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Jay Irwin - Page 15

Jay Irwin

         Born and raised in Seattle, WA, Jay has been a theater geek for years.  He attends as many shows as he can around the country and loves taking in new exciting works.  

Three-letter rating system on each review is as follows.  They range from best to worst as WOW (A can’t miss), YAY (Too damn good), MEH+ (Good, with some great things going for it), MEH (Just OK), NAH (You can miss this one) and WTF (I think you can figure out my complex code there).

Jay is also an actor in the local Seattle scene.  Follow me on Twitter @SeattleBdwyGeek or on Threads @jdirwin14 or BlueSky Social at @seattlebdwygeek.bsky.social.  You can also check me out in my web series "The Gamers: The Shadow Menace" available on Amazon Prime.




LEARN MORE ABOUT Jay Irwin

First Show:

First big show I saw here in Seattle was either 42nd Street or Hello Dolly with Carol Channing. Not sure which one was first. First Broadway show on Broadway was the original cast of Spamalot. Great way to start off my Broadway experiences especially since I hung by theb stage door (back when we could do that) and meet the entire cast.

Favorite Show:

Little Shop of Horrors

Favorite Stories:



BWW Review: COME FROM AWAY Nat'l Tour at 5th Ave Still One of the Best Shows I've Seen ... Ever!
BWW Review: COME FROM AWAY Nat'l Tour at 5th Ave Still One of the Best Shows I've Seen ... Ever!
October 15, 2018

Dear Readers, as many of you know, back in November of 2015 Seattle was blessed with being one of the first cities to see 'Come From Away' before it ventured on to be the hit it still is on Broadway. And if you recall my review you'll remember how I implored you to drop everything you were doing, including reading the review, and go get your tickets to catch this amazing show. And I'm sure many of my friends will attest to the constant nagging from me of 'have you gotten your 'Come From Away' tickets yet' so they wouldn't miss the show and the ones who succumbed still thank me to this day for said nagging. Well, Dear Readers, the first National Tour of 'Come From Away' has started and it's once again blessed our city to start in, this time at the 5th Avenue Theatre, and once again I must implore you to stop reading this immediately and go get tickets to this groundbreaking, heartfelt, stunner of a show (and then of course come back and read the rest of this) and my friends are all in for another round of nagging.

BWW Review: Seattle Rep's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS Shimmers with Tragic Beauty
BWW Review: Seattle Rep's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS Shimmers with Tragic Beauty
October 11, 2018

Dear Readers, in the past you may have heard me refer to what I call "theatrical alchemy". It's where all the right elements seem to magically come together in just the right ways to form pure theatrical gold. Well, the Seattle Rep currently has a bunch of alchemists working with them with their joint production with the American Conservatory Theater and their presentation of "A Thousand Splendid Suns", a riveting tale filled with so much tragic beauty that you'll be left breathless.

BWW Review: Fantastic.Z's SEVEN HOMELESS MAMMOTHS WANDER NEW ENGLAND Wanders a Bit Too Much
BWW Review: Fantastic.Z's SEVEN HOMELESS MAMMOTHS WANDER NEW ENGLAND Wanders a Bit Too Much
September 29, 2018

When any playwright sits down to their notepad/typewriter/computer I would hope they have pinned to their workspace a note which, in very large, bold letters reads, "Is this germane to the story I'm trying to tell or is it only interesting/funny to me?" Without that question we get plays like "Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England" currently being offered from Fantastic.Z. There's a little gem of a play in there buried deep amongst the superfluous detritus surrounding it.

BWW Review: Café Nordo's Spell Goes a Bit Awry in THE WITCHING HOUR
BWW Review: Café Nordo's Spell Goes a Bit Awry in THE WITCHING HOUR
September 28, 2018

I'm certainly a fan of the creepy and the crawly and the things that go bump in the night which is one reason Halloween is my favorite holiday. So, a spooky Cafe Nordo show entitled "The Witching Hour" should be right up my alley. And while it is and there's still all the delicious food and fabulous music and fun one would expect from a Nordo show, the story felt a little tentative and unsure of itself and where it needed to go.

