ARTS COVERAGE TO END ALL ARTS COVERAGE >>>
At this point it goes without saying. If you're looking for coverage of local arts in Tacoma, Olympia, and all points in between, the Weekly Volcano is THE place to find it. Our goal is to consistently provide the best local arts coverage possible to our fantastic readers. We're always on the lookout for ways to shine a light on all the awesome creativity we see around us.
This week's Volcano arts section includes blind artist Jeff Freels, Lynn Di Nino's "The Survivors," "Hello, Dolly" at Capitol Playhouse, "The Color Purple" at Tacoma Musical Playhouse and more ...
Here's a look at the Volcano arts coverage waiting for you this week in print and online.
FEATURE: JEFF FREELS
How many times have you read a story about someone who's had a singular passion for art for as long as he can remember?
The story of Olympia's Jeff Freels is yet another one of those - except Freels' passion had to carry him through more than some lean years and a discouraging teacher.
Freels is legally blind - but that hasn't stopped him from working as a cartoonist, illustrator and designer of role-playing games.
"I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil," says Freels, who drew the cover of the Volcano's Best of Olympia issue this year and was named Best Blind Artist. "That's how I process. That's what I do."
Twelve years ago, Freels lost most of his eyesight, a complication of the Type I diabetes he's had since age five.
Sitting across a table from me at Barnes & Noble this week, Freels could dimly make out the shape of my shoulders, but not my head, because my light skin and hair blended into the background behind me. He walks with a cane.
"If you wrapped your head in cheesecloth and then closed one eye, you might be able to see kind of what I see," he says.
So how can he create such intricately detailed illustrations?
"I had to start learning how to draw again," he says of losing much of his sight. And there was no question in his mind that he could and would. ... – Molly Gilmore
VISUAL EDGE: LYNN DI NINO'S THE SURVIVORS
But Tacoma artist Lynn Di Nino and her team of stalwart archeologists have beat them to the punch. And what did they find buried under the ice in Antarctica? Hostess cupcakes. Tons and tons of cupcakes and other Hostess products, plus many other consumer products that have been popular throughout most of our lives. Those damn cupcakes last forever, and that's the point of this art-as-archeology exhibition.
You can count on Di Nino to be cleverly relevant, and this show - like most of what she does - addresses important contemporary issues with wry humor. In this instance the issues are consumerism and environmental waste.
Called The Survivors, Di Nino's exhibition at Flow Gallery consists of museum-like displays of Hostess products and similar packaged food stuffs displayed in oddly shaped box-like structures covered with protective "glass." The "glass" being plastic packaging of the type manufacturers love to put everything from toys to apples in, the kind that clog our landfills, lakes and rivers. Di Nino's assemblages are like Pop Art versions of Joseph Cornell boxes but without the compartments. ... -- Alec Clayton
THEATER: HELLO, DOLLY
I don't want to take anything away from the unassailable work of Hello, Dolly!'s cast and crew at Capital Playhouse. Almost to a person, they're knocking themselves dead out there. It's amazing, truly, what these performers can do. Gwen Haw inhabits the role of matchmaker Dolly Levi, so closely identified with Carol Channing, and makes it her own. She sings and dances beautifully, as does Bailey Boyd, who does some of her best-ever character work as nasal Minnie Fay. Sean Stinnet and Patrick Wigren bound amiably through two very busy acts, and Michael Self spins a variation on his excellent Scrooge as crabby Horace Vandergelder. The ensemble is first rate as it sails through insanely difficult choreography by Dolly's original director, Gower Champion. Bruce Haasl's set is a pink confection. The costumes (with the possible exception of one unmanageable hat) are fantastic. Director Kevin P. Hill worked wonders, and his stars have never looked better.
I hope you'll keep that in mind as I explain why I hated their show.
Somebody, somewhere is the absolute best living blacksmith. Someone is the world's greatest telegraph operator, and someone makes the finest grandfather clock. They all do amazing work ... that you don't need.
Every aspect of this play seems unearthed from Broadway's distant past. Performers are blocked to mug directly at the audience, and they struggle to wring comic value from setups that were paleolithic when Grandpa wore short pants. ... -- Christian Carvajal
THEATER: ENCHANTED APRIL
It's been dumping rain on the South Sound, so you're probably desperate for a sunny vacanza in Lombardy. Enchanted April at Harlequin Productions is just the thing.
There's pretty much no way I can summarize Matthew Barber's charming idyll in a way that'll make it inviting to straight men, but here goes anyway. The year is 1922. English housewives Lotty Wilton (Helen Harvester) and Rose Arnott (Maggie Lofquist) answer a newspaper ad to secure one month's rental at a quiet Italian palazzo. Unable to meet the terms themselves, they recruit two housemates: notorious socialite Lady Caroline Bramble (Deya Ozburn) and haughty one-percenter Mrs. Graves (Walayn Sharples, an equally apt name for the character). Warmed by the climate and lifestyle of Mezzago, they gradually bond and reveal domestic secrets of long standing. Lotty and Rose's husbands rejoin them in the final scenes and are equally transformed.
Okay, so now that all the bros have fled the building, let's talk about why I, a proudly hetero husband who rolls his eyes at any reference to Eat, Pray, Love, enjoyed this diversion immensely.
For starters, it isn't trying to be anything other than adorable and amusing. Aside from one unnecessarily maudlin revelation in Act II, these characters are victims of their own foibles. ... – CC
THEATER: THE COLOR PURPLE
The concept of The Color Purple as a stage musical seems to evoke the same reaction in virtually everyone - at least everyone I know.
And that reaction is, "Huh?"
Alice Walker's Pulitzer-winning novel follows Celie, a young black woman in 1930s Georgia, from a childhood of rape by her father, into forced loveless marriage, the loss of her sister and only true friend, abuse, sexual awakening, loss of faith and ultimate redemption.
Heady stuff. Which is not to say that musicals can't successfully take on serious material, but one still can't shake the feeling that something is a little off throughout the Tacoma Musical Playhouse production.
Despite that odd sensation, there is plenty to enjoy about The Color Purple. The cast of TMP's production provides several highlights. Stacie Calkins is a long-time mainstay of the Tacoma theater community, and has never failed to impress over the years. In the lead role of Celie, Calkins has ample opportunity to flex her acting chops and her powerful voice. ... – Joe Izenman
WE RECOMMEND: RAN DANK
As far as virtuosic young piano prodigies go, Ran Dank is totally dank, yo. And by that we mean he's the bomb. Even better, he's coming to Olympia Wednesday as part of the 21st Century Masters Series. According to hype this is the Washington Center's 16th straight season partnering with Young Concert Artists, Inc to bring up-and-coming talent to Oly - a series designed to show off these young musicians' skills and also inspire the concert musicians of the next generation. Ran Dank should do just that. - Weekly Volcano
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