Seattleplays.com review By Tom Scanlon
				Wonderful Life: The Holidays on Capitol Hill Washington Ensemble Theater (WET) Thursday-Monday at 8pm closes Dec. 23 $10-$15. Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com Little Theatre, 608 19th Avenue East, between Mercer & Roy 206-325-5105
		It’s a wonderful show . . . if you can suspend disbelief just a tad, and overlook a few minor infractions. With acting ranging from strong to superb, WET's ensemble creates a sort of real-life Peanuts -- if you can imagine Charlie Brown and company as angsty 20-somethings, scurrying around Capitol Hill, searching for connections and meanings during the holiday season.     It helps that Wonderful Life plays at the best – physically – theater in Seattle. Not too large (Intiman, ACT), not too small (Stone Soup, Theater Schmeater), the Little Theater is a converted movie theater with comfortable seats. That’s wonderful, right there . . .      Washington Ensemble Theater/WET is rapidly become THE fringe company in Seattle, with a busy schedule of quality productions. Wonderful Life is an original, newly written by Amy Rebecca Boyce and the ensemble, who used conversations with Capitol Hill residents as the text for this fast-moving play, directed by Boyce. “Fast-moving” is putting it lightly, as the show begins with ADD speed, smash-jumping from one character’s fragmented monologue to another’s to another’s . . . The tempo eventually slows down somewhat, as Boyce and the ensemble -- Mikano Fukaya, Nic Hoover, Elise Hunt, Julia Leichman, Jonathan Martin and Michael Place – smoothy slide from one vignette to the next.      While the subtitle of the show is “The Holidays on Capitol Hill,” several of the vignettes are more every-day life stuff: trying to catch a bus, crushes on barristas, first day in a new apartment, encounter with a homeless person, etc. The holiday theme is much more in the forefront with scenes addressing being alone during the holidays, a Thanksgiving romance, a holiday gathering of “strays,” Christmas night at the Cha Cha bar (“If I drink this I’ll puke – should I drink it?”) . . .      A particular highlight is the song “O Casserole,” which is not only hilarious, but sung with agility by the ensemble.      The acting is quite strong and calibrated, with the gracefully breezy Hunt and intense Place (particularly as a peripatetic Dostoyevsky-type who keeps getting lost around the Hill) as the standouts.      Anyone who has spent time on Capitol Hill knows it can be a cynical, hardened, isolating place – perhaps as close to Manhattan as Seattle gets. The cast does a powerful job of exploring this specifically urban experience . . . though the happy endings surely are too-easily reached. Another gripe is that street people and minorities are vastly under-represented. Fukaya is delightful, particularly singing “Silent Night” in Japanese, but not having an African-American member of the ensemble makes WET far too white.      Beyond these intellectual criticisms, the show is emotionally and artistically a stunning success. Snatching magic from the air of casual conversations, WET may have created an instant classic, not so much an It's a Wonderful Life for a new generation -- more a Charlie Brown Christmas for the young and restless of Seattle.