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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Nathan Weinbender

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A&E >  Entertainment

Tribute show celebrates an era, pays homage to songwriter Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern was one of the most influential and prolific theatrical composers of the early 20th century, yet his name is on fewer modern tongues than many of his contemporaries. The author of hundreds of songs (some have credited him with more than 700 compositions), Kern’s best known tunes include “The Way You Look Tonight,” an Oscar- winning standard performed by Fred Astaire in the film “Swing Time,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” which became a No. 1 for the doo wop group the Platters in the late 1950s. But Kern is likely best known for his lengthy collaboration with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, who would, following Kern’s death, form an even more famous partnership with Richard Rodgers. Together, Kern and Hammerstein wrote the 1927 stage musical “Show Boat,” based on Edna Ferber’s epic novel, which has not only been credited with changing the direction of musical theater but has been revived frequently since its original premiere.
A&E >  Entertainment

Sea Wolf goes it alone

It seems fitting that Sea Wolf’s debut album, 2007’s “Leaves in the River,” opens with the sounds of rainfall on water because the band specializes in music that perfectly soundtracks a rainy day. It’s even better if you have a window to stare out of wistfully. Channeling the pastoral folk sounds of Iron and Wine and the evocative lyrics of Belle and Sebastian, Sea Wolf is the pet project of California singer-songwriter Alex Brown Church, who also plays just about every instrument on his records.
A&E >  Entertainment

Tribute show celebrates an era, pays homage to songwriter

Jerome Kern was one of the most influential and prolific theatrical composers of the early 20th century, yet his name is on fewer modern tongues than many of his contemporaries. The author of hundreds of songs (some have credited him with more than 700 compositions), Kern’s best known tunes include “The Way You Look Tonight,” an Oscar- winning standard performed by Fred Astaire in the film “Swing Time,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” which became a No. 1 for the doo wop group the Platters in the late 1950s. But Kern is likely best known for his lengthy collaboration with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, who would, following Kern’s death, form an even more famous partnership with Richard Rodgers. Together, Kern and Hammerstein wrote the 1927 stage musical “Show Boat,” based on Edna Ferber’s epic novel, which has not only been credited with changing the direction of musical theater but has been revived frequently since its original premiere.

News >  Features

Critics Webster, Weinbender explain their Oscar preferences

The commercials for tonight’s Academy Award ceremony have labeled this year’s Oscar race the most competitive in recent years, and for once there’s truth in advertising. Normally, your friendly neighborhood Oscar prognosticator would study the numbers, figure the odds and determine who’s most likely to win which award, but this year the acclaim has been all over the place. The marketplace was simply too crowded with good movies and performances, many of which were completely shut out by the Academy. For three years now, Dan Webster and I have offered up our dual predictions in the main Oscar categories: actor and actress (lead and supporting), as well as best picture and director. In 2011 and 2012, our individual guesses were all the same; in terms of accuracy, we guessed five of six right in ’12, and four of six in ’13.
News >  Spokane

Review: Spokane Civic Theatre’s ‘Mousetrap’ a playful whodunit

It’s a setup you’ve no doubt heard before. On a stormy, snowy night in 1949, an investigator visits the married proprietors of an English guesthouse called Monkswell Manor and their four tenants. A murder has been committed earlier that day in London, he tells them, and the killer is likely on his or her way to the rural security of Monkswell. When another body turns up in the main hall, however, it’s clear that the murderer has already arrived. These oft-imitated circumstances are typical of mystery novelist Agatha Christie’s work – suspects are confined to a single location while a detective pieces together evidence to determine which of them is a murderer. But her play “The Mousetrap,” which she expanded from her 1947 radio play “Three Blind Mice,” has remained a juggernaut since its 1952 premiere: It’s still a mainstay on London’s West End, where it has run continuously for a record 61 years and over 25,000 individual performances.
A&E >  Entertainment

Civic Theatre presents ‘The Mousetrap’

Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” remains the longest-running play in the history of London’s West End for one big reason: Its ending is top secret. Since its 1952 premiere (which included Richard Attenborough among its cast), the play has been performed more than 25,000 times, and every single audience has been urged to remain tightlipped once the show is over. The inherent curiosity factor is built right into the premise. Much like Alfred Hitchcock concealing the final twist in “Psycho” (while making a to-do out of the very fact that he was concealing it), audiences are desperate to discover the ending for no other reason than they’re not supposed to know what it is.
A&E >  Entertainment

Fundraising campaign launched for Big Dipper

The Big Dipper, that distinctive blue brick building on the corner of Washington Street and Second Avenue, might finally get a chance at a new life. Musician Dan Hoerner, a founding member of the Seattle indie rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, bought the Dipper last year and plans to reopen it as a live music venue.
A&E >  Entertainment

Interplayers stages ‘Barrymore’ - a glimpse of a Hollywood legend

At the height of his career, John Barrymore was one of the most popular figures of the stage and screen. He was one of the few actors who made a seamless transition from silent films to talkies, he could play light comedy as effortlessly as tragedy, and his interpretations of Richard III and Hamlet would forever change the way those characters were portrayed. By the early 1940s, though, Barrymore was a has-been: He was no longer a box office draw, he began to have trouble memorizing lines and his crippling alcoholism was devastating to his health and his personal life (he was married and divorced four times). He died at 60, suffering from pneumonia that was exacerbated by cirrhosis.
A&E >  Entertainment

