Readers’ pick Tacoma Little Theatre best local theater
Readers’ pick Fulcrum Gallery best gallery
More Readers’ Picks 2009
Weekly Volcano Picks 2009

Readers’ pick: Tacoma Little Theatre best local theater

The theater to watch in Tacoma next season will be Tacoma Little Theatre, and that is not just because of what is set to happen on stage. It also has to do with whether there will be a stage at all.

The theater’s season seems solidly safe enough for a theater on the mend during a time of a recession, so the odds are good. The talent is there. All the theater has to do now is sell tickets and regain its subscriber base that has shed during a few troubling years.

The season might just make it. The first show is The Star-Spangled Girl, by Neil Simon, a fairly safe meat-and-potatoes show about the founders of a radical magazine dedicated to fighting “the system.” Enter from stage left Sophie, an all-American, Olympic swimmer, who moves into the apartment next door. Politics goes out the window when love enters the scene.

Next is Lend Me a Tenor, by Ken Ludwig, which tells the story of Saunders, the general manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera Co. in the mid 1930s as he waits for one of the greatest tenor performances of the era only to have comedy step in instead.

The holiday show is A Christmas Story, by Jean Shepherd, which tells the classic story of the little boy who really wants an official Red Ryder BB rifle with a compass in the stock.

Also in the slate is a reprise of sorts, with the theater staging A Tuna Christmas, by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. This is the second installment of the Tuna series that was started last year at Lakewood Playhouse. It stars Lakewood’s Artistic Director Marcus Walker and TLT’s Managing Artistic Director Scott Campbell.

The show to kick off the new year after the holidays is  Over the River and Through the Woods, by Joe DiPietro, a show about an Italian-American who dines every Sunday evening with both sets of hilarious grandparents. Then he announces that he is moving to Seattle. The news does not go well.

Next comes Noises Off, by Michael Frayn. This play within a play follows the antics of  a British theatre company as it runs through a final dress rehearsal of the farce Nothing On.

The season closer is Major Barbara, by Bernard Shaw. This show brings a turn-of-the-century look at a woman in the Salvation Army and her Machiavellian father, millionaire arms manufacturer, Andrew Undershaft. This smart comedy brings wit to a new level.

The success of the next season will not just depend on ticket sales for these shows, but Campbell’s ability to mend bridges that were burned down between actors, ticket holders and community members by a rudderless theater caused by a parade of temp directors at the helm.

Campbell can do it. His 20 years in the business and seven years at Lakewood translates into what it takes to rebuild a community theater program. — Steve Dunkelberger
[Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N I St, Tacoma, 253.272.2281]

Readers’ pick: Fulcrum Gallery best gallery

How much can change in a year? Last year I picked Fulcrum Gallery at 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way as the best gallery in T-town. At the time, the gallery was so new and I had seen so little of it that my choice was based mostly on speculation and potential.

Fulcrum Gallery has met my expectations. I think it’s still the best in town. Apparently, Weekly Volcano readers agree.

Now that, sadly, The Helm has bit the dust, Fulcrum is probably the edgiest gallery in town. They’re willing to take chances on works with little commercial potential, such as an installation of collaborative works by Shannon Eakins and Marc Dombrosky including a portrait of serial killer John Allen Muhammad that Eakins shot full of bullet holes — with the same model gun Muhammad used and purchased from the same gun shop. That was, understatement of understatements, creepy.

Fulcrum has also displayed beautiful abstract works such as Lance Kagey’s prints based on numbers, and lots of excellent glass art (gallery owner Oliver Doriss is a glass artist). It’s a small and unimposing gallery. Blink while driving down MLK and you’ll miss it. But the variety and quality of work shown there is consistently top drawer.

You never know what Fulcrum is liable to do next. Well, yes you do, next up is ceramic sculptures by Meghan Elissa Hartwig and photographs by Kristin Giordano.

“I am honored that Tacoma has responded so positively to the work we do here at Fulcrum. Open now for a year and a half I am pleased with the growth that has occurred thus far, and look forward to melding the experimental contemporary art displays with the products and events that are the back bone of this delicate business model,” Doriss said.

When Doriss first opened this gallery, an article in The News Tribune said they were going to specialize in installation art. Installation art is impossible to sell or collect, and while wanting to provide opportunities for installation artists and others whose work has little or no commercial appeal, Fulcrum has also shown an awareness that people want to be able to buy affordable art they can put in their homes, so they have balanced the un-sellable with small and affordable paintings, sculptures and glass art - a formula that so far seems to be working quite well. — Alec Clayton
[Fulcrum Gallery Art Space, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way,  Tacoma, 253.250.0520]

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT READERS’ PICKS 2009

BEST LOCAL COMEDIAN: Mayor Bill Baarsma
BEST LOCAL THEATER GROUP: Tacoma Little Theatre (see article on this page)
BEST LOCAL ACTOR: Joe Rosati
BEST KARAOKE BAR: Puget Sound Pizza
BEST OPEN MIC: Antique Sandwich Co.
BEST PARTY PRODUCERS: Kulture Lab
BEST LITERARY NIGHT: Banned Book Club
BEST PUBLIC ART: The Bridge of Glass
BEST ART GALLERY: Fulcrum (RIP The Helm)
BEST MOVIE THEATER: The Grand Cinema