BWW Review: Forward Flux and Pratidhwani's A SMALL HISTORY OF AMAL, AGE 7 Sweet but Doesn't Connect
BWW Review: Forward Flux and Pratidhwani's A SMALL HISTORY OF AMAL, AGE 7 Sweet but Doesn't Connect
September 25, 2018

Dear Readers, I know you've heard me talk before about taking the air out of a scene or earning your pauses or pauses you could drive a truck through. Well the latest offering from Forward Flux and Pratidhwani, Lindsay Joelle's "A Small History of Amal, Age 7", while being a sweet and sometimes touching story, suffers from a typhoon of air and a convoy of trucks driving through making the show feel forced and lacking connection.

BWW Review:  Showtunes Gives Us the LEGALLY BLONDE We Didn't Know We Needed
BWW Review: Showtunes Gives Us the LEGALLY BLONDE We Didn't Know We Needed
September 23, 2018

Showtunes is doing "Legally Blonde"? Don't they do obscure musicals that never get done? Yes, that's them, Dear Readers. Putting up for a few weekends, concert stagings with books in hand shows that usually don't see the spotlight. And now here they come with "Legally Blonde" that mega-hit. So why? Because they focus on rare voices and that could mean titles of shows or that could mean casting someone in a role for which they may never be considered. Enter an off-hand remark made at one of the 5th Avenue Theatre spotlight nights when Alexandria Henderson said she didn't have a dream role, just to be able to be cast without limitation and another actor on-stage shouted that she should be Elle in "Legally Blonde" and the crowd went wild. So, an African American Elle with the titular blonde locks. Why not? And that Dear Readers, is the last time we need focus on the fact that Ms. Henderson isn't your traditional Elle. For the rest of this article we'll only focus on the fact that she killed it!

BWW Review: WET's EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH a Raw Blistering Look at Body Image
BWW Review: WET's EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH a Raw Blistering Look at Body Image
September 22, 2018

Over the years I've been to several plays that have cautionary signs in the lobby. Usually they mention cigarette use or strobe lights but more than a few I've seen talk about trigger warnings in the piece. I'd never really understood the trigger warning until last night at Washington Ensemble Theatre's production of "Everything You Touch", a show all about body image. As a big guy myself, I've dealt with this stuff all my life but there was a quite powerful moment in the show where suddenly I had all these memories of my own childhood come rushing back including things like tauntings in school or my Grandmother mailing me weight loss articles she cut out from the newspaper. I'd never had that much of a personal and visceral reaction to a play before which leads me to think that either I'm not as well-adjusted as I think I am or, the production from WET is just that good. I'm going to assume it's the latter. Yeah, that's it.

BWW Review: Village's THE NOTEWORTHY LIFE OF HOWARD BARNES Is Super Fun ... For Nerds
BWW Review: Village's THE NOTEWORTHY LIFE OF HOWARD BARNES Is Super Fun ... For Nerds
September 21, 2018

A few years back, on one of my trips back to the Mothership (New York), I was going to see one of the many incarnations of "Forbidden Broadway", a series I've loved for years. I asked my travelling companion if he wanted to join me. And while he enjoys theater he's not what you would call a theater nerd and so he opted out feeling that many of the inside jokes would fly over his head. It turned out to be a good call. Village Theatre currently has their latest show brought up from the Village Originals Festival onto the Mainstage, "The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes" and while it has a few moments where the story drags or gets slightly mired down in its own joke, I found it to be super fun. But in retrospect, it's super fun to me and was super fun to the person I was with but we're both musical theater nerds. I think the inside jokey-ness of this one might be lost on your basic theatergoer.

BWW Review: Book-It's JANE EYRE Has Fire but Lacks Passion
BWW Review: Book-It's JANE EYRE Has Fire but Lacks Passion
September 16, 2018

Well, Dear Readers, this is a first for me. It seems the first Mrs. Rochester got a little over excited and jumped the gun as we had a fire alarm about 20 minutes into opening night of Book-It's "Jane Eyre" and we all were treated to an early intermission and a breath of fresh air. Luckily it quickly resolved itself and we were let back in for the show to pick up where we left off, ironically with Jane discussing the fires of hell with Mr. Brocklehurst. And while Jane does get quite keyed up in that conversation and her subsequent one telling off Mrs. Reed, unfortunately that's about as passionate as our Jane got.