Young Dubliners to play at Knitting Factory

Although they got their start in the L.A. music scene of the early ’90s, the music of Celtic rock band the Young Dubliners has roots as far back as 19th century Ireland. When the group started out, it was primarily a two-piece acoustic act featuring Keith Robert and Paul O’Toole, who would cover Irish standards and give them a modern rock twist. “The covers we were doing were nothing that anyone here would have heard of,” Roberts said in a recent phone interview. “They were rocked-up versions of hundred-year-old ballads, very much our fathers’ music.”
News >  Features

Indie rockers the Thermals bring their DIY-fueled tour to the Bartlett

The last two times I saw the Thermals were wildly different experiences. In 2010, I watched them headline a late summer show at the Seaside Bar (remember that place?), which couldn’t have held more than a couple hundred PBR-swilling concertgoers. A year later, the Seaside gig a distant memory, I caught them in Seattle opening for Weezer, performing a nearly identical set list for a couple thousand people. I bring this up for no other reason than to illustrate the virtuosity of the Thermals: They’re as comfortable on a shadowy dive bar stage as they are under bright stadium lights. They’re back in Spokane tonight for the first time since ’10, on the last leg of the tour for their most recent album, 2013’s “Desperate Ground.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Young Dubliners come to Knitting Factory

Although they got their start in the L.A. music scene of the early ’90s, the music of Celtic rock band the Young Dubliners has roots as far back as 19th century Ireland. When the group started out, it was primarily a two-piece acoustic act featuring Keith Robert and Paul O’Toole, who would cover Irish standards and give them a modern rock twist. “The covers we were doing were nothing that anyone here would have heard of,” Roberts said in a recent phone interview. “They were rocked-up versions of hundred-year-old ballads, very much our fathers’ music.”
A&E >  Entertainment

In large or small roles, Hoffman was always on

Earlier this month, Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his New York apartment of a reported heroin overdose, and the acting world lost one of its most compelling and powerful figures. His untimely death inspired remembrances of his life, his career and his craft, and those of us who truly valued his work revisited our favorite Hoffman performances in tribute (mine is his inspired interpretation of irascible rock critic Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous”). Since the early ‘90s, Hoffman delivered towering performances in one memorable and challenging film after another – “Happiness,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Magnolia,” “Capote,” “Synecdoche, New York,” “The Savages,” “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” “The Master.” With such an impressive filmography, it’s sort of disheartening that only eight of his movies are currently available for streaming on Netflix (and one of those is the lame documentary “Salinger,” in which he’s merely an interview subject).
A&E >  Entertainment

Pianist interprets world through music

Pianist Jeremy Denk says he never plays a composition the same way twice. “A conductor I worked with in San Francisco asked me how I played a particular passage when we were playing Mozart last fall,” Denk said from his home in New York. “And I played it for him, then played it again and again. And he said, ‘Do you realize that you just played that three times, and each time it was different?’ ”
A&E >  Entertainment

Theater faces stark realities with ‘Wit’

After the breezy romps of “Lend Me a Tenor,” “SantaLand Diaries” and “Little Women,” Coeur d’Alene’s Lake City Playhouse is getting considerably more introspective with its newest production, Margaret Edson’s drama “Wit.” Directed by Troy Nickerson, the play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999, is the intimate study of a stern, independent woman coming to terms with her own place in the world during the final moments of her life.
A&E >  Entertainment

Comedy lineup puts women in spotlight

It’s no secret that stand-up comedy is a male-dominated field. Female comedians are still stereotyped and marginalized, and a number of unfair, reductive “women aren’t funny” generalizations have been thrown around by people like Jerry Lewis and Christopher Hitchens. (According to Forbes, last year’s top earning comedians were all men.)
A&E >  Entertainment

Symphony brings classic score to life

“Casablanca” is a cultural touchstone, one of those Hollywood classics that, along with “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” exemplifies the enduring power and romance of cinema. You could probably even recite most of the 1942 film’s famous dialogue without ever having seen the actual movie: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” “Play it, Sam” (oft-misquoted to include “again”). Those lines remain part of our lexicon more than 70 years after they were first uttered.
A&E >  Entertainment

Symphony brings classic score to life

“Casablanca” is a cultural touchstone, one of those Hollywood classics that, along with “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” exemplifies the enduring power and romance of cinema. You could probably even recite most of the 1942 film’s famous dialogue without ever having seen the actual movie: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” “Play it, Sam” (oft-misquoted to include “again”). Those lines remain part of our lexicon more than 70 years after they were first uttered.
News >  Features

