Mid-Season Stage Roundup

[January 3rd, 2007] The first week of January is down time for Portland's performing-arts scene, and the city's stages are empty but for the ghost lights. What better time for some cranky thoughts on the state of the art?

What worked:

It turns out $36 million can buy a lot of theatrical bling, if not a full lift system or a fully stocked bar. Portland Center Stage's new Gerding Theater has already sold out two extended runs, but can Artistic Director Chris Coleman, who front-loaded his season with crowd pleasers, keep filling the house once the novelty's worn off? Will it take the rumored Storm Large and Wade McCollum team-up in Cabaret to keep the brick ship afloat?

Third Rail has cemented its rep(ertory) as one of the city's most talented ensembles, kicking off its first full season with a sublime staging of Craig Wright's The Pavilion, and turning the Alibi into a post-show hangout for North Portland theatergoers.

We've had a bumper crop of new works, with a handful of smart (if rough-edged) world premieres (Leni, One Day, Mutt) and the ever-growing JAW/West festival attracting national attention. But the most successful show to come out of this town is still Imago 's long-running Frogz. What's up with that?

What didn't:

Enough with the murderous musicals ! Sure, we all loved West Side Story, but since July we've suffered through Broadway Rose's painfully campy Case of the Dead Flamingo Dancer, Stumptown Stages' awful Reefer Madness!, and 200 performances (and counting) of Menopause the Musical. What's next, Annie? Oh, wait....

If Portland's ever going to have a grown-up theater scene, then we're going to have to stop acting like children. That goes for everyone from John Monteverde—who started his Blue Monkey Theater Company with a carbon copy of the season he'd planned for his former employer, Northwest Children's Theatre—to Wade McCollum, who, according to audience members, broke character during a performance of I Am My Own Wife (still one of the best shows of the year) to chastise an amorous couple in the front row, to the anonymous cranks who don't think we don't do enough to "support the theater scene." Memo to the insecure: I'm not your therapist.

Untimely deaths: Stark Raving Theatre, the Brody Theater and Splendora's "classical" acting career (Genet's The Maids).

Hope for the new year:

Three more promising premieres: Number Three (Third Rail), The Thugs (Portland Center Stage) and Mix Up (Imago). And, of course, William Hurt in ART's Vanya.

Portland Actors Conservatory is months away from an accredited MFA program, putting the city a step closer to a nationally relevant performing arts scene—but don't hold your breath.

I can't wait for this summer's production of Singin' in the Rain (Broadway Rose). Hey, even the critic has to have fun sometime.