mention of Alias of Westgate, a character my wife and I created for the novel Azure Bonds (still available in your finer used bookstores).

Anyway, one of the graces and the challenges of the Realms has always been that it is so big and rich. Over the years, there have been a lot of game books, novels, computer games and comics set here, and the task of dealing with it may be daunting for a player or DM. We built a lot of it in 1st and 2nd edition, worked over a bunch of it in 3rd and 4th. In 5th edition, WotC swung the other direction, and kept it mostly confined to the Sword Coast, ignoring the rest, which also frustrated people. This version neatly splits the difference. It talks about the major areas in the Player's Expansion (Heroes of Faerun), and then drills down into a handful of locations in the DM's Expansion (Adventures in Faerun) with different flavors of fantasy. Which is a nice way of providing a lot of options to the player without hitting them with a firehose. It also shows off the Realms as hosting different flavors of fantasy - The Dalelands is your standard setup, Icewind Dale leans towards survival horror (man against nature), Calimshan graces the entire Arabian Nights fantasy, the Moonshaes are celtic and fae, and Baldur's Gate is urban fantasy. All in all, a great tour of the kinds of campaigns you may want to run.

Even with picking a few places in the Realms, there is a lot here. Heroes of the Realms covers how all the races/species fit into the Realms (including the ones that showed up most recently). There are a buncha subclasses. backgrounds, and feats. A good chunk on gods (and there are still a lot of them). Stuff to buy, magic, and factions. Opens a lot of doors and options for the players. The Adventures in the Realms book drills deeper into the subsettings I mentioned above, but also sets up particular settings and frameworks for running adventures there. Plus an overarching meta-adventure, more monsters and magic items unique to the Realms. And advice on how to run the Realms. 

And it is really good. One thing I disagree with is their portrayal of the Realms as a higher-level campaign, and its recommendation you start at 3rd-level. I think the Realms is a suitable setting for low-level campaigns that let you grow into your character, and deal with low-level threats, but that's just me.. 

Riverbank, by Kij Johnson, Open Design/Kobold Press, 192-page hardbound, 2025, Backerkit.

The term "cozy" as a genre first showed up for me in mystery novels. The British countryside. The sleepy little town nestled in the farmland. The occasional murder, but it is always a polite murder, lacking a lot of the unnecessary bloodshed. There's still conflict, but it much more mannered. Agatha Christie gets the nod as the mistress of the Cozy, but it has spread far and wide, and jumped the genres into things like role-playing games. 

Riverbank is very much a delightfully cozy RPG (Full disclosure, the designer is a friend and former colleague, the editor is a friend and former colleague, and the publisher is a friend and former colleague - just so you know). All the characters are Animals with a capital A, which sets them apart from the ordinary animals. They wear clothes. They drive vehicles. They pay visits to friends and take tea. They are very British in their outlook, and summon up visions of Winne-the-Pooh, Master Toad, Peter Rabbit, Frodo and Bertie Wooster.  They live alongside humanity, and are treated much better than other members of the Empire were in the early 20th Cent. 

There is conflict and challenge here, but without combat. You may not have gotten an invite or have to chase down a rare toy or have to suffer the visitation of a horrid relation. The key here is to keep a balanced demeanor, measured by a scale similar to Pendragon. Slip too far in one direction and artistry takes over, and you ignore all else to write an opera. Slip too far in the other and you have the urge to shed you civilized weskit and slacks and make a nest or dig a burrow. There's a variety of Animals to choose from, but all Animals are equal, at least in size, and very hobbitish in their demeanor. Yeah, the early chapters of The Fellowship of the Rings is appropriate here as well, where the lads are crossing the Shire and worried about nothing more than Farmer Maggot's dogs. 

The game itself has a couple card decks to handle Betweentimes (actions between adventures) and Hapazardry (random encounters) as well as specialty dice, but neither are required to play the game (they have tables within). And the pieces of these are drifting in piecemeal for fulfillment, such that the card decks showed up after I took the above photo but before I finished this lengthy epistle. 

