Critic picks best of theater season

Here’s the true triumph of the Inland Northwest’s 2004-05 theater season: There was so much of it.

For more on that, check out the final category below (Most Positive Trend).

Meanwhile, however, let’s get straight to my annual critic’s picks of the just-concluded local theater season:

Best Play: “True West,” Interplayers Ensemble – This category was a tossup in my mind between this incendiary Sam Shepard classic at Interplayers and the equally brilliant “The Drawer Boy” at the new Actor’s Repertory Theatre.

The nod goes to “True West” because it incorporated all of the theater arts – writing, directing, acting, design, lighting, sound – into a ferocious evening of drama about the myths and contradictions of living in the West. The suburbs sprawl, yet the coyotes still howl.

“The Drawer Boy’s” pleasures were more intimate and more subtle. No, that does not make it a lesser play.

Best Local Musical: “42nd Street,” Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre – This ‘30s backstage musical was gloriously and shamelessly old-fashioned, in the best sense of the term. With its elaborate tap-dance numbers, its show-stopping production numbers and its wealth of great singing roles and character roles, it played directly into the strengths of the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre.

(Note: This show was actually from last summer’s season in Coeur d’Alene, since we mark the end of the 2004-05 theater season as the end of May.)

Best Actor: Jamie Flanery, “You Say Tomatoes,” Interplayers Ensemble – The play was not exactly memorable, but Flanery completely immersed himself in this role. I came away convinced that he was a dotty English eccentric with bad hair and muddy Wellington boots. He’s not, of course. He is one of Spokane’s most gifted actors.

The competition was tough in this category: Alex Robertson as Iago in “Othello” at Interplayers, and Ed Cornachio in “I’m Not Rappaport” at the Spokane Civic Theatre. Cornachio was named Best Local Actor last year. Flanery belongs in the same league.

Best Actress: Erica Chiles-Curnutte in “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking,” Interplayers – This play was less than memorable and the character of Hannah Mae was written perilously close to low-rent Texas stereotype. Yet that’s what made Chiles-Curnutte’s performance so remarkable. With a gift for the telling gesture and the well-phrased line, she made Hannah Mae into a full-fledged comic creation. She proved her talents again with a supporting role in “You Say Tomatoes.”

In a perfect example of trying to compare apples and oranges, I was torn between her and Jan Neumann in the title role of “Hello Dolly!” at the Civic Theatre.

How about this for a solution: I’ll just declare Neumann to be the Best Actress in a Musical.

Best Acting Ensemble: Reed McColm, Michael Weaver and Andy Greenfield in “The Drawer Boy” at ART. These three actors gave stunning performances in this thoughtful story of a Canadian farmer and his damaged friend. Weaver and McColm have both been named Best Actor before; put them together on the same stage and the result is riveting.

Close runners-up: Nathan Smith and Sean Cook, who switched roles every other night in “True West.”

Most Positive Trend: More theater in the Inland Northwest than ever.

For the first time, Spokane had two resident professional theaters with full subscription seasons – Interplayers and ART – and a professional dinner theater, CenterStage, which mounted a series of musicals, revues and straight plays.

Then there are the other longtime institutions: The Civic and its black-box annex, The Firth Chew Studio Theater; the professional Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre; and Coeur d’Alene’s community theater, the Lake City Playhouse.

Those theaters alone accounted for 36 distinct productions, and that doesn’t count the numerous other community theaters in the region, the college and high school productions and the big touring musicals in the Best of Broadway series.

Can all of this theater thrive in this market? From an economic standpoint, the question has not yet been answered. From a quality standpoint, however, the answer is a resounding yes.