BY BRITTANY DANIELLE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 5/8/26 |
There’s a version of Mother’s Day people in this town know by heart. You book something late, end up somewhere louder than you meant to be or quieter than you hoped, order a decent meal, say the right things, and call it good. Nobody’s mad about it. Nobody talks about it the next week, either.
If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Tacoma does this holiday the same way it does most things: a little last-minute, a little improvised, and usually centered around food.
That’s fine. It just isn’t memorable.
So here’s a better option.
On May 10 at 5 p.m., Jeff Coleron and Rhiannon Kruse bring their dueling piano show to Ocean5. And if you’ve never done one of these shows, it’s worth understanding what you’re actually walking into.
It’s not a concert. It’s not background music. It’s not something you sit politely through. It’s a room that gets handed over to the crowd.
The whole thing runs on requests. Real ones. People write down songs, send them up, and the performers figure out how to make it all work. One minute it’s a song half the room forgot it knew, the next it’s something that pulls everyone in whether they planned to participate or not. It’s loose, a little unpredictable, and built around the idea that the audience is part of the show, not just watching it.
That can go sideways in the wrong hands. It doesn’t here.
Jeff and Rhiannon have been doing this long enough to know how to keep a room from drifting. They read the crowd constantly. They know when to lean into a moment and when to move on before it loses steam. They let things get loud without letting them fall apart. That balance is harder than it looks, and it’s the difference between a night that works and one that drags.
That kind of show needs the right room.
Ocean5 is not the usual Tacoma music spot, and that’s exactly why it fits. It’s big, for one thing. More than 57,000 square feet of bowling lanes, arcade games, laser tag, virtual sports, and a full restaurant all running at the same time. On paper, that sounds like too much. In practice, it gives the night somewhere to go.
Because people don’t stay put there.
They move. Between lanes, between drinks, between conversations. Someone wanders off for a game and comes back when the music catches their attention. A group that showed up for bowling ends up pulled toward the pianos because they recognize a song. The room shifts constantly, and that movement creates its own kind of energy.
That matters for a show like this. Dueling pianos depend on momentum. They need a crowd that reacts, not one that sits back and waits to be entertained. Ocean5 gives them that without forcing it.
It also does something Tacoma doesn’t always manage well: it holds different kinds of crowds at the same time.
A Mother’s Day group isn’t one thing. It’s families, couples, people who want a low-key night, and people who don’t. Most venues make you pick a lane. Ocean5 doesn’t. You can have a drink, wander, sit down, stand up, drift in and out of the music. And when something lands, everyone ends up in the same place anyway.
That overlap is where the night actually becomes memorable. Because the parts people remember are not the structured ones. It’s not the reservation time or what was ordered. It’s the moment something hits. A song people didn’t expect. A chorus that pulls in half the room. The point where it stops feeling like a planned night out and starts feeling like something happening in real time.
That’s what this format does well. It leaves room for that to happen.
And it’s what makes it a better fit for Mother’s Day than the usual script. Not because it’s more elaborate, but because it’s less controlled. It trades predictability for participation. It gives people a chance to actually share something instead of just marking the occasion.
Ocean5, for its part, was built with that kind of use in mind. It is designed as a gathering space as much as an entertainment venue. The layout encourages people to cross paths. The scale keeps the energy from flattening out. Even the building itself leans toward long-term thinking, with LEED-certified construction and recycled materials baked into the design. It is meant to be used, not just visited once. That shows in how it functions.
It’s not trying to be a quiet night out. It’s not trying to be a concert hall. It sits somewhere in between, which is exactly where a show like this works best.
There’s nothing wrong with the traditional route for Mother’s Day. It exists for a reason. But it is also easy to forget. If the goal is to do something that actually sticks, something that feels a little less scripted and a little more real, this is the better option.
On May 10 at 5 p.m., it’s all in the same room. Find event tickets and info at https://www.o5social.com/event/mothers-day-dueling-pianos-live-show/
