Opening Nights
PFunny Girl
Village Theatre, 303 Front St. N. (Issaquah), 425-392-2202, villagetheatre.org. $30–$65. Runs Wed.–Sun. through July 6. (Moves to Everett July 11–Aug. 3.)
When the musical Funny Girl was being cast for its 1964 Broadway premiere, producer Ray Stark searched far and wide for an actress capable of playing the legendary stage performer Fanny Brice (1891–1951), whose talent famously surpassed her looks. He chose Barbra Streisand, and a new star was born, confident in her unconventional beauty.
In the starring role of this revival, directed by Steve Tomkins, Sarah Rose Davis has to be exhaustively gawked up and geeked out by her costumers to match the song “If a Girl Isn’t Pretty.” But by the time the show reaches “I’m the Greatest Star,” Davis owns the part, bouncing from pushy to pleading to soulful to catty, bratty, soulful, and back again. The first-time lead, raised in Bellevue, demonstrates a remarkable agility of performance and comic timing.
Good, because Funny Girl is a show that lives and dies on its Brice. Even the primary plot points of the vaudevillian’s fictionalized biography are mere vehicles to truck the audience toward the next song-and-dance spectacular. And of those there are many in this three-hour show (with intermission), with Davis wonderfully supported by the large ensemble. Everyone speaks (and sings) in honking Brooklynese—that peculiar old dialect that sounds so exaggerated we don’t care if it’s real or not.
The fleet-footed John David Scott is a standout as Eddie, the puppyish friend and man-in-waiting to Brice. His tap-dance routine early in the show is nimble and engaging; it leaves you wanting more.
However, the one dull spot in this practically Technicolor production is the central romance between Brice and the hit-and-miss gambler Nick Arnstein (Logan Benedict). Tall, dark, handsome, and mustachioed, Benedict certainly looks the part of a dashing 1920s gentleman. His deep, resonant voice would fit perfectly in one of the evening radio dramas of yore. He never falters, wavers, or stumbles in his performance. All the pieces are there, yet you never buy the love story in this Funny Girl. Davis and Benedict have talent but no chemistry—perhaps because they and everyone else are so busy rushing from one number to the next. Fortunately, it’s those musical destinations—songs by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill—that truly matter. And if it’s romance you want, you can always rent the movie with Streisand and Omar Sharif. Daniel NASH
Terre Haute
ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $15–$25. Runs Thurs.–Sat., plus Sun. & Mon. Ends June 15.
The most important item onstage in the Bridges Stage Company’s debut production is an inch-thick pane of glass that separates its two main players.
Situated in the interview room of the United States Penitentiary in the titular town, the two men have plenty separating them already in Edmund White’s 2006 drama. Prisoner Harrison (Robert Bergin) is a young, self-educated “redneck” who served in the first Gulf War. Interviewer James (Norman Newkirk) is an aging intellectual blue-blood expat who lives in Paris. Yet they do have a commonality: Both believe the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction. Harrison expressed his displeasure with “fascist federal fucking bullshit” by bombing a government building, while James seeks to protect “the American republic from American empire” by penning lengthy didactic essays, one of which caught the attention of Harrison. This leads first to an exchange of letters and eventually to the interview we’re watching.
These characters are obvious stand-ins for two very real historical figures: the mass murderer Timothy McVeigh and the intellectual Gore Vidal. Terre Haute is an imaginative exercise by White, who was intrigued by the fact that McVeigh had invited Vidal to his 2001 execution after reading the latter’s Vanity Fair essay “The War at Home,” which railed against the erosion of the Bill of Rights. Vidal stayed away, but White brought their surrogates together in his only play. (The prolific writer is best known for The Joy of Gay Sex and novels including A Boy’s Own Story.)
And yet White could only bring them so close. The pane of glass remains, splitting a striking, perfectly sterile set by Rick Araluce. This barrier allows each character to look closely into the other’s eyes, yet it keeps them far enough away to protect themselves—and, conversely, to expose themselves without fear.
Directed by Aaron Levin in an intermissionless 90 minutes, this is an uneven play, which sometimes devolves into a pissing match between two cranks spouting off theories about Western decline. But in its most intimate moments—where the characters are exploring their rage, their regret, and their sexuality—Terre Haute makes good on the promise of the set. Then we get insight into the minds of two idiosyncratic characters, and some moving performances. Newkirk is particularly good as the patrician James is slowly unpeeled by Harrison, revealing the vulnerability beneath his learned mannerisms and the humanity that, at its core, this still Tea Party–topical play is actually all about. Mark Baumgarten
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stage@seattleweekly.com
