New Theater And Arts Center Opens At West Seattle Junction

------------------------------- Curtain up

"Once Upon a Mattress," directed by Karen M. Kinch, is the opening show of the new ArtsWest Playhouse, 4711 California Ave. S.W., Seattle. The musical comedy runs through Dec. 4. $12-$25. 206-938-0339. -------------------------------

Attention, West Seattle residents. Your neck of the woods now has an attractive new home for theater runs, as well as concerts, exhibits, classes and other arts activities.

It is the ArtsWest Playhouse, which officially opened Friday with a production of the musical "Once Upon a Mattress" by the resident ArtsWest Theatre Company, and with an all-day party Saturday offering live entertainment and walk-through tours.

In the heart of the Junction commercial district, on a site formerly occupied by a grocery store and a five-and-dime emporium, ArtsWest Playhouse is a compact but handsome and inviting facility that will host a variety of local cultural events.

Designed by local architect Terry Williams, the $2.7 million renovation project (funded by individual, government and corporate sponsors) has transformed the three-story 1929 structure into a 149-seat theater with exhibit space, rehearsal and technical facilities, costume and scene shops, and a large multi-purpose room for meetings and other gatherings.

The simple exterior of the off-white building is banked with wide picture windows and leads into a pleasant lobby-exhibit area that wraps around to the back entrance. Currently on display is a group of sumi-style brush paintings by local artist Janet Laurel.

The theater proper is pleasantly done up in a plum-and-black color scheme with a fairly spacious, recessed stage area flanked by banks of well-upholstered seats on three sides.

There are still a few adjustments to be made here in order to achieve the right sound levels in the hall and minimize the distracting noise of its heating system. But overall, this seems a fine, cozy venue for drama and the literary events and acoustic music concerts on ArtsWest's busy calendar.

As for "Once Upon a Mattress," the inaugural show in the new theater, it's an eager-to-please but decidedly amateurish affair, which should appeal most to youngsters with long attention spans and adults with high tolerance levels for cornball humor.

Introduced on Broadway in 1959, and spotlighting the talents of the young Carol Burnett, this rather madcap musical comedy gently spoofs traditional fables in general and "The Princess and the Pea" in particular. Imagine a "Fractured Fairy Tale" from the old Rocky-and-Bullwinkle TV cartoon show, rigged out with a batch of show tunes (composed by Mary Rodgers, with lyrics by Marshall Barer) and knock-about vaudeville gags and you've got the idea.

A great deal of panache is required to make this material fresh rather than just silly, and the ArtsWest production meets the challenge less often than you would hope.

The clever tune "I'm Shy" is sung at proper lung-scorching volume by perky Dori Eisenhauer, appealing as the dense but intrepid, moat-swimming heroine, Princess Winifred (the role Burnett, and in a recent revival, Sarah Jessica Parker played).

A few other actors in the large ensemble also key into the right bouncy comedic spirit. One is Marcus Absher as naive Prince Dauntless, a whiny royal desperate to marry just about anyone.

Another is Judy Ann Moulton, who plays Queen Aggravain, the formidable mother of Dauntless, a Type-A battle-ax and the story's stock comic villain, always kvetching about her aches and pains and devising impossible eligibility tests for her son's prospective brides.

The colorful costumes are fun too, in Belle McClusky's faux-medieval designs. But there's only one really strong singer at hand: Sara Goin, as another spunky court gal, the pregnant-but-unwed Lady Larken. (For a 1959 musical, that was pretty risque.)

And given the inconsistent level of performance and heavy-handed direction by Karen Kinch, the show's lumpy, joke-laden book (by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller) makes for quite a long haul. Kinch doesn't stage the big ensemble numbers with much flair and she allows the mute, lecherous King Sextimus (Roger Tompkins), the Court Jester (Frank Stilwagner) and others to mug frantically, with little return.

The five-piece backup orchestra also lacks polish, delivering too many flubbed notes and sometimes overpowering the singers.

Certainly the supportive opening-night crowd seemed happy to cut the show some slack, as ArtsWest Theatre gets accustomed to its new home. But the company needs to decide if it wants to be an energetic amateur-community troupe (no harm in that), or aspire to the more professional standards it aimed for last season, in other digs.

However the theatrical component turns out, ArtsWest Playhouse is an agreeable new outpost for the citizens of West Seattle and their neighbors. It's also another reminder that the cultural life of our area is proliferating and decentralizing, in many directions.