Opening
Nights

Dogfight

ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., 
938-0339, artswest.org. $5–$37. 
7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 22.

The title of this musical—based on the affecting 1991 movie—refers to a hideous sort of male-bonding competition among a group of Marines the night before they ship out of San Francisco: Whoever brings the ugliest woman to a party wins. But Eddie ends up falling for Rose, the shy aspiring singer/songwriter he’d intended to humiliate, and they spend an increasingly tender night together. It’s 1963, so you know where he’s shipping out to, and that adds a melancholy foreboding to their eight-hour romance. The film’s a potentially powerful basis for a stage work; my hopes were high; and last Thursday’s opening night of ArtsWest’s production started engagingly enough.

Until we got to the party scene. A pretty vile idea, right? Cruel public ridicule of innocent women? Well, unbelievably, the scene is played for laughs, broad ones at the women’s expense, and it got them. One of the women was played by a man in drag; another flung herself around the dance floor deliberately spastically; another was supposed to be Native American, which topped this shitpile with a charming dollop of racism. I’m not sure whether this approach was the intention of the book writer, Peter Duchan, or the brilliant idea of director Mathew Wright. In either case, I’ve never seen a more staggeringly misguided, profoundly offensive misreading of artistic intent.

The scene simply invalidates the rest of the show. Though Devon Busswood, as Rose, gives her all to her subsequent solo lament, how hypocritical is it to expect the audience to be moved by her mistreatment when the show itself does what Eddie did? There’s an attempted rape near the start of Act 2; how are we supposed to feel this as a moral outrage if we’ve just spent 10 minutes laughing at women made to appear as grotesque as possible?

That was a specific problem. Dogfight’s overall problem is that it evokes next to nothing of the film’s peculiar bleak bittersweetness, either in the Eddie/Rose plotline or in the backdrop of the Vietnam War experience (we spend a good amount of time with Eddie’s fellow soldiers) and the cultural rift it caused, still an open wound a half-century later. Co-credited to Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the music is more or less Rent-lite (though attractively orchestrated), just like, it seems, every other small-scale musical since, and the lyrics rhyme a bit glibly, especially coming from the mouths of Marines. Eddie, Rose, and Vietnam all deserve a deeper treatment than what is basically a Very Special Episode of Glee. But it’s that party scene in particular that demands rethinking, because as it stands it’s as near-unwatchable as anything I’ve ever seen on a stage. Gavin Borchert

PHamlet

New City Theater, 1404 18th Ave., 
271-4430, newcitytheater.org. $15–$20. 
7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends Nov. 15.

Four years after Seattle Shakespeare’s indelibly satisfying Hamlet, there’s another notable local production of the play that shouldn’t be missed. The prodigiously pliable Mary Ewald stars as young Hamlet, shedding decades off her impressive odometer with astutely formulated adolescent smoldering. Her face and minimalist gestures are endlessly engrossing, made for the minute nuances of low-action theater like Beckett. (For the duration of 2011’s Happy Days, only her face was visible atop a mound of sand.) Such emotional articulation pays off handsomely in Hamlet’s sleuthing and dithering, making the often muddled shades of his indecision utterly distinct. Under the unambiguous direction of John Kazanjian, the play’s twists and shadows have never been more comprehensible to me.

There are also many gems among the supporting performances. A svelte Peter Crook scrumptiously deadpans Polonius’ insouciant hot air. Tim Gouran’s Laertes self-detonates as only Gouran can. And the various lesser characters played by Brandon Simmons and Scott Ward Abernethy manifest more secret personality than many a principal character in other productions.

Quibbles? Kristen Kosmas seems too mature for Ophelia, Todd Jefferson Moore’s wide-eyed, doddering Claudius too broad. Kazanjian stages the famous bedroom scene between Hamlet and Queen Gertrude (Elizabeth Kenny) with zero Oedipal tension, and the fight choreography is a bit tentative. Still, I found myself riveted by this tiny yet immersive production, where Nina Moser’s set evokes a compact, creepy Elsinore with candlelight and brick. The air smells dank, and the dirt floor offers actors anguished loam-smearing opportunities. A single row of seating puts the cast within a few feet of the audience, revealing Hamlet’s abject inner life as if in high-def close-up. Margaret Friedman

Vanya and Sonia 
and Masha and Spike

ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, 
acttheatre.org. $55 and up. 
Runs Tues.–Sun. Ends Nov. 16.

Every morning Vanya and Sonia drink coffee while watching the blue heron feed at their pond in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The scene seems serenely perfect, except it’s not. Vanya (R. Hamilton Wright) and Sonia (Marianne Owen) are unmarried 50-something siblings—Sonia is adopted, and she’ll keep reminding us of that—who cared for their dying parents and still live in their childhood home. Their sister Masha (Pamela Reed), an aging starlet, funds their bleak lives (someone has to). Though cut from the same proverbial cloth, Vanya and Sonia and Masha are as unique as they are the same. Their theater-loving parents named them after Chekhov characters, and the specter of Chekhov hangs over Christopher Durang’s Tony-winning comedy.

Director Kurt Beattie mixes the absurdist levity with a whirlwind of bittersweet emotions; the effect is often frustrating but also satisfying. Durang’s characters can seem flat, at times almost caricatures, though his themes are resoundingly heartfelt. There’s more mood here than solid plot (again: Chekhov), which revolves around a family reunion of sorts. Masha visits her siblings with her boy-toy Spike (the excessively bare-chested William Poole) with the intent of selling the house, a misfortune foretold by Cassandra the housekeeper (the gregarious Cynthia Jones). Meanwhile neighbors visit, siblings bicker, compliments are undone by criticism, schemes are uncovered, and parties end in disaster.

Despite all Durang’s amusing references to Chekhov, Pirandello, Greek tragedy, and even Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you sometimes feel you’re watching a clever yet contrived sitcom. The happy ending is a given, and the play’s almost more interesting for its individual character and scene studies. For instance, a phone exchange between Sonia and a gentleman caller creates unexpected pathos and brings to light the allure of self-sabotage. A spastic outburst from Vanya on the nature of change may cause you to wonder if he’s about to suffer a nervous breakdown. And the prima donna Masha’s inability to give up the spotlight is seen to be human, however inane.

A carefree country life this isn’t, and Carey Wong’s ironically idyllic set holds enough dust and skeletons to fill a lifetime—or three. Irfan Shariff

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