Review: 'Condo Millennium' is a probing, vibrant take on our town and its development

PERFORMANCE REVIEW |

Vanishing local landmarks. Empty and unsellable condos. Fallout from foreclosures. Worries about impending foreclosures.

These aren't exactly the changes you'd wish on your home city.

Collectively, they're the focus of "Condo Millennium," Marya Sea Kaminski's self-described "performance spectacle" which might better be dubbed a talking-heads docu-drama with interruptions (including one lively midshow musical interlude).

"Condo Millennium" is distilled from interviews with Seattleites: condo owners, condo sellers, real-estate agents, renters, landlords, one boisterous homeless woman and, in the evening's most memorable moment, a construction-crane operator who's coping with pressures at home and on the job.

Each actor in the cast handles multiple characters, often without regard to gender. Kaminski, a noted local actress, is not among them, alas. But as writer-director she draws some finely tuned character studies from her performers.

Among the standouts: Carrie McIntyre, as homeless Betty and a gay 18-year-old Californian who thinks he can make a fortune off the condo crash, and an accent-perfect Josh Aaseng, as an aging renter wanting more privacy, a Russian would-be downsizer from Mercer Island and a slightly giddy restaurateur named Linda.

Phillip E. Mitchell, as that crane operator, and Charles Norris, as a "street pharmacist" with some particularly shrewd comments to make on gentrification, also shine. When certain soliloquies take off, "Condo" is as entertaining as it is probing.

Still, some passages need tightening or more diligent shaping, and some repetitions need eliminating. The musical number, celebrating how condo life is all about "you you you you you," is a great idea — but the recorded backdrop overwhelms some of the vocals. A few brief dance routines have humor but could be more sharply executed.

Reed Nakayama's video backdrop, however, brilliantly evokes every real-estate brochure cliché you've ever encountered, while Korby Sears' score and sound design lend the script a sense of momentum, even when it wanders.

A game show, an interruption from the frustrated dramaturge and an instant history of Seattle in deliberately flaky puppet-show format are also part of the fun. This feels like a theater piece that, with more tinkering, could become the lasting word on Seattle's fiscal and real-estate upheavals of the last few years.

It certainly has its central theme in firm focus.

As one skeptic notes: "Progress is not inevitable — but change is."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com