But all in all, it's a nifty hardback, and my only real regret is that I sprung for the deluxe edition, with its stamped gold foil cover, instead of the regular version, as the art by Kathleen Jennings (who is not at this time a friend or former colleague) is spot-on in capturing the spirit of the game. And a very cozy spirit it is. 

Dragonlance Legends by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Random House, 1114-page Hardback, contributors copy from the Author. 

This is a collection of the second Dragonlance Trilogy - Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, and Test of the Twins, the twins in question being Caramon and Raistlin. This second trilogy followed hot on the heels of the original Dragonlance Adventures trilogy, and broke away from the map-based flow of the original three and charted its own course. There were no game tie-ins at this point, and it represents where the novels took command of Krynn and its future. 

Here are all three books in their glory between one set of covers. In addition, the volume has songs written by Michael Williams, and short essays by some of the original creators, including yours truly. The original stories are now forty (forty!) years old, and it makes me smile to see them available once more. 

Epic Tales (Alpha Playtest Rules) by Stan! Stannex Press, 4-page pamphlet,  2025, Gift of the creator.

This is the last entry of part one, and is a very small one, designed by friend, designer, and frequent youtube host Stan! Brown. Epic Tales is very simple RPG. You choose your Occupation (otherwise called Class), Specialty (what you're good at), Weakness (what you might struggle with) and head off to adventure. That's about it - target numbers of difficulty and how much effort you want to put into the roll (from Lazy to Maximum). You have Action Points to jimmy the odds in your favor. 

And that's about it. It's a simple, straightforward set of rules. Why do I mention it here? Because I want him to expand it out and get to a copy that he feels comfortable running at conventions. 'Cause I think he has something here. So if you see him at a convention, be sure to ask him about it. Not that I'm being evil and pushy about it at all.

And that draws us to a close on the First Part of the Winter of Too-Much-Content. Stay tuned for part 2

More later,

Theatre: A Child's Life

 Mary Jane by Amy Herzog, Directed by Allison Narver, Seattle Rep, through 19 April

This play is a great example of why I have season tickets - It would be very difficult to get me out of the house and up to the Seattle Center for a play about a single mother dealing with a massively ill child. But I'm glad I did because it was a deep, natural, resilient, and resounding performance that left me more than a little shaken.

Brenda Joiner is Mary Jane, and woman consumed by the tragedy of her chronically ill young son Alex's health, stricken with a slew of illnesses. Her old life of marriage and school was blasted away by the needs of her child, and she is transformed into a full-time caregiver. It is stressful and oppressive, but Mary Jane is at her core a nice, good-hearted person, as are the rest of the women she encounters as she tries to navigate the stormy waters of tending to her son's health. She is warm with her super and with the in-home nurses, and supportive of other parents who are just starting to deal with their own, similar challenges. Fate and health and bureaucracy are the villains here, and Mary Jane and the others are challenged to deal with it. Joyner through all of this is amazing as a woman who is increasingly stressed by immovable fates.

The play is split into two parts - the first in her apartment, where Alex is heard only through the machines that monitor him and keep him alive. After a health crisis, the stage itself splits open to be a hospital scene. The other players take double roles, both in the home and the hospital. Shaunyce Omar is bpth Sherry, the longest-tenured of the in-home nurses, (the rest cycling through) and also the direct Doctor Toros dealing with Alex's case. Anteia DeLeaney is both Sherry's shy niece and the music therapist at the hospital. Andi Aldhadeff is both a mother in both cases, the first seeking advice on how to navigate the health-care system, and the second as one with a huge supportive family with their own child in the hospital. Amy Thone is both the understanding building super and hospital clergy (Buddhist). Each of these actors transform themselves in their roles, creating different pockets of strength for May Jane.

The play itself is natural in its language and interactions, and incredibly real. People talk over each other, thoughts are abandoned, things are left unsaid, feelings are spared but shattered in any event. Mary Jane is through it all is a rock, a positive force, even as she is aware of not only the fact that her old life is gone, but that future opportunities and experiences may never happen. 

This was a very traumatic play for me, for several personal reasons. At the final blackout I was unaware that the play itself ended, and must of the audience was also silent at the end until the lights came back up. It was a good play, with excellent performances, and I was both troubled by it and glad for the experience that it shared. But yeah, theatre is supposed to do that sometimes, and it was well worth it.

