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Theatre
February 8, 2010
Review: 'John & Jen'
Penfold Theatre distinguished itself last year, surprising Austin theater-goers with ‘The Last Five Years,’ a one-act, two character musical. The production garnered Penfold, and Michael McKelvey, the show’s director, rave reviews and several nominations from the Austin Critics’ Table.
Now, McKelvey and Penfold bring us ‘John & Jen’ another modern chamber musical at the Hideout Theatre.
With music by Andrew Lippa and lyrics Tom Greenwald ‘John & Jen’ charts the story of two siblings growing up against the shifting American political landscape as the conservative 1950s gives way to the liberal, volatile 1960s.
Backed by a trio of piano, cello and percussion (in the tiny Hideout the musicians were shoehorned backstage revealed only partially through a gap in the stage set wall), Andrew Cannata and Sarah Gay had enormous tasks in shouldering the entire two-act sung-through musical. They also had to convincingly play their characters as children, teens and adults which they did with composure.
Jen leaves her younger brother along to survive in their stifling, repressive household when heads to college and the hippy lifestyle. John later heads to Vietnam. In Act Two, Jen is single mother struggling to raise a son, not uncoincendentally named for her brother.
If the plot of this two-actor three-character rapidly moving show is rather sentimental and predictable, McKelvey’s production nevertheless remains sharp and compelling.
Perhaps that’s because McKelvey know what makes the intimate chamber musical mode work to its best: a combination of energy and straightforwardness.
Simple staging and lighting enhanced but didn’t interfere with the rapidly changing moods of a story that veritably rockets through the years.
Cannata’s fairly relaxed tenor has good tone and when he hit the open phrases, he unleashed a Broadway-style boom - impressive, but almost overwhelming for this small-scaled show. Gay has the more emotionally complex and challenging role to sing which she mostly handled with grace.
Small is good when it comes to musicals, despite the typical penchant for the spectacle. And in the hands of a good director, small proves surprising and convincing.
‘John & Jen’
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 21
The Hideout Theatre, 617 Congress Ave.
$10-$20
www.penfoldtheatre.org
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February 2, 2010
Review: Tim Miller's 'Lay of the Land'
When solo performer Tim Miller takes the stage, it seems like he can’t breathe. When Miller shifts into his performance persona, he always seems to be gasping for air.
The acting choice alternates between producing a sense of anxiety or exasperation as Miller’s streaming delivery goes on a journey through his take on what it means—and more importantly—how it feels to be queer in the US.
In Miller’s newest piece “Lay of the Land,” Saturday at Vortex, Miller targets his exasperation toward the ongoing battle over same-sex marriage. As is always true with Miller’s shows, the mix of comedy, pain and exuberant politics produces an unsettling mixture of empathy and indictment. “Lay of the Land” asks the now perhaps old, but still true feminist question: how do personal stories become political? And how do political decisions affect individual people trying to love each other and live together?
“Lay of the Land” focuses most directly on Miller’s experience in one the Californian same-sex couples able to marry during five months in the summer of 2008. But the show’s structure allows Miller to cover a huge swath of topics. “Lay of the Land” follows Miller’s participation in November 15 protests following the California Prop 8 anti-gay marriage vote.
Popping in and out of his role as activist in the street, Miller recalls vignettes from his life as a queer man. Perhaps the most intense recounts a harrowing moment as Miller’s father stood over his nine-year-old son, preparing to do an emergency tracheotomy on the kitchen table to remove chuck steak stuck in Miller’s throat
In one of many examples of the play’s web like writing, Miller relates the moment to his childhood hatred of baseball games—he saw the stadium as a tool for fathers to masculinize their gay sons—and Miller uses the steak as launching pad to discuss the queer issues, as he says, stuck in the throat of the nation. The many-tentacled writing can be dizzying to follow, but it’s fascinating in its scope.
Reflecting “Lay of the Land’s” title, Miller offers a stunningly broad view of the place of queer Americans in the national landscape. From an ode to Iowa — the state Miller calls the freest of the free after its 2009 unanimous State Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage—to his queer ode to state university mascots, Miller surveys the variety of American positions on gay and lesbian issues in even the most unlikely of places. After seeing “Lay of the Land,” no audience member will ever look at the University of Wisconsin’s hyper-muscular Bucky the Badger the same way again.
“Lay of the Land” is unabashedly political. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Miller’s positions, it would be nearly impossible to remain conscious through this show and not rethink gay rights in the US. And it would be impossible to sleep while Miller gasps and entertains.
Kudos to the Vortex for their long-time commitment to bringing this important artist back to Austin again and again.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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January 30, 2010
Review: Headlong Dance Theatre
It’s hard to have a dinner party when some guests insist on pretending to be horses. That’s not definitely the tension at the heart of Headlong Dance Theatre’s “More,” but it could be. The delightful dance, a collaboration between the Philadelphia dance company and choreographer Tere O’Connor at the Long Center Friday, exploits dance’s most interesting quality: the form’s poetic porousness. With the coupling of O’Connor’s high concept approach to choreography and Headlong’s wit, “More” offers the audience a chance to revel in the gaps between knowing.
Who knows what “More” is “about.” It doesn’t matter. Dancers neigh and paw like hyper horses. Furniture suggests a suburban parlor gathering. The pieces don’t necessarily add up, but they do seem to serve a larger structure. I did not know what was going on. But I was not lost.
Headlong and O’Connor approach everyday, mundane aspects of performance with precision. A brilliant blue vinyl couch, an Oriental rug and a microwave are among the items that create the work’s domestic atmosphere. Somehow when they’re moved into a giant junk pile and lit with a soft white light, the ordinary becomes beautiful, yet still haunted by functionality. Earlier when the furniture is still set up like a living room, dancers enter with several large trees. Once the dancers insert the trees into the existing set so that limbs and leaves cover huge swaths of the stage, the effect is beautiful. Then there’s the last Headlong touch: Nicole Canuso sits, her face now obscured by a limb, adding a witty wink to the lovely landscape.
Precision drives the dancers’ performances, too. Their partnering of flat affect with exact, unison series of tiny gestures produces a quirky juxtaposition that never grows tiring. What could be excessive repetition is fascinating. Dancer Devynn Emory has a special gift for pairing muted, but not vacant facial expression with total body engagement.
I’d describe how Emery’s final horse dance ended the show with another moment of beautiful humor, but then I’d rob future viewers of another moment of “More’s” pleasurable confusion.