Bing Theater continues to benefit from artistic, structural upgrades

Jerry Dicker has invested in a lot of downtown Spokane real estate, but it’s the Bing Crosby Theater that he calls his “labor of love.” Since acquiring the Bing in February 2012, Dicker estimates that he’s put at least $400,000 of his own money into renovating and updating the theater, and that figure will no doubt swell as the structural and artistic improvements continue. Dicker, a California businessman who owns GVD Commercial Properties, knew the Bing wasn’t going to be a moneymaker when he took it on, but he believes that the venue’s increased activity can only encourage prosperity in Spokane’s art scene.
A&E >  Entertainment

Loyal fans lend momentum to Toad the Wet Sprocket

It might surprise you to learn that Toad the Wet Sprocket is still making music more than 25 years after they first picked up instruments. But no one is more surprised than the band itself. If there’s one thing that unites the long career of the California-based group, who had such radio hits with “All I Want,” “Walk on the Ocean” and “Fall Down” in the 1990s, it’s lowered expectations yielding unanticipated results.
A&E >  Entertainment

Pieces find inspiration through musical imitation

“Triumph and Delight,” the sixth installment of the Spokane Symphony’s ongoing Classics series, is all about influence, inspiration and even musical imitation. The program includes three pieces that show 19th- and 20th-century German composers paying tribute to their inspirations: Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn pays homage to the influential Austrian composer; Concerto for String Quartet by Arnold Schoenberg is an expansion of one of George Frideric Handel’s concertos; and Symphony No. 2, a Robert Schumann composition, features prominent allusions to the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.
News >  Spokane

Review: Civic Theatre update shows Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’ is timeless

It’s one thing for a community theater to tackle the work of William Shakespeare; it’s another thing entirely for one to tackle his epic magical comedy “The Tempest.” There are a number of reasons this particular play is a tricky proposition: It isn’t really one of Shakespeare’s more famous works, and it requires a mastery of music, broad comedy and special effects on top of its complicated language. But the Civic Theatre, whose interpretation of “The Tempest” opened this weekend, does justice to the Bard’s words. It works best, I think, in its lengthy comic passages and as a physical production of sound and fury. Director David Baker, who’s also the Civic’s technical director, has wisely staged his version as theater-in-the-round so that the audience is as much consumed by the magic as some of the characters.
News >  Spokane

‘Hello, Dolly!’ Best of Broadway show is high-spirited, goofy fun

When the musical “Hello, Dolly!” premiered in 1964, it became a classic right out of the gate. Written by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart, the original production won 10 Tony Awards and made a star out of Carol Channing, who played busybody matchmaker Dolly Levi. Its popularity even extended to Hollywood and mainstream radio: It was adapted into a successful, Oscar-winning film starring Barbra Streisand in 1969, and a version of its title song performed by Louis Armstrong overtook the Fab Four on the Billboard charts at the height of Beatlemania. It’s a Broadway institution, and dozens of legendary actresses have taken a crack at Dolly in various revivals: Ginger Rogers, Mary Martin, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Eve Arden, Betty Grable. And now Sally Struthers, the Emmy Award-winning actress of “All in the Family” fame, has taken on the role, starring in a touring production of “Hello, Dolly!” that is making a stop in Spokane as part of INB’s Best of Broadway series.
A&E >  Entertainment

Ana Popovic: Blues without bounds

Even before she could speak a word of English, Ana Popovic was fluent in the language of blues. Growing up in Belgrade, Serbia, she was surrounded by the music of the great American blues artists – everyone from Albert Collins to Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughn to Robert Johnson. “I listened to blues ever since I was 2 or 3 years old,” Popovic said from her home in Memphis, Tenn. “Blues was the only thing in my home, thanks to my dad. We had a huge collection of vinyl, everything from Delta blues to Chicago blues and Texas blues.”
A&E >  Entertainment

Civic revisits Bard with steampunk take on ‘Tempest’

There’s a long-standing belief in the theatrical world that William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a cursed play, one that’s so unlucky that simply uttering the title inside a theater is thought to bring about doom. Maybe it’s silly superstition, but it’s possible that Spokane’s Civic Theatre sort of believes in it: They staged “Macbeth” in February 2001 and haven’t touched another Shakespeare play since. It’s 13 years later (superstitions be damned!) and the Civic is dusting off another of the Bard’s classics, with “The Tempest” set to open tonight under the direction of the technical director David Baker. It’s one of Shakespeare’s more fanciful works, an epic tale of the spurned sorcerer Prospero seeking revenge on his brother Antonio, who abandoned Prospero on an island and usurped his position as the Duke of Milan.
A&E >  Entertainment

Grown-up love story drives locally filmed ‘At Middleton’

We go to the movies for a lot of reasons – for entertainment or escape, or to experience people and places we don’t see in our real lives. Multiplexes are almost always filled with the special effects and faraway lands of movies like “The Hunger Games” and “The Hobbit,” but it seems that the most common sight on big screens in the last month has been Spokane itself, with three locally filmed features all premiering in theaters in January. First it was the inspirational drama “Different Drummers,” based on the true story of a friendship between two young boys in the late 1960s. Then it was “Knights of Badassdom,” a gory fantasy comedy set in the world of live action role players. And now we have “At Middleton,” a low-key romance co-produced by North by Northwest Productions and starring Academy Award-nominated actors Andy Garcia and Vera Farmiga.