As long as I remember I have always enjoyed high quality theatrical performances, especially musicals and comedies. I’ve never been one for artistic plays which seem to be for the sake of the play itself. I saw a play like that not too long ago. It was titled “Sunday in the park with George”. It was as exciting as the title sounds, about this ego tripping artist and how he spent his Sundays in the park painting. After about 15 min or so I started wondering if they were ever going to move on and maybe explore more aspects of his life. When intermission came and they were still going on about how he liked to paint in the park on Sundays as well as his ego trips I went home. This is the only play ever that I walk out on during intermission.
While I have always been into the theater I didn’t necessarily go to many plays in my younger days. It has only been I’d say in the last five or six years or so that I started getting really into theater and going to more and more plays. Seattle has an amazing array of really high quality theaters with what seems like an endless array of great plays. Eventually I ended up having favorite theater. This ended up being the 5th Ave Theater. I ended up buying a season subscription and have seen pretty much every play they have put on for the last few years.
The 5th Ave Theater does mostly musicals and does an amazing job at it. They are in what I believe to be an old historic theater on the corner of 5th Ave and University Street in downtown Seattle. I think there has only been one play I’ve seen there (out of several dozen) that I didn’t like (but I already covered that). Every other play I’ve seen there I absolutely love. The top three that stick out are “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas”, “Jersey Boys” and “Buddy Holly”.
After a few years as a 5th Ave subscriber, I was introduced to the ACT (A Contemporary Theater) and suddenly I have a new favorite theater and have been a subscriber there now for several years.
There is also a really cute community theater in Redmond, WA called Second Story Repertory (SSR) that totally rivals both 5th Ave and ACT. In fact, there have been a couple of plays I saw both at 5th Ave and SSR and I liked the SSR production better. Their productions are much simpler and also their ticket prices are a fraction of the ticket prices at 5th Ave, making SSR a much better value in my opinion. I have been an SSR subscriber for probably 10-15 years if not longer.