Aug 15 – 29
The 5th Avenue Theatre’s 2021-2022 season started off like a rocket with associate artistic director Jay Woods’ joyful, wholehearted, and diverse production of Beauty and the Beast. It then produced two engagingly earnest world premieres, Afterwords and And So That Happened…, adding fuel to its velocity. The all-musical company is clearly adapting well to a new generation of theatremakers.
With the physical space hosting a couple of worthy Broadway tours—Casey Nicholaw’s spirited and underrated comedy The Prom and the return of the truly lovely, Tony-winning sensation Come From Away—the 5th will finish this season with a musical radio play called Wonder Boy, written by Jaime Jarrett and directed by Jéhan Ósanyìn (Village Theatre’s The Book Club Play and founding creative director of Earthseed).
The radio play is about a transgender superhero (Rhys Daly) who “attempts to find a new normal in his identity” while defending his college campus. It features a hell of a lineup of local talent, including Rheanna Atendido (ArtsWest’s We’ve Battled Monsters Before), Rachel Guyer-Mafune (Book-It Repertory Theatre’s Howl’s Moving Castle), and UJ Mangune (Seattle Rep’s In the Heights).
The play’s marketing doesn’t reveal much of the plot, and I’m more than happy to go into it cold, hoping for something fresh and different. At a minimum, I’m assuming it’s unrelated to the Tenacious D song of the same name.
