Curtain Up! is the story of five women with distinctly different personalities thrown together in an unlikely situation, one forcing them to work together in order to save a theatre recently willed to them in equal shares. It’s funny and farcical, but it’s also emotional and heartfelt, running the emotional gamut from anger and sadness to love and forgiveness, with the humor and heart perfectly balanced. Directed by Trina Williamson and with a cast led by Sarah Conte-Bacolini in a breakout performance, Curtain Up! is easily Jewel Box’s best show of the season.

Where is Here?, the co-production from Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble and Seattle Public Theatre, feels like the right story for our country’s current political climate. Playwright Naghmeh Samini presents the immigrant experience in an empathetic way, one that provides insight into the challenges immigrants face in finding their identity, living between two worlds, second-guessing what they left behind and uncertain of the road ahead. With a short run time, and an option between seeing the show in English or Persian (or both!), Where is Here? is a play that will make you consider the immigrant issue in a wholly human way, a perspective we all need right about now.

The work of Rajiv Joseph has started to make its way on to Seattle stages more and more recently, and we as theatre patrons are better off for it. The latest of his work to hit area theaters, and one with an amazing name if I do say so, Gruesome Playground Injuries, is being presented by SecondStory Rep and is a play about human connection and relationships, about lost opportunity and the hope for reconciliation. It’s a truly human story, a dark comedy about two people, performed by two talented actors in very good performances, that asks us to look at our own lives, to see if what we have is what we need, and demands that we don’t take anything for granted, especially those that we love and care about.

Don’t Limit Women, the January offering from Drunken Owl Theatre, is a special combination of music, poetry, and theatre, threaded together with the common themes of experience, enablement, and empowerment, created by and performed by some of Seattle’s most talented creative artists. The formula is unique among theatre companies in the area, the Jules Maes Saloon is the perfect venue for this type of production, and if this is what Drunken Owl Theatre brings to its monthly revues, it’s something every theatre lover in Seattle needs to see at least once.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a fun and nostalgic musical that is entertaining for the whole family. Ovation Performing Arts NW’s winter musical is full of catchy songs performed wonderfully by a cast of adults and kids along with vignettes and scenes that are sure to take anyone back to the days of the Peanuts TV specials and Charles Schultz’ daily comic strips. Ovation’s first show in its new home at the Buxton Center at Bainbridge Performing Arts is a good one and is a lighthearted and good way to start off the second half of the 2024-25 theatre season.

When a play has been around as long as A Midsummer Night’s Dream has, the number of adaptations that have been made of it are bound to be as varied as they are numerous. Few adaptations hit all of their marks the way that The Original Theatre Black Dog production of A Midwinter Night’s Dream does. Led by Holly Madland in her directorial debut, and performed by a youthful, energetic, and masterful cast, this wintery holiday version of Shakespeare’s classic tale just happens to be the most enchanting and entertaining adaptation that I’ve seen, proving that once again, the best theatre isn’t always in the largest houses, sometimes it exists just beyond them, or even right there, hidden in the large shadows that they cast just waiting to be discovered.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians isn’t the kind of holiday show that will rekindle your Christmas spirit, or make you rediscover your sense of hope, community, love, and forgiveness. There are plenty of other shows out there for that. What Santa Claus Conquers the Martians will do is make you laugh, laugh hard, and laugh a lot. It’s a cheesy, campy, irreverent, science fiction comedy that is like watching a B-movie on stage with all of its flaws and is presented by a cast that has such a quality about them as to not take the play nor themselves seriously at all, and to deliver a production that can only be described as perfectly imperfect.

The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, this year’s holiday production at SecondStory Rep, the companion piece to their offering last year, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, and Lauren Gunderson’s sequel work to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is a look at the other side of the social hierarchy in which the Darcys, Wickhams, and Bennets reside, the lower level of the estate and the servants quarters. Combining some familiar characters along with some new ones, the story is complementary to “Miss Bennet” and has all of the humor and heart of that story as well as that of Austen’s original work. With a director and three cast members returning, it feels like SecondStory hasn’t lost a step from “Miss Bennet”, and “The Wickhams” is just continuing the wonderful story that was last year’s production. “The Wickhams” is a wonderful holiday escape, to a different time, but a time when people faced the same challenges we still do today, socioeconomic conflicts and relationship challenges, and find support in the same places, in family, love, forgiveness, and hope. With an exquisite design and a cast that is both so talented and fun to watch, The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley is full of all of the things that make the holidays feel magical.

The Rented Christmas is a sweet and funny holiday play that shows what can happen when we open our doors and our hearts, and let others in, how that love can become contagious and spread, making us all better off for having opened ourselves up to it in the first place. The Olympic Theatre Arts production is a feel-good holiday production that will surely have you laughing, leave you smiling, and taking the holiday spirit with you to share with everyone you see this season.

While most theaters are running traditional Christmas favorites or lighthearted family stories for the holidays, Intiman Theatre’s Black Nativity is one of the few, if not the only, shows on stage in Seattle that presents a non-secular vehicle for the season. With a cast that takes the classic words of Langston Hughes and elevates them to new heights through their full and powerful voices, complemented by a beautifully sounding choir and a supremely talented dance ensemble, the experience that is Black Nativity doesn’t care which faith you align yourself with, or whether you align yourself with one at all, but rather it wants to welcome us all into its family, and surround us in a spirituality that will stir something inside and make us realize that we’re all apart of the same human community.

