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Cast members for “Dinner with Friends” include (left to right, front row:)Julian Schrenzel and Kat Schroeder; (back row:) Gerald Browning and Macall Gordon. Courtesy photo.

SecondStory Repertory, Redmond’s only professional theater company, has a full slate of shows scheduled for its 2010 – 2011 season. The focus is on the classics.

"It’s a return to the kind of shows our audiences know and love us for," says Mark Wahlstein, president of the board and founding member of SecondStory Rep. "We listened to the feedback from our supporters and created a season that is more in line with their preferences."

On the mainstage, up first is "Dinner with Friends" (8/27 – 9/18), a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama which was subsequently made into an Emmy-nominated TV movie and is now regarded as a contemporary classic. The show tells the tale of two couples, longtime friends, who are rocked to the core when one pair decides to divorce.

"It’s a very relatable show," comments Wahlstein. "It’s really about finding yourself amid all the conflict that comes with relationships."

Just in time for Halloween, the company will present "The Turn of the Screw" (10/1 -23), a classic Victorian thriller adapted from the Henry James novella of the same name. In this gothic ghost story, a governess is hired to take care of two children at a country manor, where strange events begin to occur.

February, the month of love, brings the classic Shakespearean romantic comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing" (2/4 – 26, 2011).

And on tap for spring is another contemporary classic, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" (4/1 – 30, 2011), a delightful musical comedy that began life as an improv show and went on to become a Tony Award-winning Broadway smash.

The season wraps up with the heartwarming classic, "On Golden Pond" (6/3 – 25, 2011). Norman and Ethel have always spent summers at their lake house in Maine. But, when their daughter visits with her new boyfriend and his son, boundaries and relationships are in for a test.

For the younger set, SecondStory Rep has put together a selection of four shows: "Harriet’s Halloween Candy" (10/29 – 11/14), a cautionary tale of a young girl who learns how sharing can make you a better bear… and can help avoid sugar-induced stomach aches; "Sleeping Beauty" (1/7 – 23, 2011), a much-loved adaptation with a modern edge to it; "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" (3/4 – 20, 2011), one of Aesop’s most famous fables; and "A Year with Frog and Toad" (5/6 – 22, 2011), the story of cheerful Frog and grumpy Toad who spend a year together learning the true value of friendship.

SecondStory Rep will also present several special events during the season, including the 2nd annual Thrill the World Zombie Dance (10/23), a community fundraiser for the company; Weekends with Split-Second Improv, the Eastside’s only professional improv troupe; Saturdays with musician Dan Connolly; and the teen musical, "Children of Eden" (12/3 – 23), an often overlooked, yet stirringly poignant and inspirational production about the "creation" of parents and children, with a focus on the theme of conflict and resolution.

"It’s a great lineup," says Wahlstein. "There’s something for everyone to enjoy." Wahlstein emphasizes the theater’s accessible location and free parking, its intimate size and its reputation for putting on quality productions with professional actors.

He adds, "For people on the Eastside, SecondStory is ideal because it’s on the same side of the bridge. You don’t have to deal with all the traffic and the time it takes to get downtown. Or the cost of parking. We’re small enough, too, that audiences get to know us, and the size of the theater means you’re no more than six rows from the stage wherever you sit. I think this really enhances the theater experience."

Wahlstein also notes that SecondStory is one of the few resident theater companies with its own home – another plus.

Though the company was in financial straits last year and on the verge of closing its doors, a successful fundraising campaign that netted $85,000 helped give it some breathing room.

"It helped catch us up," notes Wahlstein, "but it didn’t retire all of our debts, so we still need to do a lot of work to get us where we need to be to survive more comfortably."

He adds, "We’re reevaluating the structure of our staff to make the payroll more efficient, we’ve just kicked off our new subscription campaign for the season and we’re looking into corporate sponsorships to underwrite our productions. All of these things will hopefully help us become more financially stable."

The company is also currently in the midst of hiring a new executive director, as well as an artistic director, and announcements will be forthcoming.

For more information about SecondStory Rep or to purchase tickets to its upcoming shows, call (425) 881-6777 or visit www.secondstoryrep.org.

Last year’s Wild Fish Soirée

The Wild Fish Soirée will be held September 17 at the Willows Lodge, in the heart of Western Washington’s wine country. It will be a memorable evening of live music, gourmet food, fine wine and lively socializing. Help Wild Fish Conservancy build a more sustainable future for the Pacific Northwest as they kick off their Harvest Reform Campaign.

