Comments on Intiman Finds a Managing Director

I like a lavish production of Private Lives or Hamlet as much as the next Thespian, but some young blood would certainly help out Seattle's main stages...

I heard "Orson's Shadow" on KUOW, via the syndicated show "The Play's the Thing," last April, and - probably because it was a radio play, reminding me of this or that "Mercury Theater of the Air" thing I'd heard here and there - it fucking spellbound me.

http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/kpcc/news/shows/latw/2007/04/20070428_latw?start=00:00:00:00.0&end=00:00:15:00.0

THAT horrible URL links to a first-15 minutes sample of the play. Apparently the cast heard here was the originating cast and they won some LA awards for the piece. As I recall, the dude doing Welles *nailed* the voice.

I feel like I should clarify, too: the +play's+ not a disaster, it's... OK. Well written. Not a raging fount of innovation. Introspective and backwards looking.

What's a disaster is the actual, true, story the play dramatizes, and it's the momentum of the egos barreling at one another across the boards that holds one's attention.

oops, my memory fails on the cast and origination thing. "The Play's The Thing" site made some fooraw about the cast and awards such that I had the impression that it had opened in LA in the mid-oughts, clearly not so according to wikipedia.