The show continues tonight at 8 p.m. at the Long Center.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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January 25, 2010
Q-and-A with performance artist Tim Miller
Clare Croft, American-Statesman freelance critic, interviews Tim Miller.
Two weeks ago in San Francisco arguments began in the federal trial regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban of same-sex marriage. This weekend, Austin will hear a slightly less somber challenge to Prop 8: queer performance artist Tim Miller’s one-man show ‘Lay of the Land.’ at the Vortex.
Miller gained national headlines in the early 1990s when he was one four artist performances artists whose NEA grants were yanked by conservative lawmakers intent on curbing their sexually-oriented creative expression. In response to what became known as the culture wars, the NEA — which was nearly abolished in the process — stopped awarding individual grants to artists.
Miller spoke with Statesman about the performance’s timeliness, sexiness and meaning.
American-Statesman: How did the November 2008 vote for Proposition 8 catalyze the creation of ‘Lay of the Land?’
Tim Miller: This piece really began from questioning what it means when your state completely messes with your family—when 52 percent of the voters vote to deny rights to 10 percent of the citizens. It’s a response to this kind of crazy thing: having your neighbors vote to take your rights away.
AAS: You perform ‘Lay of the Land’ with American and California state flags on either side of the stage. Why did you choose those symbols?
TM: They’re clear markers of civic identity. Every high school cafeteria has a state and national flag. Every courthouse. The spaces I tell stories about are almost always public spaces—where individual identity clashes up against national status. I also travel constantly, so if it doesn’t fit in my carry-on bag, it ain’t part of the show.
AAS: Why do you talk about sex so much in your work?
TM: Well, in mainstream representations of gay people on television, it’s pretty much forbidden for sex to even be mentioned. It’s usually just the gay minstrel clown with snappy one-liners. I want to create the images I would say are invisible in mainstream culture: a queer citizen, a queer husband, [and] a queer activist.
AAS: What gives you hope — the drive to keep performing, despite the passage of legislation and referendums with which you disagree?
TM: I was performing at Texas Tech in Lubbock last year and a bunch of ROTC students wanted to talk to me. I thought, ‘Oh, they’re going to mess with me.’ Instead they only wanted my take on how they could be better officers and more effectively dismantle ‘Don’t ask; don’t tell.’ This is a bunch of 21-year-olds in Lubbock wanting to talk to the gay performance artist about dismantling ‘Don’t ask; don’t tell.’ It was so great. My own prejudices were exposed. I had thought the only narrative would be queer bashing, and I was completely wrong. Moments like that are the currency of hope. The story can change. The narrative is not fixed.
‘Lay of the Land’
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday
Where: Vortex, 2307 Manor Road
Cost: $15-$30,
Info: 478-5282, www.vortexrep.org
Photo by Leo Garcia.
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January 22, 2010
Review: 'In This House' at FronteraFest
“You know what’s really scary?” a girl asks her brother as they cower in a dark shed, illuminated only by a flashlight. “When people just disappear.”
And so it is with Salvage Vanguard and Eponymous Garden’s lovely site-specific production “In This House (Everything Is You).” Characters vanish and reappear, as though they were ghosts haunting the gorgeous Victorian guest house where the performance takes place.
This collaboration, part of Frontera Fest’s Bring Your Own Venue, was written by Sharon Bridgforth, Daniel Alexander Jones, Monika Bustamante, and Cyndi Williams and co-directed by Dustin Wills and Jenny Larson. The venue—a sprawling old house hidden on an East Austin street—becomes a central character in this poetic exploration of how we deal with the traces our loved ones leave behind (photos, clothing, memories).
As the show begins, the audience sits on oversized wooden chairs or comfy couches in the living room and watches as a brother (Jude Hickey) and sister (Adriene Mishler) tease each other about “the lady with the eyes of death,” a mysterious woman in a portrait who watches them as they move about the house. From these first intriguing moments, the audience becomes privy to the secrets of a family dealing with love and loss across time. The audience travels from room to
room—and outdoors, for a scene dripping with atmosphere—watching short vignettes. (If you’re unsure where to go next as the show transitions, here’s a tip: follow the little kids in black.)
The performances are uniformly strong, as the actors deftly transition between exuberance and tenderness. A mother and son (Florinda Bryant and Wesley Bryant) have an especially touching scene in the kitchen where she asks him if she’s a good mother.
It’s not always possible to follow the connections or the meandering storyline of “In This House,” but that’s part of the point. As in a dream, don’t worry too much about deciphering the plot. Just let the images and the rich language drift by and cobble together your own meaning.
‘In This House (Everything Is You)’ continues tonight through January
24 at 8 p.m., January 23 & 24 also at 5 p.m. Eponymous Gardens, 1202
Garden Street. Seating limited to 20 people per performance, $15.
www.hydeparktheatre.org.
Claire Canavan is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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Review: 'American Volunteers' at FronteraFest
Nothing is easy in ‘American Volunteers,’ the first play by emerging writer Johnny Meyer now getting its premiere at the Blue Theater as part of Fronterafest, Austin’s fringe theater festival.
For starters, the story is not easy — a squad of special operations Army rangers whoe patrol the isolated Afghanistan-Pakistan border and who are charged with executing procedures that are seemingly disconnected from any greater plan.
The violent situations they face and the decisions these military men and women must make are not easy, either: Most importantly, how should they reconcile their individual desire — and their individual lives — against the dominating framework of military hierarchy?
And when a wet-behind-the-ears female private is assigned to the all-male ranger patrol, the fragile social web the platoon has built begins to crumble.
As a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Meyer, a University of Texas undergraduate, brings an authentic voice to ‘American Volunteers.’ And it’s that authenticity which gives this 90-minute drama its force and emotional complexity.
Meyer and director Allison Hammond leave the fast-paced flow of scenes to speed along on their own. No hamfisted staging here. It’s not needed. Meyer’s story is compelling enough to propel the play with almost lightning speed. And the ensemble cast of 12 handles that speed deftly.
At times, Meyer’s penchant for experimenting with metered language gets the best of the script, diluting the play’s energy and adding a layer of self-consciousness.
Still, it’s a noteworthy playwrighting debut. (Meyer won UT’s Roy L. Crane Award in Literary Arts last year for the his novel version of ‘American Volunteers.’) The U.S. has been at war for the better part of a decade. Now, we have a thoughtful theatrical reflection on the essential human experience of that very complex war experience.