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY VOLCANO PICKS

Best Drama
Theater Northwest Group, the heir apparent to the Tacoma Actors Guild legacy, made its birthright known with its staging of Educating Rita, the story of a washed out teacher turned tutor who finds a life lesson worth learning when he finds himself in the company of a young hairdresser with ambition. Their relationship as teacher and student blossoms, giving Frank a new sense of self and Rita the knowledge she craves. Steve Manning nailed the role of Frank, and Casi Wikerson, well, she always serves up a performance worth remembering. This was the best drama of the season in Tacoma. No debate. — Steve Dunkelberger

Best Musical
Tacoma Musical Playhouse landed a great one when it staged the Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan toss up, The Producers. Frank Kohel nailed his gig as the producer. He is nuanced and hilarious and has a great set of pipes, as does his partner in crime Scott Polovitch-Davis, who played the accountant. But what made this show was not just the quality of the leads and the great sets by Dori Conklin, but also the solid choreography by TMP founder Jon Douglas Rake. — Steve D
[Tacoma Musical Playhouse, 7116 Sixth Ave, Tacoma, 253.565.6867]

Best Comedy
The best comedy award goes to an effort that was years in the making. AACTFest 2009, the national conference for community theaters, paid a visit to Tacoma, making it the first time in 25 years the conference has taken to a stage on the West Coast. The whole affair was filled with great acts, great shows and great presentations by community theaters from around the country. AACTFest 2009 Co-Chair Judy Cullen pulled off a great conference right when Tacoma needed a theatrical shot in the arm. — Steve D

Best Utility Player
The utility player award for the season goes to someone who only took to the stage for one show, Greater Tuna. But he is the man about town when it comes to Tacoma theater. Scott Campbell is the new artistic director at Tacoma Little Theatre and is tasked with the tough duty of rebuilding a bleeding and broken theater effort during one of the worst economies an arts program could face. I think he can do it. He grew his heart for community theater under the leadership of Marcus Walker and watched him rebuild the program at Lakewood Playhouse, and can now use those skills and a few of his own to do the same in Tacoma. — Steve D

Best Visual Artist
I’m going to go out on a limb and choose as best artist a painter whose work I’ve seen very little of other than on a computer screen — Jeremy Mangan, this year’s Foundation Award winner. I’m assuming the actual paintings look something like they look online. Managan’s technique and inventive imagery is admirable, as is the wide range of styles he works in. His surrealistic paintings of barn-like buildings have a brittle quality and interesting juxtaposition of crowded areas and open spaces, and some of his paintings have a lush photo-realist-pop look, both of which I like. But let’s not look too hard at the commercial and commission work on his Web site. What we do for money is like what we do for love, excusable. — Alec Clayton

Best Big Museum Show
I didn’t even review this show because it was too big for me to wrap my head around, but I visited it many times and each time I wished I had more time to look and read all the notes. I’m talking about a very big and complex exhibition with many-layered meanings, forms and artworks — David Macaulay: The Way He Works at Tacoma Art Museum. Famous as an illustrator and a kind of modern-day De Vinci, Macaulay has written numerous books about how things are built and how they operate, from buildings and bridges and inventive gadgets to the human mind and body. In this show there are notes and sketches, preliminary plans for larger works, and finished illustrations including some he drew on the museum wall just for this show. It was amazing. — AC
[Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave, Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

Best Print Festival
It may go without saying that Johannes Gutenberg was one of the more solid contenders for Person of the Millennium, but the possibility of his having given birth to an artistic revolution as well is rarely mentioned. Unless, of course, you’re into fine art printing. The folks at King’s Books are, and if you’ve never had the opportunity to experience the wide range of expressive possibilities particular to printing — and calling in personal ads doesn’t count — an afternoon of perusing their annual Wayzgoose letterpress show should bring you up to speed. Meet local printers.  Print your own keepsake.  Watch sweet pea drive a steamroller. It’s freakin’ cool. — Suzy Stump
[King’s Books, 218 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.8801]

Best Book Art
From the libraries at Pacific Lutheran University and University of Puget Sound to the Woolworth windows to Brooklyn, N.Y., Holly Senn has taken her love of books and art on a wild ride that appears to be only starting. Using old discarded books as a starting point, Senn builds sculptures and installations that are intriguing, thought provoking and beautiful. Perhaps Tacoma is not big enough to contain her talent, as her latest installation, Windows on Nature and Knowledge, is installed in display windows in the Brooklyn Public Library in — where else? — Brooklyn, New York. Senn’s art is primarily conceptual, meaning the ideas she conveys are her central concern. But they are not without visual appeal, which is one of the things I most appreciate. Many conceptual artists seem to care little or know nothing about the visual aspects of their art, but Senn is sensitive to visual beauty and also to implications of her media. — AC