Have Yourself a Crazy Little Christmas is another in a long line of Christmas gone incredibly wrong stories, a holiday farce, if you will. When one thing piles on top of another, the stress of the holidays builds until it hits a boiling point, and as the tension rises, so does this show. After a slow start, the Olympia Little Theatre production hits its stride and keeps going, despite the challenges of a runaway ferret, a slingshot turkey, and a surprise guest that throws the holiday dinner into utter chaos. Director Kelly Toombs has done a nice job in creating a funny holiday show that gets funnier as it goes on, and will surely make any crazy family gathering you’ve ever had seem sane in comparison.

Miracle on 34th Street remains one of the most popular classic Christmas films in the history of cinema, and is so in large part because of its themes of family, new beginnings, and trusting in what we believe. Macy’s Department Store has built an entire marketing campaign on that tradition of belief that stems from the film, and as the story makes its foray from the screen to the stage, it’s nice to see that those themes remain intact, and that in doing so it has not lost any of its charm. Much of that comes down to the Edmonds Driftwood Players cast, let by David Hayes as Kris Kringle, and under the direction of Paul Fleming, who come together to deliver this classic Christmas story in a way that captures the kind of magic that the film has done for so many years.

Fiddler on the Roof is one of those musicals that virtually everyone knows of, perhaps through the stage version, but more likely through its film. Regardless of the medium, it’s the story that resonates, one of loss, oppression, family, tradition, love, and hope, things that have been part of our everyday lives no matter what generation we’re part of. The Tacoma Little Theatre production of Fiddler, under the direction of Melanie Gladstone, has everything a good version of this story needs to be successful, a talented cast, led by the stellar Jonathan Bill as Tevye, the familiar and classic songs that are impeccably performed, and staging that is creative and memorable. The show misses nary a step, and though our own lives may be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof, this is a show that most certainly is anything but, a delightful telling of a classic.

The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, the lighthearted holiday play from Cricket Daniel, is chock full of one-liners, jabs, jokes, and holiday spirit, which is a good thing because it’s all about its main character trying to rediscover his own. The Phoenix Theatre production isn’t going to change the world, but with a cast that delivers laugh after laugh, and at the same time understands the heart behind the jokes, The Night Before The Night Before Christmas will help even the grinchiest of grinches find their spirit this season.

Bake to Alaska is a lot of things. The new play from David A. Natale, which is having its world premiere at Key City Public Theatre in Port Townsend, and running on stage through December 29 in a production directed by Brendan Chambers, is a crazy panto that is a tribute to the silliness of 1970s television, bringing together three teams charged with baking and assembling a gingerbread house while sailing to Alaska. As with any bake, this comedy has many layers, and in order to make this holiday production work, it needs capable bakers, and with a more than capable cast and creative team under the direction of Brendan Chambers, this group has produced an irreverent and funny play and has surely earned itself the theatre equivalent of the holiday Paul Hollywood handshake.

As we enter the heart of the holiday season, we look for stories of magic to bring us closer to each other and to the hopes we have for the world around us. But sometimes, it’s a story with real people, where hope, love, and forgiveness are front and center that we look to in order to make our own magic. Anastasia is such a story and while the musical version on stage at Bainbridge Performing Arts may not be precisely up to the exacting standards we’ve come to expect from a BPA production, overall, it is a well produced and performed piece and it most definitely captures the heart of the story and provides the kind of magic we can all use this holiday season.

You probably never thought of associating Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit with the holiday season, but sometimes you don’t need a play that screams “Christmas” to be a wintertime hit, maybe you just need something that can be an escape from the stress of the world we live in, so that for a few hours, we can be immersed in a world of laughter, joy, and fun. That’s exactly what Blithe Spirit is, and with a play like this one, the better the cast, the better, and funnier, the story. When a cast is in sync, the result is a total performance, but add to that a creative team that is also working together on all cylinders, and you’ve got magic, and that’s what this production of Blithe Spirit is. And maybe that’s it, if this is the time of year for magic, the Seattle Rep production of Blithe Spirit is the perfect gift for all of us.

Mary Poppins is a undoubtedly a classic, and as a follow-up to last year’s award winning White Christmas, The 5th Avenue Theatre is hoping that by staging it this holiday season that lightning can strike twice in two years at Christmastime. Thanks to amazing choreography from director Denis Jones, and a cast that is superb in its execution, and supremely talented all the way from the leads to the ensemble, they have, in fact, delivered another stupendous, exhilarating, and wholly entertaining holiday show. It’s not just fun for the whole family, it’s an example of the high level of musical theatre that Seattle has proven time and again that it is capable of delivering. Bravo, you’ve done it again.

The Centerstage Holiday Panto version of Beauty and the Beast is unlike any version of the story that you’ve ever seen. Sure, many of the familiar characters are there, and the plot generally weaves back and forth along that well known arc, but with a drag queen, dad jokes aplenty, and music that more resembles a top 40 radio station than a Broadway stage, it’s clear that this is not your average fairy tale, and when it comes to delivering a story in the style of the English pantomime, Centerstage has it dialed in. Cast not simply with actors, singers, or dancers, director Trista Duvall has put together a group of multi-dimensional performers, who know how to bring this fairy tale to life in a most unique way, and while it’s cheesy and it’s campy, it’s also hysterical and delightful. There’s a little something for everyone of any age, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a few hours than in the company of this group immersed in their skill as entertainers.

Happy Christmas, Jeeves, is the latest chapter in the story of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable valet. Written by local playwrights Heidi McElrath and Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey, this hilarious farce of a holiday adventure fits the Jeeves canon like a glove, with characters both familiar and new that carry the heart of PG Wodehouse’s work to a new generation. With Calder Jameson Shilling and Richard Nguyen Sloniker reprising their roles from 2023’s Jeeves Takes a Bow, Happy Christmas, Jeeves is a winner, a new holiday classic with enough laughs to fill Santa’s sleigh, and enough heart to carry us through the darkest winter night.