‘American Volunteers’
9:45 p.m. Saturday, 12 noon Jan. 30’
Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road’
$8’
www.fronterafest.org
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January 19, 2010
'American Volunteers' shows war experience, first hand
Johnny Meyer is like many a young playwright getting ready for his first production.
Except that the 27-year-old University of Texas student is also a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and he’s turned his experience into a play, ‘American Volunteers.’
The play opens tonight as part of the FronteraFest festival of new theater.
Read the full story on Meyer’s journey from solider to playwright.
Here’s a video interview with Meyer:
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January 13, 2010
Review: 'The Color Purple'
Why sing?
That question drives any musical’s creation. Why should a character burst into song?
“The Color Purple,” which opened Tuesday at UT’s Bass Concert Hall, never settles on an answer to what parts of the story should be told in song versus speaking. But when lead female figures Celie (Kenita Miller), Shug (Phyre Hawkins) and Sofia (Felicia Fields) burst into emotion-driven song the musical opens up, inviting audiences to share in the women’s pain, sensuality, and ever-rising strength. And the three performers in these significant roles are fantastic.
The musical’s confusion over song creates an odd flatness, particularly in Act I, despite the heart-wrenching story. Based on Alice Walker’s 1983 novel of the same name, the book by playwright Marsha Norma and music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray often has characters sing at each other with inflections more like speaking than singing, a not uncommon feature of more operatic musicals.
But the style feels randomly dispersed across Celie’s story: a woeful tale of a poor black woman twice raped by her father, then sold into marriage for the price of a cow.
Celie’s life seems destined only for pain when her husband abuses her and exiles Celie’s beloved sister, Nettie. Then barrel-tongued Sofia marries Celie’s stepson and jazz singer Shug ignites Celie’s heart in a lesbian relationship the musical tiptoes around. (Though the musical addresses the women’s romance more than Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film.)
As Sofia, Fields is a woman who cannot be sidestepped. She introduces Celie to her response to overbearing men with the song “Hell No!” Sofia can only serve as what Celie is not. Shug transform Celie into a woman who can shout back (sing back) at her male oppressors.
Shug’s arrival affects more than just Celie: the musical gets better too. It’s almost as though the show, like the town’s men, saves its best for her. Suddenly songs have a richness they lacked earlier. The women use this richness to overcome the bleak narrative. Of course Celie’s second act stand against her abusive husband Mister (Rufus Bonds, Jr.) comes in a long, loud note of song exploding so intensely from her belly that she must bend her knees and clench her fists.
Now set apart through music Celie separates from the rest of the town — a quality oddly absent earlier. Walker’s book is an existential crisis, told through Celie’s letters to a God whose existence she doubts. But the musical encases Celie in community—particularly the community of the African American church. The always-present church ladies and multiple comic gags shift the story’s tone from dramatic tragedy to a hopeful mix of drama and comedy.
Then again, can a Broadway musical tell a story of existential loneliness?
In moments, John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set, Brian MacDevitt’s lighting design, and Gary Griffin’s direction suggest an other-worldliness that momentarily isolates Celie, but then becomes her refuge: the place where she openly loves Shug or dreams of her sister Nettie in Africa. Her home flies away as Celie kneels in a pool of light grieving her sister’s banishment, then later the set disappears as Celie and Shug sing before a vivid pink horizon.
Donald Byrd’s choreography never takes advantage of the rich movement vocabulary offered by the musical’s setting: the jook joint where Shug sings or the long dream sequence of Nettie in Africa. The former only has tiny tastes of the Lindy hop, the swing dance borne in hidden African American nightclubs, and the latter is a bizarre mix of ballet, jazz, and touches of West African movement.
Despite its problems, the musical does its work: it tells a story that eventually needs its song.
‘The Color Purple’
When: 8 p.m. today-Jan. 16; 2 p.m. Jan. 16-17, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17
Where: Bass Concert Hall, UT campus
Cost: $20-$69
Info: www.texasperformingarts.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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January 6, 2010
Next week's forecast: 'Purple'
With the Broadway musical version of Alice Walker’s seminal novel landing in Austin for the first time, we take a prismatic look at ‘The Color Purple.’ First a Pulitzer-winning book, then a vaunted (and chided) film and now a successful musical.
Read the full story here.
From left Lynette DuPree, Virginia Ann Woodruff, Kimberly Ann Harris. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
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January 5, 2010
Austin arts philanthropists establish Horton Foote Prize
Austin arts philanthropists Greg and Mari Marchbanks through their family foundation have established the Horton Foote Prize, in honor of the noted Texas playwright, news sources reported today.
Foote — author of ‘The Trip to Bountiful’ and ‘The Young Man from Atlanta’ among many other plays and screenplays — died in March 2009. Foote won an Academy Award for his screenplay of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’
The biennial Horton Foote Prize is for $30,000.
For the competition some 65 resident theaters will be invited to submit a play by a writer with at least three full-length plays to his or her credit that have been produced by professional theaters. A selection committee will choose a short list of finalists and a winner will be determined by a group of four theater directors Foote worked with closely.
Mari Marchbanks will serve as the executive director of the prize committee.
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December 31, 2009
Review: 'A Texas Christmas Carol'
Variety shows are tough. They can demand lightning fast emotional shifts as a troupe moves from lighter fare to more melodramatic matters. But they also can offer quick hits of all kinds of entertainment - here’s a show choir, here’s some ballet, here’s a jazz singer — a jukebox of the stage, if you will.
It helps to have a theme, and “A Texas Christmas Carol” pretty well explains it. No, Scrooge is not involved, thank God — transplanting him to Austin would be a bad look.
Instead, veteran producer Charles Duggan (“A Greater Tuna” and two sequels) has assembled an all-Austin talent revue based around a loose Christmas/holiday theme.
The MVPs are the almighty Biscuit Brothers and Tish Hinojosa — the former move the show along, the latter sings a mess of songs. Dancers from Ballet Austin crank out a nine-minute Nutcracker, perfect for your local 4-year-olds. (I took my 4-year-old Tuesday night.)
The Amazing Grace Gospel Choir gave us “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (not sure if the intro was supposed to remind me of Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Requiem,” but the effect was cool). Members of the Austin Lyric Opera were sprinkled throughout — they led a “Hallelujah” chorus sing-along and soloist Liz Cass delivered a sharp “O Holy Night” (a.k.a. the best Christmas carol ever).
Jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson was the guest star for the Dec. 30 performance, torching up “Santa Baby” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” The Tapestry Dance Company kicked, the Bowie High School Silver Stars show-choired and Zach Theatre regular Jill Blackwood seemed to sing on just about everything. The show benefits a variety of charities on various nights (see below).
At one point, Duggan emerged with his twin 7-year-old sons to talk about how the show was for them and children everywhere (see also the list of charities involved). It’s the first year for this production and Duggan hopes to make it an annual event. He’s enough of an old pro to learn from some slower moments (and a second act that’s longer than the first) and tighten things up next year.
Here’s hoping “A Texas Christmas Carol” is around for enough years for the twins to get thoroughly embarrassed by their dad bringing them out on stage.
‘A Texas Christmas Carol’
When: 1 and 6 p.m. today.
Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.
$10-$60
www.thelongcenter.org
Each performance features a special guest artist or artists and also benefits an Austin charity with 20 percent of the ticket proceeds donated.
2 p.m. Saturday: Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society (Helping Hand Home for Children)
7:30 p.m, Saturday: Anton Nel, Stanislav Pronin (Any Baby Can, Ronald McDonald House)
1 p.m. Sunday: Anton Nel (St. David’s Foundation)
6 p.m. Sunday: Matthew Hinsley and the Austin Classical Guitar Society (Make-a-Wish Foundation)
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December 22, 2009
Performance artist Tim Miller -- one of the 'NEA Four' -- in Austin Jan. 29-31
Performance artist Tim Miller — one of the so-called ‘NEA Four’ — is coming to Austin Jan. 29-31 for three performances at the Vortex.
MIller will be performing the latest of his one-man solo shows ‘Lay of the Land,’ a look at what Miller calls the ‘State of the Queer Union.’ Miller ricochets from his sexy misadventures while on national tour, to street protests for marriage equality, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, to a grade-school flag monitor, to choking on cheap meat caught in his 10-year old gay boy’s throat,
‘Lay of the Land’ plays 8 p.m. Jan. 29-31. Tix are $10-$30 and seating is limited. See www.vortexrep.org for more information.
After 1988, with George H.W. Bush in the White House, conservatives focused their attentions on a handful of artists whose practices involved the body, sexuality and identity.
In 1989, Andreas Serrano’s photograph ‘Piss Christ’ — an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine — received the wrath United States Senators Al D’Amato and Jesse Helms who were furious that the artist had received a $15,000 grant from National Endowment for the Arts. A catalogue of Serrano’s work was torn apart on the floor of the Senate.
Then in 1990, after NEA peer panels awarded grants to four artist performances artists — John Fleck, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes and Miller — the grants were subsequently vetoed by then NEA chairman John Frohnmayer.
The artists — who became known as the NEA Four — sued.
But both district and circuit courts ruled in favor of the NEA Four and ordered the U.S. government not only to reinstate the artists’ grants in full, but also to pay their court costs
The NEA Four pressed on, this time suing the federal government for violation of their First Amendment right to free speech.
However in 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a verdict on National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley that not only reversed a portion of the lower courts’ rulings but also advised the NEA to take “into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the beliefs and values of the American public,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her decesion.
In response to what became known as the culture wars, the NEA — which was nearly abolished by conservative lawmakers — stopped awarding individual grants to artists.
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December 17, 2009
Vortex nets $15,000 NEA grant
The National Endowment for the Arts is beginning to make its list of FY 2010 grant recipients.
Long-time Austin indie theater Vortex Repertory Company has been awarded $15,000 in from the NEA’s Access to Artistic Excellence grant program for ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ an original musical by Vortex founder Bonnie Cullum and theater artist Content Love Knowles.
The grant will fund a new production of the all-ages musical that was first performed at the Vortex in 2005. Dance, music and storytelling weave together Cullum’s and Knowles’ feminist adaptation of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale.
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December 15, 2009
Kathleen Turner to play Molly Ivins in new play
Molly Ivins, the salty-tongue Texas columnist, will be portrayed by Kathleen Turner in a new play about Ivins’ lively career and character.
Philadelphia Theatre Company will premiere ‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins’ a new play by Margaret Engel and Allison Engel.
Playbill reports that the production will run March 19-April 18, 2010.
Why Philadelphia and not the Lone Star State? Because if you want to align your production for an eventual Broadway run — or even to be a considered for such — you open it first in places like Philly or Boston.
Among her other brilliant witticisms, Ivins coined the nickname “Shrub” for George W. Bush.
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December 9, 2009
Review: 'Dionysus in 69'
It easy, arguably, for today’s theater-goer to forget that so many of the conventions of contemporary performance — the improvised audience participation, the venues with no fixed seating and no ‘fourth wall’ between performance and audience, the changeable dramatic trajectory of each performance — were once new and shocking.
What was avant-garde 40 years ago seems so conventional now.
In an audacious move, Austin theater troupe the Rude Mechanicals has re-staged ‘Dionysus in 69,’ one of the most ground-breaking theatrical productions to come from the 1960s radical experiments in performance.
And the audacity pays off: This 2009 ‘Dionysus in ‘69’ is a keen, spirited, brilliantly acted paean to experimental theater past, present and future.
The original ‘Dionysus in 69’ — directed by Richard Schechner and created more or less collectively by The Performance Group — offered a radical new interpretation of Euripedes ‘The Bacchae.’ Schechner and his co-horts commandeered a garage in New York’s then-gritty Soho neighborhood for a theater space with no separation between audience and actors. Viewers perched on platforms made of two-by-fours or sat on the floor and were invited to join in on a Dionysian dance of ecstasy. Clothes were shed from actors and audience alike. Actors played themselves and their characters at the same time. And the narrative focus morphed depending on what happened between audience and actors.
Though based on an ancient Greek cautionary tale of the dangers of libertine living, ‘Dionysus in 69’ utterly epitomized its freedom-exploring era. Critics both praised and decried it. A young Brian De Palma filmed it. And Schechner’s self-coined term ‘environmental theater’ became academic nomenclature.
Boldly, the Rudes — easily Austin’s most sophisticated performance group — have re-created ‘Dionysus in 69’ using De Palma’s movie as a template and benefitting from Schechner’s temporary tenure in Austin as this year’s Cline Visiting Professor of UT’s Humanities Institute.
It’s impossible to know how accurate or ‘right’ the Rudes’ re-staging of the original production is. And in a way, it doesn’t ultimately matter. (Though at a recent screening of the De Palma film, the bold-talking Schechner declared the Rudes’ production ‘every bit as good’ as the original.)
