"You take yourself far too seriously ..."  "You seem to have a personal vendetta ..."  "judgemental [sic] and unhappy ..."  "usually negative in tone and often times [sic] downright mean ..."  "cranky and nasty ..."  "mean people suck ..."

Gosh, what did Joann Varnell do to earn those character assassinations? Did she throat-punch a baby? Tase a nun? Roll her eyes at American Idol?  No, she committed the unforgivable effrontery of giving a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical an uninfatuated review. Clearly that makes her, not just vicious, but an ice queen, impervious to hurtful comments like the ones above.

Look, I didn't see the musical in question, so I can't say how accurate Ms. Varnell's critique was.  But unlike most of the commenters above, I've talked to Ms. Varnell.  She's not a mean, cranky person; quite the opposite, in fact.  She cares passionately about theater, so much so that she devoted her professional life to it.  Like me, she'd much rather sit through a great show than a bad one or (even worse) a pedestrian one, no matter how funny the resulting critique might be. Who wouldn't?

And that's exactly why I had so much fun last weekend.

Riot to Follow, a student group at The Evergreen State College, is offering a free production of the beloved Ashman/Menken musical Little Shop of Horrors.  If you know the movie or the WPA production it adapted, then this incarnation will come as a surprise.  At first you might even be disappointed: The set's little more than a table, a few flats, and some boxes. The Ronnettes are white. Audrey is not. Mushnik is a woman. No one onstage displays a Broadway-level singing voice, and the choreography is basic at best. Orin Scrivello, DDS looks nothing like Elvis, and there's little in the way of early '60 iconography on the stage.  But sometimes poverty is the mother of invention, and this production was forced to rely on Little Shop's classic songs and the appeal of a man-eating plant. It works just fine - so charmingly, in fact, that it made me wonder if such spectacles as Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables would play as well stripped to their bones. I love it when a director (in this case, student JJ Wampach) intelligently redesigns an old warhorse, even if it's only to save the cost of a dozen costumes. A reinvention just has to support the material, not work against it, and Riot to Follow left me humming for hours.

Meanwhile, half an hour away in Centralia, director Pug Bujeaud stages a riveting revival of Inherit the Wind in the wonderfully intimate Evergreen Playhouse (no relation).  It's one thing to assess this spin on the "Scopes monkey trial" through a distant proscenium; it's another to be right in the middle of the courtroom as bombastic Matthew Harrison Brady (Dennis Rolly) and curmudgeonly Henry Drummond (Scott Peterson) tear into each other over evolutionary science in, God help us, a science curriculum.  The acting shines throughout, not just from the leads; in some shows, there really are "no small parts." Natural selection may not be as controversial here as in the Midwest, but Inherit the Wind reminds us that sometimes, the most important voice is the one that disagrees with our most cherished assumptions.

Even if that unwelcome opinion belongs to, say, Joann Varnell.

Little Shop of Horrors

Thursday, May 6-Saturday, May 8, 7 p.m.

Free

The Evergreen State College Communications Building

2700 Evergreen Parkway NW, Olympia, 360.867.6000

Inherit the Wind

Friday, May 7-Saturday, May 8 8 p.m., Sunday, May 9 2 p.m.

$15

The Evergreen Playhouse

226 W. Center St., Centralia, 360.736.8628