More later,

Theatre: Rocky Revival

 Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Arts West, in co-production with the Hansberry Project, Through March 1.

It has been rerun sort of season this year. We've already had Come From Away return to the Rep, and now here's another play the Lovely Bride and I saw at the Rep all the way back in 2003. The LB and I didn't really care much for it. Here's the review I posted at the time. And we STILL feel that way after the new production. The only difference is that I know more about plays now than I did then. 

Topdog/Underdog is about two impoverished African-American brothers living together in a single room. Lincoln plays President Lincoln at an arcade where people pay to assassinate him (was this ever a thing?). He used to run 3-card monte but swore off it. Booth, his younger brother has no steady job, but gets by boosting stuff and dealing with his girlfriend. The two spend the two and a half hour runtime in their small apartment, squabbling and trying to exert dominance over each other. Lots of cursing. Lots of yelling. Lots of violence just bubbling beneath the surface. Stuff escalate to 11 regularly, then ratchets back half a notch, then cranks up again. 

The characters are pretty irredeemable, in that you are just yearning for some Save the Cat moment, when they reveal they have heart and affection for each other and a glimmer of hope in their lives. No dice, here. Chekov's Gun checks in early, and hangs about for the duration, and the characters' moods flash back and forth erratically. 

The characters are petty and venal, not even evil enough to merit our anger or pity. The actors, on the other hand, are really, really good, which they need to be to handle their personalities. You see flashes of humanity, understanding, and pathos before it all gets buried in one more escalating argument. I'd love to see ML Roberts and Yusef Seevers in something else, in part because they do not give up on their characters, and try to bring some nuance to them.

One thing that is better with this revival is the set. As opposed to a bare-ish stage with hints of the world around them, their apartment at Arts West is a cluttered mess that reflects their lives. There is even a curtain installed of a bleached American Flag, hung upside down. Not subtle, but then play isn't as well. 

Back twenty-plus years ago, I asked the question "Pulitzer? This won a Pulitzer?" Yes it did, and a whole bunch of other awards as well. And the revival a few years back won more. This is definitely a case where my viewpoint does not line up with others who are experts on the craft. And to be honest, it was a full house that evening, the stage manager counting all the full seats before the performance. The side wings were filled with what seemed like high school seniors - maybe an English class? I'd love to sit on the post-play discussions about this one.

OK, enough belly-aching. It was a frustrating play that has not aged well with the passing years. The most positive thing I can say is that it shows glimmers of possibility for those involved. In the meantime, I'd recommend you check out Here There Are Blueberries at the Rep. 

More later,

Theatre: Memorial

 Here There Are Blueberries by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich Conceived and Directed by Moises Kaufman, Seattle Rep through 15 February.

Yes, here's another review for the Rep. And a big part of it is that we were late attending The Heartsellers (see next entry), so this one is next in queue. And the comparison is pretty darn amazing, showing the huge range of what theatre can do.

So. Nazis. 

Here There Are Blueberries is about a photo album sent to the Holocaust Museum in 2007. The photo album, a relic of WWII, has photos of Auschwitz. But not photos of the prisoners, but instead of the guards and administrators. Julia Cohen (Barbara Pitts) is a junior curator who gets the initial offer of the album and follows it through, unpeeling the onion of who had the album made (an officer at the camp) and what the album showed. 

And what the album showed was the banality of evil. It did not show the prisoners, the showers, the crematoriums. It did not show the dead, the victims, or the survivors. Instead it showed the guards in their everyday lives of picnics and visits from the top brass. Posed pictures and candid shots, captured with the Leica cameras that were coming into vogue at the time and made affordable for most Germans (in America, the Kodak cameras were much the same). The photos are of the type that show up on the social media these days, of people laughing and enjoying themselves IN THE CAMPS THEMSELVES.

The album poses questions - who are the people in the photos and how could they condone the extermination of others? Plus, what to do with the photos from a group dedicated to commemorating the victims, not the oppressors? We follow not only the discoveries in the albums (like size of the Auschwitz complex and the lodge on the far end, used to reward the guards and workers with days off from their monstrous tasks). And the post-war effects of the individuals and descendants of the criminals - the silence about the war years, and the denial of the participants. "How were we to know that the crematorium right next to our living quarters was used to incinerate people? That the air we breathed was the carbonized remains of our prisoners?".