What matters is that with their ‘Dionysus in 69,’ masterfully directed by Madge Darlington and Shawn Sides, the Rudes conjure up a spirit of revolution and playfulness that celebrates the zeitgeist that 40 years ago led to shape-shifting changes in theater practice.
An unflinchingly focused and creative ensemble makes this ‘Dionysus’ their own masterwork. And Thomas Graves as Dionysus/William Finley and Josh Meyer as Pentheus/Bill Shephard demonstrate how sophisticated risk-taking defines tour de force acting.
The Rudes’ re-staging of such a seminal work is vital to Austin’s arts scene. Performance is at the fore of so much creative output today, particularly in the visual arts. Yet, most of what is produced is so clearly ignorant of its own origins. Likewise, are arts audiences.
This ‘Dionysus in 69’ is required viewing.
‘Dionysus in 69’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Dec. 20. Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. www.rudemechs.com. Nudity and adult themes.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
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November 30, 2009
Review: 'Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England'
That the sprawling Victorian tales of Charles Dickens can make for good improv theater shouldn’t seem all that strange.
After all, Dickens’ tales are filled outsized caricatures and long and winding episodic story lines that are riddled with bizarre and unexpected twists.
Anything can happen, and frequently anything does. Wholly benevolent characters appear out of nowhere to change the course of events. Utterly evil characters appear out of nowhere to change the course of events. Amazingly good luck occurs. Amazingly bad luck occurs.
Indeed, Dickens offers a narrative free-for-all that’s ripe for some fun farce. Fun is what ‘Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England’ is. Running Saturdays through the end of the month at the Hideout Theatre, the show offers a troupe of improv actors in Victorian garb who ask for just one prompt from the audience. And from that spins a 70-minute improvised show that at once plays homage to Dickens’ tales and has utter fun with their maudlin style.
Period costume improv? You bet. And it works. ‘Dickens Unleashed’ is ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ gone mad and goofball.
Smartly, directors Jessica Arjet and Kaci Beeler don’t allow for any cheap anachronisms to filter in to this offbeat Victorian world. No silly iPhone jokes here. Instead, it’s all pocketwatches and stovetop hats, orphans and buckets of coal, silly Cockney accents and lots of British balderdash.
That all makes for some pretty refreshing comedic twists and turns — and plenty of improv challenge for the eight-member troupe (the line-up varies a bit from each performance). Beeler does a particularly sharp turn as the striving orphan girl at the center of the action. And as the narrator/protagonist. Kareem Badr booms the very Dickensian-sounding narrative while sitting at a writer’s desk even if it’s delightfully off-kilter Dickensian narrative.
In a nice gesture, there’s a family-friendly version of the show offered, with a band of “orphans” (studnets from the Hideout’s youth improv classes) offering an opening set.
Yeah, “orphans” — it’s Dickens, you know.
‘Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England’ continues 8 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 26. Family-friendly show at 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Hideout Theatre, 617 Congress Ave. $11. www.hideoutheatre.com.
Pictured: Kareem Badr and Kaci Beeler.
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November 18, 2009
'The Method Gun' heads to Humana Festival
The Rude Mechanicals are getting ready to hit the road to the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
For 34 years, the best of new American theater has been showcased at the Humana Festival. And the Rudes will take their wonderous ‘The Method Gun’ to ATL’s Victor Jory Theatre for a run March 16-28, 2010.
A valentine to the process of art-making, ‘The Method Gun’ impressed when it opened the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre in 2008.
Then last season, the Rudes’ offered a slightly re-tweaked version at the Off Center. And as I said then, ‘The Method Gun’ ranks as one of the best productions to grace the Austin theater scene in the past few years.
See a slide show of the production here.
The Rudes next production, ‘Dionysus in ‘69’ opens Dec. 3.
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November 17, 2009
Artist selected for Zach Theatre public art project
The City of Austin’s Arts Commission announced today that it has selected artist Cliff Garten to create a work of public art for new Topfer Theatre addition to the Zach Theatre complex adjacent to Lady Bird Lake.
The Venice, Calif.-based Garten will receive a $150,000 commission.
Zach unveiled the design of the $20 million Topfer Theater, by Austin’s Andersson Wise Architects, in October. The sleek 430-seat theater that will be surrounded by a tree-filled plaza and grounds.
“Cliff’s beautiful and thoughtful artistry, working in collaboration with the Andersson Wise team, has the potential to enhance the site in a way that connects Zach to Lady Bird Lake and engages Austinites during the daytime and evening,” said Dave Steakley, artistic director for Zach Theatre.
Garten was selected from among 148 national artist submissions. Through his Cliff Garten Studio the artist has created dozens of public art projects including the recently unveiled ‘Avenue of Light’ sculpture in Fort Worth.
Photo by Laura Seewoester/www.pegasusnews.com
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November 9, 2009
Review: 'Sick'
Topically, Zayd’s Dohrn ‘Sick’ — now being staged by theater group Capital T at Hyde Park Theatre — couldn’t be more timely.
Dohrn’s dark comedy zeros in on a Manhattan family of germaphobes terrified of the world and its lethal contamination which they perceive to be everywhere. Maxine (Rebecca Robinson) is the hyper-possessive mother of this crazy family of four and she lines the windows and doors of the family’s apartment with plastic sheeting, keeps air purifiers whirring in every corner and demands that surgical scrubs and face masks be the family’s uniform.
Dohrn — son of Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers, the former Weather Underground members who interestingly spent his early years in hiding with his parent — wrote ‘Sick’ while living in Beijing during the height of the SARS epidemic. And that was only a few years after living in Manhattan when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks set the city on alert for potential mass contamination from the fall-out of World Trade Center.
Now, just as this production hits Austin, the H1N1 flu pandemic rattles nerves and makes headlines.
Maxine cocoons her children, Sarah (Tayler Gill) and Davey (Stephen Mercantel) in the plastic-lined apartment, home-schooling them lest they become infected by bad substances in the outside world or bad ideas.
Maxine’s pristine world is rocked when her husband Sidney (Joe Reynolds), a poetry professor, brings home a graduate student, Jim (Joey LePage), in an effort to deliberately rattle.
Mark Pickell direct competently. And the cast does an able job with their roles. Yet unfortunately that — and the timely topic — doesn’t save Dohrn’s script from seeming predictable and at times rather melodramatic.