All proceeds from the evening will support this effort.

The auction will feature a wide variety of items including fishing trips abroad, local excursions, weekend getaways, fly fishing equipment, fine wine, gourmet dinners, and much more. The Wild Fish Soirée will begin with a silent auction and champagne reception at 6 p.m. followed by a gourmet dinner and live auction at 7 p.m. Interested in attending the event?Visit wildfishconservancy.org or call (425) 788-1167.

We all know what happened on that fateful September 11 morning. Or do we? After watching "Yankee Tavern," Steven Dietz’s new play, now heating up the stage at ACT Theatre, you may not be so sure. The show opens in a rundown saloon in lower Manhattan, five years post 9/11.

Adam (Shawn Telford), a grad student with aspirations of working for the C.I.A., runs the place he inherited from his father. He and his practical-minded fiancée, Janet (Jennifer Lee Taylor), appear to be the happy couple, with only two noticeable areas of tension in their lives. They don’t see eye-to-eye about when Adam should let go of the soon-to-be-condemned bar and Janet is concerned about why so many "save the date" cards for their wedding, addressed to Adam’s friends, have been returned, marked "addressee unknown."

Ray (Charles Leggett), the bar’s seemingly sole patron and good friend of Adam’s deceased father, however, is a man who is in conflict with the whole world. He enters, headset on, waiting to rant about the rigged 2000 presidential election on a call-in radio program. He claims that the purpose of G.W. Bush’s win was to provide Al Gore with the opportunity to obsess over global warning. Ray spies a conspiracy in everything, from the 1969 moon landing to the fall of Communism, which he believes may have been a plot cooked up by the Kremlin and Disney.

Although J.F.K.’s assassination is "the mother of all conspiracies," 9/11 also ranks high on the list, in his opinion. The bombastic gadfly spouts his theories about the government’s role in orchestrating the attacks on the Twin Towers, explaining that the buildings didn’t go down because airplanes flew into them, but because of carefully planted explosive charges. He asserts that everything can be traced back to rich, powerful Saudis and the Bush family.

Janet dismisses Ray’s ravings, saying a commission investigated everything. But, when a mysterious stranger named Palmer (R. Hamilton Wright) enters the bar and eventually owns up to knowing something about 9/11 – and when it seems as if Adam might know something, too – Ray’s crazy notions take on a life of their own and the theoretical becomes very real. Strange coincidences, and there are many, (i.e. Why did the towers fall even though their steel cores should have melted at 2,700 degrees while jet fuel burns at a comparatively lower 1,500?

And why did owner Larry Silverstein buy a multibillion-dollar insurance policy on Towers 1 and 2 just a few weeks before the attacks?), begin to add up and slowly and subtly, you are drawn into a world where your disbeliefs are suspended and you may find yourself a believer … or not. "A mixture of humor, intrigue and darkness, ‘Yankee Tavern’ keeps us guessing about the truth," says ACT Artistic Director Kurt Beattie. "Like all the dim bars, frequented by ghosts and memory, which have enriched the American theatre, the Yankee Tavern becomes that dangerous joint some of us may have visited before, a place where you might overhear, purely by accident, a story you know was never intended for your ears, but one you simply can’t stop listening to."

The show, which is directed by Dietz, is an exciting political thriller that boasts hefty doses of suspense, as well as humor, along with solid performances by a talented cast.

At its helm is Leggett, who plays Ray as zany and wacky, yet still possessing enough sanity where you can’t completely pooh pooh his outlandish theories. You want to, but somehow you just can’t flat out dismiss them. His frenetic spiels are hilarious and the amount of energy he expends on stage is impressively exhausting.

As Palmer, Wright is convincingly menacing – the sinister, silent type, who holds many secrets. Though he doesn’t say much in the first act, his presence is fully felt. He is convincingly ominous and makes the audience wonder who he is and why he always orders two Rolling Rocks, leaving the second one for an unseen friend.

Telford and Taylor do commendable work, with Taylor giving a particularly emotion-laden speech that strikes to the core of the issue of post tragedy vicarious grieving.

The ending of the show is a tad rushed and inconclusive, but perhaps the playwright is leaving it up to the audience to fill in the blanks. And maybe, do a bit of questioning themselves.

"Yankee Tavern" runs through August 29 at ACT. For ticket information: (206) 292-7676 or www.acttheatre.org.