The play touches on the mechanization and compartmentalization of the Holocaust. It was a genocide made possible by the technology of railroads and record-keeping and modern poisons. It was a crime against humanity of which each individual person in the chain had but a small part and as such could not consider themselves completely culpable. It was very similar to people talking about lynching here in this country. "I didn't kill him, your honor. I just held the rope for a little while, and sometime in a the confusion, the victim just died". These people held the rope.

So yeah, it a sobering, stunning play. The presentation is matter of fact, aided by the pictures themselves presented in multimedia. The stagecraft supports but does not overwhelm. The ensemble switch from museum workers to descendants to the victims themselves. Against the current background of ICE, authoritarianism, detention centers and Nazis once more marching in the streets, it hits harder. The only change is that the Leica cameras and Kodaks are replaced by the cameras are on our phones, recording atrocities in real time, giving us no excuse to say "How were we to know" when the butchers bill finally comes due. 

A tough play. Go see it. More later,

Theatre: Strangers In A Strange Land

 The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh, Directed by Sunum Ellis, Seattle Rep the 1 February.

Usually the Lovely Bride and I have tickets early in a show's run, but this time we didn't. We returned from one of the Lovely B's Tax seminars in Bellingham for our first chosen Sunday afternoon, and were completely wiped out, so we swapped our tickets in for a later date two weeks later, which proved fortuitous because the LB pulled a muscle and was on crutches for the next week (she's recovered nicely, thanks for asking). But its late in the run when we got to Rep for this one.

And it's a split decision. The Lovely Bride loved it. I was more neutral on it. I didn't hate it, but didn't connect as much for me. Let me give you the basics.

The Heart Sellers is about two women having a conversation. Becca Q.Co is Luna, an excited, chatty Filipino with a non-stop patter and little in the way of a filter. Seoyoung Park is Jane, a quiet, timid Korean still coming to grips with the English language. Neither Luna, nor Jane are their birth names, which is part of the challenges they're facing in this new world. Both are married to medical students, and are left to their own devices while their husbands pull long shifts. Both are outside traditional American society, and are lonely. Luna encounters Jane in a local grocery and invites her home. The play is about that evening of two women from different cultures uniting in the shadow of a larger third culture, and what they are a changing, giving up, and not surrendering in the process.

Like I said, it's a split decision. It didn't connect for me, and felt like an extended SNL skit with Gilda Radner and Loraine Newman. The stakes were low and the pacing sometimes difficult as conversations would start and stop in a natural fashion, and the two women had a lot of physical business to cover over the bare spots (both actors are excellent physical comics). Plus, the characters got drunk over the course of the play. The actors, though, were absolutely brilliant, and held the audience through those blank spots and delivered meaningful and authentic performances. So I ended up neutral.

The Lovely Bride loved it because it connected with her own personal experiences, where she uprooted her life in Pittsburgh after we were married and moved to Wisconsin, where she had to cash in her Susan B. Anthony dollars to do laundry, a glass lasagna pan fell out of a cabinet and smashed her Wonder Woman glass, and a Phyllis Schlafly was on Public Radio that same morning. So yeah, that culture shift hit her hard at the time, and as a result, the play resonated strongly with her. 

The play is set in 1973 (They name-check Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech), which increases the distance between me and the characters. The set, however, was pure vintage (I think we had a refrigerator that shade of brown-green), and the music is on-spec - they were playing Elton John and Carole King in the pre-show and the LB and I were singing along. 

But I understand where the Lovely B is coming from, and appreciate what she went through all those years ago (Happy 43rd Anniversary, dear), and while I was not moved by the play, I can recognize is a heartfelt presentation about home and hearth and where one's ultimate heart lies. Worth seeing.

More later, 

At Home in the Storm

Yes, there was some flooding. We're doing OK. Thanks for asking. 