‘Sick’ continues through Dec . 5 at Hyde Park Theater. www.capitalT.org
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November 6, 2009
Review: 'The Trojan Women'
Those left behind by war — women, children, civilians — are marginalized all over again by history, their experiences typically not the stuff of record.
That’s been true to for millennia. And in a smart re-imagining of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’ by Meghan Kennedy and Kimber Lee. we’re reminded that the ravages of war dramatized in ancient Greece resonate with equal tragedy thousands of years later.
Produced by the University of Texas Department of Theatre & Dance and inventively staged by director Halena Kays, this edgy, visceral interpretation of the saga of the survivors of the Greeks’ 10-year war with Troy smartly updates the ancient story to read as a contemporary parable yet doesn’t forsake the classic drama.
Grimy, exhausted, bruised and their hair shorn, the Trojan women emerge from a smoky ruin and face their fate: to spend their lives as slaves and concubines to their Greek conquerors. (Scenic designer Peter Holtin and lighting designer Cheng-Wei Teng create a dark, ruined world of urban rubble. Music by Kevin O’Donnell, played by a quartet in formal wear, adds plenty of atmosphere.)
As the Trojan queen Hecuba, Kate deBuys is alternately beaten down and raw, the life scratched out of her, and then steely with the will to rebel. When she confronts Menelaus — played as swaggering corporate swell by Rodney Richardson — Hecuba unleashes her most powerful weapon: words. And in playwright Kennedy and Lee give Hecuba nuanced contemporary words that nevertheless deliver intelligent bite.
And the cause of this decade-long war and ensuing wreckage? As Helen of Troy Verity Branco is all classic Hollywood vixen with elbow-length gloves and coiffed long dark curls. Branco exudes sensuality. Bu she is also a modern queen resentful of how she’s been made a scapegoat for a war.
Here again, it’s that smart balance of modern psychology and sensibility blended nicely classic character and drama — a balance that makes this ‘Trojan Women’ a smart story for our times.
‘The Trojan Women’ continues through Nov. 8. www.texasperformingarts.org
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November 5, 2009
Theater for germaphobes
Lately, with fears of the H1N1 flu rocking the public psyche, bottles of antibacterial hand sanitizer grace office desks and retail countertops. In some world cities, medical face masks have become the new accessory. And cultures with affectionate cheek-kissing greetings are now finding their traditions the subject of public health concerns.
A few years ago, when playwright Zayd Dohrn began writing ‘Sick,’ a quirky comedy about a Manhattan family and the absurd extremes they go through to protect themselves from pollution, he had plenty of material at hand. He was living in Beijing during the height of the SARS epidemic. Dohrn relocated to China from post-Sept. 11 New York, where health-threatening environmental fallout from the terrorists attacks was dreaded.
Now here in Austin — as H1N1 fears still makes headlines — Capital T Theatre is opening a new production of ‘Sick.’
In Dohrn’s offbeat play, a family of germaphobes believes they have allergies to everything from junk food to cleaning supplies to the Manhattan air. When their vacuum-sealed home is invaded by a visitor, chaos crescendos.
‘Sick’
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 5
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.
$15-$25
www.capitalT.org
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November 2, 2009
Review: 'Murder Ballad Murder Mystery'
It’s a not a spoiler to say that everyone dies by the end of ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery,’ a new musical play by Elizabeth Doss, a co-production of Vortex Repertory-Tutto Theatre Company.
Dying — well, murder — gets going from the get-go in this free-spirited if problematic production directed by Dustin Wills.
Doss, Wills and set designer Lisa Laratta place this wanna-be allegory in a stylized world that’s a kind of bayou/Southern gothic. Actors cavort in a shallow pool center stage or climb the sprawling platform structure that rings the center seating section. A motley four-piece bluegrass band strolls around, acting as clowns and chorus both. There’s a husband-killing tough ol’ gal, legendary murderer Stagger Lee, a Bonnie and Clyde-esque young couple and a pair of young backwoods sisters whose crashing boredom leads to — oh, take a guess.
The dead and the living, the past and the present, are intimately intwined in Doss and Wills’ Americana vaudeville-esque setting. And Mark Stewart and Andy Tindall’s twangy bluegrass music provides the aural atmosphere in the perpetually half-lit world. And the ensemble cast is full of energetic acting.
But with little linearity to it, ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’ trades a little too much on atmosphere. Plenty is suggested and yes, quirky, delightful scenario after quirky, delightful scenario is unveiled and presented for our consideration.
But as imaginative as each of those scenarios are, they lack a kind of friction with each other. Never quite able to stick together, the individual pieces of ‘Murder Ballad Murder Myster’ just miss at being a whole.
‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’ continues through Nov. 7. www.tuttotheatre.org
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October 26, 2009
Paul Baker, legendary Texas theater educator, 1911-2009
Paul Baker — influential Texas theater educator — passed away at the age of 98.
He died at the hospital on Sunday morning, October 25 due to complications from pneumonia, a press release from Dallas Theatre Center reported. Baker was the founder of the Dallas Thearre Center as well as the founding principal of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Among Baker’s contributions to the fields of theater and education continue to be celebrated. Over a long career as chair of the drama department at Baylor University, Baker honed his ideas about an integrated approach to the study of the arts (theater in particular), an approach still upheld today.
Read anAmerican-Statesman profile of Baker.
The Baker Idea Institute at the Dallas Theatre Center continues his legacy.
A public memorial and celebration of the life and work of Dr. Baker is being planned to take place at Rosewood Center for Family Arts in Dallas in early December. Details to be announced.
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October 22, 2009
Review: 'Spring Awakening'
There is a certain irony to the bright red “Mature Themes” warning on posters for the musical “Spring Awakening,” since the show illustrates how restricting knowledge about sexuality becomes dangerous for a group of adolescents in late nineteenth century Germany.
In Tuesday’s show at the Texas Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas, the national tour’s cast of “Spring Awakening” plumbed the depths of teenagers’ anger at adult-imposed conservatism. When the show turned from anger to wretched sorrow, a blanketing silence spread across Bass Concert Hall’s audience.
Following the path charted by rock musicals like “Rent,” “Spring Awakening” mixes high velocity rock and almost sappy emo music by pop star Duncan Sheik. Steven Sater’s book and lyrics, based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play of the same title, vacillates between celebrating the pleasure of screaming four-letter words in public places and critiquing the dismissal of children and adolescents as sentient, sexual beings. The show’s teenage characters often relish doing what is forbidden, but social strictures often mean they make these choices without full knowledge of the consequences.