BWW Review: Seattle Shakes and Upstart Crow Bring Down the House Again with RICHARD III
BWW Review: Seattle Shakes and Upstart Crow Bring Down the House Again with RICHARD III
September 15, 2018

Dear Readers, if you were lucky enough to catch Seattle Shakespeare Company and Upstart Crow's all female epic productions of the "Henry VI" Trilogy that they dubbed "Bring Down the House" and showed in two parts a few years back then you know of the power that they brought to the stage with some of the best female actors sinking their teeth into those traditionally male cast characters. And you also may have had the same wish that many others had, including myself, that they'd keep that train going especially once they'd seen the remarkable Sarah Harlett play the young hunchback Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with such malevolent zeal. Who wouldn't then want to see her go on to play him in the sequel, "Richard III"? Because we all love a sequel. Well, wish granted. The hunchback is back and scheming around the boards of the Leo K. Theatre at the Seattle Rep and is just as glorious as before.

BWW Review: ACT's SKYLIGHT Provokes, Ends, and then Ends Again
BWW Review: ACT's SKYLIGHT Provokes, Ends, and then Ends Again
September 14, 2018

David Hare's "Skylight", currently playing at ACT, is a play teaming with recriminations over infidelities and the struggles of class at the heart of the demise of two people's relationship. It's packed with wonderful moments for both actors to make equally compelling arguments over who's at fault. Who's right and who's wrong. Who's got the moral high ground and who's grounded in reality. To the point that by the end you can see the good and bad in each and walk away with something to think and talk about. And then Hare adds a second ending that I can only describe as the Hollywood RomCom ending to drive his own point home, a point we already got, in a way that is at best superfluous and at worst just plain confusing.

BWW Review: WAITRESS at Paramount is Charming, Heartfelt, and Funny all Mixed up and Baked in a Beautiful Pie
BWW Review: WAITRESS at Paramount is Charming, Heartfelt, and Funny all Mixed up and Baked in a Beautiful Pie
September 12, 2018

Known for her soulful sound in the pop music world, Sara Bareilles burst onto the musical theater scene out of the blue with her smash hit 'Waitress'. I'll admit some cynicism with this with the attitude of 'oh good, another pop star who thinks they can write Broadway.' The problem is, she can, and the show is just damn good.

BWW Review: Strawshop's PRELUDE TO A KISS a Last-Minute Triumph
BWW Review: Strawshop's PRELUDE TO A KISS a Last-Minute Triumph
September 9, 2018

Any theater company has that fear of, after weeks of rehearsing one play, having to switch it out for another with little rehearsal time left before opening. Maybe the rights to the play get pulled or some other act of the theater Gods which is out of their control forces their hand. But what if a theater were to decide to do it to themselves? Such is the case with Strawberry Theatre Workshop and their current production of Craig Lucas' "Prelude to a Kiss" which took over for what was to be their production of Lucas' "Reckless". After already diving headlong into the show they discovered that one character in particular felt so dated and out of touch as to be offensive without any kind of touchstone in the show to point out the offense. But this is not a review of their decision, so we won't go into all that, this is a review of what they put up … with the same cast … and the same scheduled opening night … after only 12 days of rehearsal.

BWW Review: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors in Intiman's NATIVE GARDENS
BWW Review: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors in Intiman's NATIVE GARDENS
September 8, 2018

For as long as there have been living spaces people have had points of contention with their neighbors, whether it's the people upstairs, next door, or on the other side of the fence. Maybe they're too noisy, or they shoot off fireworks right outside your bedroom window on the fourth of July, or they like to stack up their garbage by their front door rather than taking it to the dumpster (you guessed it, I once had the neighbors from hell). But no matter the differences the hope is that people can work them out (or just let them seethe inside for years) without resorting to pesticides and chainsaws as the folks in Karen Zacarias' play "Native Gardens" did, currently being offered from Intiman Theatre.