 I don't talk that much about my neighborhood in the blog these days. Grubb Street is located on the East Hill of Kent, in the most northernly part near Panther Lake. When we moved in (years and years ago), the area was a mix of small farms, orchards, and houses with big yards and a lot of trees. Since then we've seen much more development. The horse farm at the corner became a huge development, and smaller developments have shown up on a lot of the side roads. Next door was when we moved in a wooded lot with a small cottage, but that plot is being developed into 13 huge houses with very small yards.

And despite the neighborhood disruptions, that development has been doing generally OK by us. We have a lot more sunlight in the yard for the gardens. The developers hooked up to our water main badly and we got some nasty water bills (which they offered to cover, which is nice). And at one point they cut my internet connection (Wire from the house across the street to a main line) with a backhoe as they were re-digging the sewer line, and again, put it back in working order by the end of the day. They did take down two huge pine trees on the properly line, which provided shade for the house during the summer. Those, I really miss. 

Anyway,

We have a horseshoe driveway in the front of the house, which is good for access and parking when friends come over. And in the center of that horseshoe, we have a couple more big pines and a dead/dying maple. The maple has been dead/dying for years, had split into two large trunks, and one of the two looks like it had be struck by lightning somewhere along the way. At the base we have a number of rhododendrons (the property two lots over was a rhododendron garden, and these are descendants). But we like the level of separation between the house and that street the maple and the other trees in the front provides. 

Cue the atmospheric river. 

The atmospheric river (A term that thrown around a lot out here these days) is a steady, heavy stream of water-laden air that starts in the Philippines, crosses Hawaii (gaining another title of "Pineapple Express") and then makes landfall between Alaska and California. Usually we don't get hit that hard. This past month, the Seattle area got hit hard. Our rivers in King County tend to be short and shallow, and our valleys steep and narrow, so that when we get hit with rains, the rivers swell quickly, to flood stage and beyond.

You've seen the pictures. The Skagit and Snoqualmie Rivers in the northern parts of the county overtopped their banks with the first wave of storms, swamping farms and communities.  Then the Cedar River, which runs down Maple Valley and through Renton itself, hit well over flood stage. And then the Green and White Rivers, which broke levees and flooded entire housing developments and warehouses. Pumpkins from an inundated farm upstream have been spotted floating down the Green. Roads through the passes have been closed due the flooded streams undercutting and collapsing the road surfaces. So, yeah, that's pretty bad.

As I say, we're OK from the flooding, being on a hill. The nearby Panther lake overflowed, flooding the local fields but not coming up over the road (there was work on the drainage system there about ten years back). But we were hammered by the wind coming through with the variety of storm fronts. 

And one of the massive trunks of the dead/dying maple snapped about 20 feet up and toppled. The good news is that it did not take out the power line. The bad news is that it blocked one of the entrances to the horseshoe driveway and took out our Internet connection and the mailboxes.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the mailboxes. We had three mailboxes out front, which, like everything else out here, have a history. The original post was put in by the neighbor's father-in-law in the 60s, and was fashioned by convicts guilty of drunk and disorderly charges (the neighbor's father-in-law was a local sheriff). When we moved in, we had to adjust it, and the Lovely Bride and the neighbor built a flower box support for the three boxes, using tools the neighbor had gotten under the GI Bill. Like I said, everything here has a story. And this is what was splintered and crushed by the falling tree, the mailboxes smashed and buried under a tangle of branches.

And we recovered. I managed to hack away most of the medium-sized branches, and was pleased to discover that my electric chainsaw worked after all these years, and that I had enough extension cords to reach from the garage to the front. We called a tree service that hauled away the huge main trunk and got a bid to take down the rest of the dying/dead maple. I spent a week cyber-crashing at a friend's house, mooching his Internet to do the day job. Eventually we got the Internet service restored (after long discussions about which corner of the house they needed to hook it up to). The Lovely Bride purchased new mailboxes, built a new support for the boxes (using a perfectly good piece of cedar planking we had in the garage), and restored the mail service (which will need to be adjusted and cemented in once the rain finally stops). 

And like I said, we're doing OK. It was a bit more eventful than we would have liked, but a way to end the old year and begin the new. And we're just waiting for the next big storm.

More later,