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There's something singularly awful about sitting through a bad theater production—the eye contact, the vicarious embarrassment, the creeping sense of physical pain, the certainty that you will run into that actor at Fred Meyer next week, after you've filed your withering review.
Over the last 40 years, WW theater critics have endured a lot of dreck. To mark our 40th anniversary, we asked former critics to recount the worst stuff they saw, and did some archive hunting of our own.
"Many of the 600-some shows I reviewed for WW were bad, but most of those were just incompetent efforts from ambitious newbies who were in over their heads. Others were passable productions of miserable material—Dogs! The Musical and Reefer Madness (also a musical)—or victims of lousy luck: Artists Rep built a pool for Mary Zimmerman's watery Metamorphoses, then learned the building couldn't support the weight of the water and had to perform it dry. But the really ghastly shows insulted the people who paid to see them, and the worst of that lot was another Artists Rep production, a world-premiere adaptation of Uncle Vanya in 2007 starring the film actor William Hurt. The casting coup backfired: Hurt was good, but he convinced the theater it should cast his then-girlfriend, an Australian soap star named Krista Vendy, as Yelena, the idle young beauty who drives the play's men to distraction and attempted murder. Vendy had the looks, but she couldn't shake her accent, and performed the role as a surly, whinging brat, driving the tragedy close to farce. Sadly, Portland's theater producers are still too-often seduced by star power when it comes to casting and booking. Who's excited for Lauren Weedman's return to Portland Center Stage next spring?" —Ben Waterhouse (2005-2012)
"Being tasked to describe the worst theater production during my tenure at WW is tough. Where to begin? I think I'll cheat and nominate an entire company, whose absence cannot, and should not, be missed. It was difficult to know whether the Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company was a troupe of professional amateurs or amateur professionals. They would occasionally cast fine actors to fill out a play's cast, but the production concepts (except for a few by Jon Kretzu) were invariably midbrow, if not ferociously moronic. The final straw was when the company's board turned down the renowned Charles Marowitz as a possible artistic director, as he was seen as 'too difficult,' thus consigning the rest of its mercifully brief existence to its own trademarked mediocrity. When Tygres Heart's end finally arrived in the winter of 2002, a 'fan' called and accused me of killing the company. 'Good,' I replied. 'I can live with that.'" —Steffen Silvis (1997-2005)
"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas may not be the worst musical ever—not in a universe that contains Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar—but the late-'70s show (like the 1982 Burt Reynolds-Dolly Parton movie based on it) is a stinking little show all the same. Whorehouse's rancid glorification of prostitution epitomizes the reactionary Reagan '80s as blatantly as Hair and Superstar's crappy spaciness flaunts the intellectual poverty of the '60s.… Not even a shit-kicking, rambunctious, glitzoid production could make this horror palatable, but [theater company] SRO's pallid little effort makes one wonder what all the bitching was about last year when Music Theatre Oregon dared to cast out-of-towners in starring roles. If [director Greg] Tamblyn's Whorehouse represents the best that Portland…can put together, no wonder MTO bought all those airline tickets." —Terry Ross, in a 1991 review titled "Stinking Up the Place"
"Artists Repertory Theatre's current production, Same Boat, Brother, conceived and directed by Lyn Tyrrell, falls slam-bang into this 'must miss' category. Subtitled 'The Earl Robinson Musical Revue,' it is neither a revue (which promises satirical ditties and witty skits) nor a musical (which implies tunefulness). It is a set of uninventively staged songs composed by Robinson, with lyrics by himself and others, sung badly by a cast of seven. Except for location and lighting, it bears no relation to theater." —Cate Garrison, in a 1991 review titled "A Yankee Doodle Dud"
âIâm afraid Iâve repressed all that. Good luck with the others.â âBob Sitton (1975-1985)
WWeek 2015