- Oregon Children's Theatre
- CHILDREN'S THEATER YOU MAY ACTUALLY ENJOY. No, really.
SARAH MANGUSO'S ONGOINGNESS: THE END OF A DIARY—Joshua James Amberson read Sarah Manguso's latest, "a very short book about a very long diary that we as readers never get to see any part of," and found it full of potential for open-ended speculation:
Her concise, compact sentences have clearly been whittled with a poet's eye—each word carefully chosen, no room for frills. The effect is both cold and revelatory. Nearly every page of Ongoingness has a line that knocks the wind out of you a little (and most pages hold only a short paragraph or two).
Manguso reads at Powell's tonight.
TIMMY FAILURE AT OREGON CHILDREN'S THEATRE—Taking children to see children's theater, says Steve, is akin to "cramming Brussels sprouts into their mouths, and pretending to have a great, positive outlook on life"—you know, something you're SUPPOSED to do. Luckily for Steve, and everyone else, he found Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made to be the exception to the Children's Theater is Awful* rule:
The cast is uniformly terrific, especially Pat Moran as Timmy, Scott Engdahl as his pal Rollo, and Katie Michels as the screeching Molly Moskins. But then there's also the clever stage design, snappy direction, and the adaptation from Kruckemeyer, which deftly weaves theatrical conventions with a breakneck pace.
That sounds like way more fun than a lot of the plays for adults I've seen in recent memory. Let's all go see children's theater? LET'S ALL GO SEE CHILDREN'S THEATER!
THE INVISIBLE HAND AT ARTISTS REP—More like The Invisible Women? Thomas Ross found Ayad Akhtar's play about an American captive in Pakistan to be "a tight, compact, suspenseful work, but lazy in its politics," and notes that, "Of the women even mentioned in the play, roughly half are characters in Archie comics." OUCH. Minus 1000 Bechdel Test points.
MARASCHINO AT FOURTEEN30 CONTEMPORARY—I checked out Fourteen30 Contemporary's group show, Maraschino, featuring Annelie McKenzie's super weird parodies of classic art, employing an aesthetic that recalls Tumblr art by teenage girls, or Lisa Frank under the tutelage of Vanessa Beecroft. Or something. I don't know! Her paintings are sweet and kind of gross, like that nominal cherry.
*Yeah, so I don't know if this is a rule or not, but it seems like a pretty good guess? I haven't seen children's theater on the regs since I was an actual child. Perhaps someone can clear this up for me!