WEDNESDAY 9/15
From Victore, or Who Died and Made You Boss?
"The death penalty mocks justice": a James Victore poster for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Zebravisual, 2008
SDP goes down under.
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Stage: Bare Essentials
Get a bunch of men to pull down their pants, and you're in for a solid night of entertainment. Common logic to some of us, sure, but who thought a tune-filled tale about unemployed steelworkers who strip for cash would prove so durably pleasing? Broadway's adaptation of The Full Monty, the smash Brit film comedy from 1997, had a two-year, Tony-nominated run starting in 2000; a rousing touring version hit Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre in 2002; and last November, a budget-strapped staging by Balagan Theatre engaged SW critic Kevin Phinney (who praised its "character and heart"). Now Village Theatre is having a go, and there's no reason to believe the thrill is gone. Reset from Sheffield, England, to Buffalo, New York, by book writer Terrence McNally, the musical Monty loses little of the film's underdog appeal. David Yazbek's observant pop score keeps the blue-collar guys sounding amusingly like guys, and, better, expands our empathy for how lousy it feels to be out of work and low on self-worth. The show's a reliable tonic in these tough times. (Through Nov. 21.) Village Theatre, 303 Front St. N. (Issaquah), 425-392-2202, villagetheatre.org. $19–$60. 8 p.m. STEVE WIECKING
Visual Arts: A Very Bright Future
Though his boldly colored new show, Donguguan Highways in Hot Pink, draws inspiration from that booming new manufacturing city north of Guangzhou, Timothy Siciliano explains it's not about China per se. As a designer of low-cost party favors and tchotchkes for his local wholesale company Party Planners, "I go at least once a year to visit factories and showrooms. It's like you've landed in Tijuana or something. I love going there, just because it's so bizarre and a little bit crazy. It's like L.A. All the buildings lit up at night—it's like Las Vegas." Outside Hong Kong and Guangzhou, new industrial zones feed our insatiable Western demand, not just at Walmart, but also the MoMA design store, which has carried Siciliano's more upscale wares. "They're instant cities," he says. "They didn't even exist 10 years ago. The scale of things is way off. It's just like this insane overgrowth of factories—but then a little village under a freeway." In his bright, teeming acrylic canvases, Siciliano riffs on China's growth, but also follows "a narrative of characters—the women and the bunny boys and the fish and the peacocks." There are traces of Japanese anime, Bosch, Hindu temples, and traditional shrines for ancestor worship. ("I've always been interested in Eastern design.") It all mixes with the relentless engine of commerce; everything is happening at once in a giddy jumble—East and West, capitalism and communism, past and future. Says Siciliano, "It's not right. It's not wrong. It just is." (Through Oct. 9.) Catherine Person Gallery, 319 Third Ave. S., 763-5565, catherineperson.com. Free. Noon–6 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
THURSDAY 9/16
Graphic Design: Poison Pen and Paper
How's this for a job that sucks? For the July 2009 cover of Esquire, graphic designer James Victore had to hand-letter the sell copy on the naked body of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. (Yes, Leo DiCaprio's Bar Refaeli.) "She ignored me completely," Victore writes in his coffee-table design compendium Victore, or Who Died and Made You Boss? (Abrams, $40). Appropriately, there's not much text in the book, just lots of glorious illustrations printed on thick paper. At tonight's talk, the New York artist will show examples from his book covers, CD jackets, magazines, advertising, surfboards, china, and illegal subway posters from the '80s. He's a proud, vociferous leftie who'll gladly use images of sex and death to grab your attention for a good cause. (Safe sex and opposition to capital punishment are two of his strongest campaigns.) But for writers, too, he has some valuable advice: "Examine the cliché, then dig deeper into the idea, then do that again and again, turning and twisting it each time. The hell with genius. Work hard." Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St., 654-3100, aigaseattle.org. $9–$18. 6:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Film: Sideshow Confidential
Forgotten today, novelist William Lindsay Gresham actually worked among the carnival freaks before writing Nightmare Alley, which begins SAM's fall noir series. This 1947 adaptation is fairly faithful to the book's cynical tone, though it softens the ending to a note of hope that Gresham never found in his own life. Tyrone Power's unprincipled grifter learns the code for a mind-reading act from old carny pro Joan Blondell, with which he then makes a profitable sensation among the swells at Chicago nightclubs, aided by his cute new wife (Coleen Gray). The third woman in his life is a shrink (Helen Walker) who questions Power's supposed gifts. If the sex has been edited out of this movie, it still relishes the grimy connivance of carny folk (not so different from their Hollywood cousins). Power's goal, which inevitably destroys him, is to get a line of suckers to pay to see his act. And if he can't have that, he'll settle for "a bottle a day and dry place to sleep." (Through Nov. 18) Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $55–$60 (series), $7 (individual). 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