The show asks much of relatively young actors, which could be a recipe for disaster given touring shows often uneven casts. But this ensemble stands up well against the Broadway version. As the central couple, Melchior and Wendla, Jake Epstein and Christy Altomare, give subtle performances. They approach Bill T. Jones’ choreography, a simple repetitive series of hand gestures, with smart shifts of character. When Wendla first does the tiny dance, standing on a chair at the musical’s beginning, Altomare manages to make it look as though someone else’s hands eerily caress her. At the height of his second act frustration, Epstein pulls off a similar, but differently inflected, sense of disembodiment. His hands furiously move across his body as though threatening to tear him apart.
Melchior and Wendla’s relationship, a friendship turned sexual, creates the musical’s through line, even as it explodes the show. In workshop versions of “Spring Awakening,” the creative team positioned the teens’ sex act as rape, but like the Broadway show, the touring version leaves their onstage copulation ambiguous around the question of consent. The directorial choice makes Wendla an ignorant bystander to her own sexuality. As the show progresses the one-time girl leader becomes another body to be shuffled about by adults. Yet Altamore’s piercing, sorrowful voice seems a reminder of the person within the body that becomes little more than a shameful symbol.
As the musical’s second couple, the bumbling Moritz (Taylor Trensch) and bohemian Ilse (Steffi D), depict teens pushed to society’s margins: Moritz because he fails in school and Else because she has to flee her father’s violent grip. As Moritz, Trensch is agonizingly sad, although his choice to make less of Moritz’s earlier comedic charm flattens the character’s emotional journey.
Although “Spring Awakening’s” controversy is usually tied to its frank look at adolescent sexuality, its greatest musical innovation might be its anchor in anger. Although the show closes with the unnecessary sappy “Purple Summer,” otherwise the ensemble comes together mainly to stomp their feet and scream—not sing major chords and hold hands. The show argues that singing together can do more than make us feel good. Sometimes it can unleash fury fueled by oppressive social mores. ‘Spring Awakening’ continues through Oct. 25. www.texasperformingarts.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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October 21, 2009
Austin's acting A-list stars in 'Holy Hell'
Need money for your community church to survive? Why not make a horror film? The film industry is, after all, where the big bucks are, right?
That’s the hairbrained plan hatched by congregants of the money-challenged Church on Peachtree in “Holy Hell,” the quirky satire by Austinites Rafael Antonio Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee getting its Austin premiere as part of the Austin Film Festival.
However, when a reactionary Christian organization — Fight4Right — gets wind of the Peachtree project, production on the horror flick is besieged with protests while the mild-mannered yet sincerely devout congregants, led by the noble if naïve Pastor Lane (Ken Edwards) and tense, angry Deacon Pardo (Kenneth Wayne Bradley) are subjected to a negative media blitz.
Isn’t honest faith and a desire to lead a faith-filled life enough these days? Apparently, not for the Church on Peachtree.
The negative news siege culminates when Pastor Lane is ripped to shreds on a talk show by British author and vociferous atheist Christopher Hitchens, (A close friend of the film’s executive producer, Jeff Scheftel, Hitchens actually wrote his own lines for debate.)
All kinds of sacred cows are skewered by Ruiz and Bartholomee in “Holy Hell” - the bizarre contradictions of organized religion, the absurdities of the film industry and the conflict-hungry, spectacle-obsessed media.
If “Holy Hell” is a little rough around the edges when it comes to production values (well, it was made for considerably less than $100,000, producers report), the literally dozens of A-list Austin actors unleash their considerable talents to great affect (Austin theater aficiandos will have fun actor-spotting; Austin residents will recognize local spots where the movie was shot).
Nuanced performances — even in the smaller roles — bring both a smart panache and a sweet sincerity to the over-the-top plot in a script that is nicely written by Ruiz and Bartholomee.
‘Holy Hell’
Written by Rafael Antonio Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee. Directed by Rafael Antonio Ruiz.
USA: 97 minutes
Screenings: 7 p.m. Oct. 22 and Oct. 28. Rollins Theatre, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr.
Image: Kenneth Wayne Bradley stars in “Holy Hell.”
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October 19, 2009
B. Iden Payne Awards winners
The Greater Austin Cultural Alliance — formerly known as the Austin Circle of Theatres — has awarded its B. Iden Payne Awards for 2008-2009. The awards are given to the local Austin theater community. Voting is open to members of Austin Circle of Theatres.
See the results here.
The awards are named for B. Iden Payne, an English actor who, on his retirement from the staged, landed at the University of Texas where he had a lasting effect on the then-nascent theater program and on Austin’s theater community.
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Zach Theatre unveils designs for new venue
Zach Theatre will release designs today for a sleek 430-seat theater that will be surrounded by a tree-filled plaza and grounds. Slipped onto Zach’s site at South Lamar Boulevard and West Riverside Drive, the new building promises to help establish an arts park on Lady Bird Lake.
“Along with the Long Center, we’re bookending a stretch along the south shore of Lady Bird Lake,” said Zach Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. “Our new theater is not just a great story for the development of Austin’s arts during these times, but it’s also a great story about downtown Austin and the future of (the lakeside) park.”
And despite the recession, Zach leaders say, they have raised $16 million toward their $20 million goal and are primed to see their new building — the third stage on Zach Theatre’s campus —become a reality. The recession also is expected to help reduce construction costs.
“We’re bucking a trend,” said Tom Terkel, chairman of the Zach capital campaign. “We’ve had our best fundraising year in our history.”
A year ago, arts patrons James Armstrong and Bill Dickson each donated $1 million. Terkel said an additional $3 million has been raised in the past 12 months. Zach also has $10 million in city bond money, part of the 2006 voter-approved bond package, and $1 million left from a 1985 bond package.
Although a construction schedule has not been finalized, Terkel said the goal is to break ground in 2010 and open by 2012.
The new theater will join Zach’s existing 200-seat Kleberg Stage and the 130-seat Whisenhunt Stage to provide the organization with more facilities for larger productions. Once the new venue is built, the Whisenhunt will be devoted to the Zach’s youth theater programs.
The venue was designed by Austin architect Arthur Andersson of Andersson-Wise Architects, designers of the Block 21 mixed-use project downtown, which includes a hotel and a venue for KLRU’s “Austin City Limits.”
