Staff Picks
Talk about versatility: This month in Seattle theater, you can see an ’80s mega-musical one week and an Avril Lavigne meta-musical the next, then three brand-new adaptations of Chekhov comedies, an intimate play about illness and more. Here are just a few of the theater offerings we’re excited to see in the weeks ahead.
‘The Best Damn Thing’
I don’t know much about this Hanna Kime play, but I do know that Dacha Theatre makes interesting work and I was once a teenage girl, so I’m looking forward to this “exploration of what it means to be a teenage girl in a world that refuses to take you seriously.” This story’s particular teenage girl is a 16-year-old Missourian named Ellie, who writes a musical inspired by Avril Lavigne’s early work.
Through April 18; 12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave., Seattle; $35-$75, pay-what-you-can tickets available; dachatheatre.com
‘Les Misérables’
Despite recent efforts to brand fans of this mega-musical as “Mizzies” (ew, no), my love for this ’80s behemoth remains undimmed. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg crammed their adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel with more intense solos, love duets, comedy songs and rousing ensemble numbers than one musical should be able to hold. I’m sure this national tour of “the world’s most popular musical” (as it’s being dubbed) will bring all the usual bombastic, heart-on-its-sleeve energy to this show, set during the 1832 student uprising in Paris and centered on a man who steals a loaf of bread, makes good and is pursued for years by a relentless cop.
Through April 19; Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St., Seattle; tickets start at $49.60; 206-682-1414, stgpresents.org
‘Walden’
Porscha Shaw leads this play by Amy Berryman, a near-future family drama set in a remote cabin as crisis after crisis — war, climate disaster, refugee emergencies — rage outside. Shaw stars as Stella, who was raised, along with her twin sister Cassie, by a father determined to make them NASA scientists. Cassie followed that path, while Stella’s was interrupted. With one twin voyaging to space and one staying on terra firma (and with a title borrowed from Thoreau’s famous memoir of life in the woods), it’s no surprise that this play concerns itself with questions, not answers, of how we should live.
April 9-May 3; ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., Seattle; $38-$48; 206-938-0339, artswest.org
‘Appropriate’
This 2024 Tony-winning play, directed at Seattle Rep by the talented Timothy McCuen Piggee, zooms in on a Southern family that uncovers a horrific family secret while gathered at their late father’s decaying plantation. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has won just about every playwriting award under the sun, including the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play “Purpose,” and with good reason. He’s a wildly smart, incisive and curious writer, but one whose big questions and ideas (of which there are many) never get in the way of a good story.
April 9-May 10; Seattle Rep, 155 Mercer St., Seattle; $25-$145; 206-443-2222, seattlerep.org
‘The Fainting Spells’
Realizing that Chekhov’s bleak-on-the-outside plays are, in fact, extremely funny is a rite of passage for many a theater lover, as is discovering the poignant humanity in his overt comedies. As part of the Intiman Cabaret, Chekhov specialists The Seagull Project presents three short comedies by the Russian master — “Swan Song,” “The Proposal” and “The Harmful Effects of Tobacco” — as newly adapted by local playwrights Keiko Green, Allison Gregory and Wayne Rawley and directed by Sunam Ellis, Adrienne Mackey and MJ Sieber, and I’m looking forward to experiencing all the sweetly sour wit contained within.
April 23-26; Erickson Theatre, 1524 Harvard Ave., Seattle; seats start at $41.50, tables at $102, two-drink minimum; theseagullproject.org
‘You Will Get Sick’
After winning the prestigious Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award for student-written scripts, this Noah Diaz play went on to an auspicious 2022 off-Broadway debut starring Linda Lavin and directed by future Tony Award winner Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”). The play, according to a New York Times review of that production, “defies all expectations for a story in which the main character receives a fatal diagnosis, telling the tale in the most lively, surreal and surprising ways imaginable.” Now Sound Theatre Company brings this unusual piece, in which a young man hires a caregiver to deliver hard news (among other tasks), to Seattle.
April 23-May 16; Center Theatre at Seattle Center Armory, 305 Harrison St., Seattle; $6-$79; 206-856-5520, soundtheatrecompany.org
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