The Trail to Oregon brings to life a cultural icon, the Oregon Trail computer game, and does it with humor and irreverence. The Lesser Known Players production is a hilarious and wholly entertaining theatre experience, one that is interactive and never the same twice. Told by an excellent cast of settlers, The Trail to Oregon is not going to change the world, but it’s going to make you laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more. It’s only running for two weekends, and sure you might come away with a fatal case of dysentery, but in all honesty, I can’t think of a better way to go out!

Cry It Out is a rare commodity. It’s enlightening, but not preachy, it’s funny without losing the seriousness of the message, and it’s timeless. It is a show that, while told through the lens of motherhood, is a layered thesis on sex roles, class, societal expectations, judgement, and the hard choices that befall new parents. Presented here by an excellent cast under the direction of Betsy Mugavero, the As If production of Cry It Out serves up that most important of dishes, perspective.

Doubt (A Parable) at Jewel Box is not something you should see because it will make you feel good. Rather, it’s something you should see because it doesn’t. It’s the kind of play that is short (about 90 minutes, including intermission), but will continue after the curtain drops on the ride home or at dinner. It’s a play that is extremely well written and a production that is superbly performed. For me, it’s an early season favorite, and I have no doubt that it will be for anyone who sees it.

This week’s edition of The Sound on Stage highlights everything that is good about live theatre. There’s drama and humor, shows that tackle important and timely topics and some that are just fun. This week we review Last Drive to Dodge (Taproot Theatre), The Thanksgiving Play (Tacoma Arts Live), Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood (Village Theatre), and The Canterville Ghost (Key City Public Theatre), and capture everything else on stage and coming up in the area.

This week’s edition of The Sound on Stage takes us to North Kitsap, and to historic Port Gamble. This tiny town is perhaps best known for having “Washington’s most haunted house”, but it’s also a wonderful destination any time of year. Tucked into this village is the Port Gamble Theatre, located in one of the many historic buildings in and around Port Gamble. Constructed originally in 1906, this quaint building has always been a community center and houses not just the theatre space, but the town’s Post Office. And on the topic of theatre, while many companies are just now opening their seasons, Port Gamble is beginning the wrap up of its calendar-based 2023 season with its penultimate show, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile.

I’m constantly amazed not just at the sheer amount of theatre in the Puget Sound region, but by the variety, from professional to all sizes of community theaters, and from well known shows to unique, new, and original pieces. On any given week, there’s bound to be something for everyone. This week’s edition of The Sound on Stage is a great example of that variety, as our coverage includes a touring company from Canada (The 7 Fingers production of Passengers at Seattle Rep), three original plays from Indian women (Pradithwani’s Thrice), a combination concert/history lesson (ACT’s Cambodian Rock Band), and a familiar old favorite (Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s production of Cabaret).

Pratidhwani has curated and compiled three distinct and unique plays that deal with the underlying of struggles of people, specifically Indian women, to find their place and their identity. The production as a whole starts slowly but builds as each new show takes the stage, and ends with a standout performance that fits well within the overall context of the program but could easily stand out on its own against any other full length show that I’ve seen. It’s well worth putting the time in early on to get to the final payoff.

The 2023-24 theatre season around the Sound has begun in earnest. September’s schedule of opening productions continues to roll on, most theaters kicking their schedules off with big productions or ones that deal with a subject that deserves some attention. There is a little of both in this week’s inaugural edition of The Sound on Stage. This is a new forum in which you’ll find stage reviews, as well as a quick look at what’s coming up in the weeks ahead, as we look to capture the momentum of our recent Heilman & Haver Theatre Awards and continue to adapt our coverage of theatre in the Puget Sound Region.

Western Washington Center for the Arts seems to be developing a pattern, opening its seasons with a winner. Last season Jekyll and Hyde set the bar high for what turned out to be an excellent collection of shows, and this year Freaky Friday is doing that again. This story, with its catchy songs and timeless themes of family, understanding, and forgiveness, is so well performed that you may want to come back and see it again. You’ll easily be humming its songs long after you leave the theatre.

The Jewel Box Theatre is opening its season with a tale of determination and hope, a humorous tale of four ladies and their aim to overcome individual hardships that have befallen them, realizing that there is power in togetherness, in facing them together. Savannah Sipping Society presents an alternative viewpoint to the prevalent hopelessness many find in the world today, and it’s a viewpoint that is refreshing to experience, especially when it is presented as well as it is in this production.

Kitsap County has a full menu of live theatre to choose from in September, as the new season opens across the board. On that menu, near the top of the list, has to be Sleuth at Bremerton Community Theatre. Jeffrey Bassett has directed a wonderfully presented caper turned whodunit that has so many twists and turns, when it’s over, you won’t know which side is up. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s edge of your seat suspenseful, and it’s entirely enjoyable.

The Hello Girls is a musical treat, a unique telling of an historical event with an importance that has always been understated. There’s nothing understated about this production, though, this ensemble is excellent, as is the design and execution of every technical aspect. The Hello Girls will distract you with its excellent storytelling so much that you’ll won’t even realize until after you leave that you actually learned something.

Any theatre lover should, at one point or another in their lives, especially if you’re on the West Coast, make the trek to Ashland to take in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This organization is chock full of creative talent and is bringing classic work into the 21st Century, while at the same time featuring modern and up and coming pieces of performing art. And while the three shows I took in, The Three Musketeers, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night, are each at different levels of maturity, it’s a treat to see so much talent both on and off stage come together to move us all forward.

Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s The Music Man is the perfect summer musical. Directed by Harry Turpin, The Music Man captures all of the nostalgia fans of the show would hope for, and at the same times acts as a showcase for some of the amazing talent that we have in the Puget Sound region. Led by the wonderful Mauro Bozzo as Harold Hill, this show has a lightness to it and a joy that is sure to stay with its audiences long after the curtain drops.