BWW Spotlight: Village Theatre's 18th Annual Festival of New Musicals
BWW Spotlight: Village Theatre's 18th Annual Festival of New Musicals
August 21, 2018

Several years ago, I remember watching the Tony Awards and seeing Broadway power couple Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker presenting the award for Best Score and getting all giddy and nerdy over it because "NEW SONGS!" Well that's how I feel every summer at Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals. I get to see what's out there up and coming and maybe get to walk away seeing a new gem. And this year was no exception with a couple of shows blowing me away. Now, of course, these are workshops and staged readings of shows, so we cannot really review them, but I can at least tell you what they offered us.

BWW Review: ACTLab and Pratidhwani's QUEEN Examines the Ethics of Bee Science
BWW Review: ACTLab and Pratidhwani's QUEEN Examines the Ethics of Bee Science
August 10, 2018

I've never been a fan of bees, in fact they terrify me. So, I found it a little ironic that the day I'm supposed to go see a play about bees, Madhuri Shekar's 'Queen' from ACTLab and Pratidhwani, that one of the little bastards decides to up and sting me for no reason. Sure, they're important for our ecosystem and without them we would end up with severe food shortages, but they don't need to be such jerks about it. And that's the central conceit of Shekar's play (their place in the ecosystem, not them stinging me). And while the play was intriguing, at times the actors didn't all seem to be a part of the same play, at least not at the same time.

BWW Review: Theater Schmeater's Inconsistent and Chaotic SHE KILLS MONSTERS
BWW Review: Theater Schmeater's Inconsistent and Chaotic SHE KILLS MONSTERS
July 29, 2018

Greetings adventurer, you and your party are approaching a multiheaded beast to which you must convey a story filled with drama, high stakes and dire consequences. You know in order to survive you need to present yourself in a certain way, so do you judiciously put forth just what you need in order to tell a focused and coherent tale thus placating/entertaining the beast or do you throw everything you've got at it and hope something appeases the monster? Well, if you're the folks at Theater Schmeater you do the latter as was evident with the forced, unfocused, and just plain loud production of "She Kills Monsters" currently playing.

BWW Review: ACT's LAUREN WEEDMAN DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE Cavorts with Little Point
BWW Review: ACT's LAUREN WEEDMAN DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE Cavorts with Little Point
July 27, 2018

Dear Readers, if you know me you know of my disdain for shows that end up as someone else's therapy on stage. So, you'll understand how I was filled with hope when ACT's current offering of Lauren Weedman's one woman show "Lauren Weedman Doesn't Live Here Anymore" began with Weedman commenting on how she too hates it when people go into the dirty details of their personal life as well as some seriously funny moments from Weedman. You'll also understand how let down I felt when she quickly abandoned that pretense and devolved into a journey of self-discovery as she laid bare all of her sordid issues as well as abandoning the funny by bringing in an unfocused and manic character to share the journey making the 80-minute evening just feel loud, scattered, self-indulgent, and pointless.

BWW Review: Fairy Tale Princesses Get Real in DISENCHANTED from Mamches
BWW Review: Fairy Tale Princesses Get Real in DISENCHANTED from Mamches
July 21, 2018

A few years back, Dear Readers, I stumbled on an article about a new little show called 'Disenchanted', about Fairy Tale Princesses in a musical revue telling about how life ain't so happily ever after and since I always love a good dose of snark I instantly became obsessed. I followed its journey, hoping it might come to a city near me or at least one I was visiting and even corresponded with the creators, book writer, composer and lyricist Dennis T Giancino and director Fiely A Matias who were kind enough to get me some sample recordings which only deepened my obsession (and put Siri in a tizzy as she has to censor herself when attempting to repeat back to me the original title). Well now, by the grace of the theater Gods and the good folks at Mamches Productions, that wonderful revue has come to Seattle and with the original creators in tow with Giancino directing this time and Matias assisting. And while the gloriousness of those scathing songs is there, the show itself needs a bit more settling time and some technical help to be truly great.

BWW Review: Political Machinations from Theatre9/12's THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH
BWW Review: Political Machinations from Theatre9/12's THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH
July 14, 2018

A young idealist comes to town with an aim to take down the rich fat cats who have rigged the government to only work in their favor only to be swayed by the trappings of their wealth and power. Sounds like something from our government today but no, I'm referring to Henrik Ibsen's play, as adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, "The League of Youth", currently being offered from Theatre9/12, examining the goings on in a small town in Norway, 1869. I guess political corruption has been around as long as there has been politics.



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