Andersson’s design calls for a clean, modern form clad in a combination of bluish-gray brick and cement composite panels. A two-story glass lobby will front the 29,000-square-foot building, which will face west onto a tree-filled plaza that will be able to accommodate gatherings of up to 600 people. Andersson said landscape plans call for 80 trees to be added to the site, which is now an expanse of sun-beaten lawn little used by visitors to the adjacent hike-and-bike trail.
The stage will be 80 feet wide, more than twice the width of the Kleberg Stage, the larger of Zach’s two stages. Though the new theater will have double the number of seats of the Kleberg, seating will be arranged on a somewhat steep angle, decreasing the distance between each seat and the stage.
Andersson said the building will have environmentally sensitive materials and landscaping designed to capture rainwater.
Andersson estimated that construction expenses were down about 10 to 15 percent from when the project was first imagined more than a year ago, allowing for more design leeway within the $15.3 million construction budget.
Just as it will act as an architectural bookend to the Long Center, Zach’s new theater will add to the cultural cooperation between the two civic arts centers. In 1999, former Dell Computer Corp. executive Mort Topfer and his late wife, Angela, donated $5 million to the Long Center for the Performing Arts. An 800-seat theater there was to be named in their honor, but when plans for the Long Center were scaled down from three to two theaters, the Topfers agreed to have their donation folded into the Long Center’s general campaign.
But now, in an agreement between Long Center and Zach officials, the new Zach theater will be named for Topfer and his current wife, Bobbi. Like Zach, the Long Center is a private nonprofit operating on city-owned property.
“This project and collaboration is, in our eyes, the arts story in Austin over the past year,” the Topfers said in a statement. “We are so proud to have our name associated with the Zach brand and artistic integrity.”
Among those who have anted up since the Topfers signaled their approval of the Zach honor are Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, the couple whose $20 million solidified the effort to build the performing arts center that now bears their name. The Longs donated $250,000 to the Zach capital campaign.
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October 11, 2009
Review: 'Evil Dead, The Musical'
Move over “Rocky Horror.” “Evil Dead, The Musical” has come to town.
The campy musical, based on the 1981 film of the same name, opened Friday at Salvage Vanguard Theatre under the direction of Michael McKelvey. The sold-out show had opening night issues: malfunctioning microphones made some of the songs unintelligible over the live band. But even with the gaps, the show clipped along hilariously.
Like the movie, “Evil Dead The Musical,” follows five Michigan State college students as they try to make it through a night at a remote cabin surrounded by woods possessed by demon spirits.
Unlike the movie, “Evil Dead The Musical” parodies horror movie conventions, using goofy songs, one-liners, and physical gags to make fun of the characters’ misfortunes and idiotic choices. Somehow singing the ridiculous dialogue so familiar from horror movies transforms scenarios like deserted homes with only one escape routs and middle-of-the-night solo journeys into unknown woods into comedy.
Committed performances keep the constant humor fresh. David Gallagher plays the story’s hero Ash with over-the-top earnestness in even the most ridiculous predicaments. As Ash’s friends, Christopher Skillern, Kelly Bales, and Macey Mayfield played their characters’ stereotypes, frat boys and ditzy blondes, with laugh-grabbing excess. As Ash’s little sister Cheryl, Corley Pillsbury has a strong presence, even though her early zombie turn relegates her to performing most of the evening from underneath the stage. You can’t hide a good actor or a little sister gone zombie in the cellar forever.
Ginger Morris’s choreography brought the group together into odd, funny pairings, particularly in Ash and Scott’s tango “What the …?.”
The show is a whole lot of fun and looked to be even more entertaining for those brave enough to sit in the audience’s splatter section, where the show’s many gallons of fake blood first squirted, and then rained down from the stage.
‘Evil Dead, The Musical’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 31. Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, $12-$22 www.salvagevanguard.com
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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October 9, 2009
The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue
In 1998, shortly after gay university students Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyo., the Tectonic Theater Project created a somewhat documentary-style play based on more than 200 interviews with Shepard’s friends and Laramie locals.
Shephaed was kidnapped, robbed, pistol-whipped and left for dead tied to a fence on a lonely stretch of road in Wyoming. He died five days after his attack.
‘The Laramie Project,’ became a landmark play as call-to-action against hate crimes and as a meaningful means to explore how our contemporary culture literally explains itself in the first-person.
Now, with ‘The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue’ the playwrights explore how the town of Laramie has changed — or not — and how the murder continues to reverberate in the community. Tectonic Theatre artistic director Moises Kauffman and his colleagues conducted the interviews just last month.
Monday, on the eleventh anniversary of Shepard’s death, more than 140 theaters around the will perform “10 Years Later, Epilogue” while others will Web cast a performance from Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York where Glenn Close will host a pre- and post-show discussion with Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, participating.
Here in Austin, Zach Theatre, which staged ‘The Laramie Project’ in 2002 in its Central Texas premiere, will offer a staged reading of “10 Years Later, Epilogue” along with a live Web cast of the Lincoln Center pre- and post-show discussions. The Zach event is a fundraiser for Out Youth Austin.
And the University of Texas’ department of theater and dance will offer two staged readings along with the Lincoln Center Web cast.
The national ‘Laramie Project’ event has good news to dovetail with. On Thursday, after several attempts over the years, the U.S. House of Representative voted to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation. The bill — known as the Matthew Shepard Act — will now go to the Senate for a vote before it can become law
‘The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Epilogue’
7 p.m. Monday. Kleberg Stage, $20. Proceeds benefit Out Youth Austin. 476-0541. www.zachscott.com
7 and 9 p.m. Monday. Lab Theatre, Winship Building, 23rd and San Jacinto streest. Free. www.finearts.utexas.edu/tad
Image: Martin Burke in the 2002 Zach Theatre production of ‘The Laramie Project.’ Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
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September 21, 2009
Review: 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee'
In an age of spellcheck, it might seem the spelling bee would become an anachronism, a relic of an era when remembering rules about putting an “I” before an “e” mattered.
The musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which opened Saturday at Zach Theatre, emphatically announces spelling bees’ pitting of competitive youngsters against one another remains relevant—at least for a source of comedy.
Under the direction of Zach artistic director Dave Steakley, the musical’s cast and some very game audience participants string together joke after joke. The endless comedy eventually becomes the production’s only downfall: with so many one-liners, inevitably some fall flat in the two-hour performance.
Rachel Sheinkin’s Tony Award-winning book and William Finn’s music and lyrics for “Putnam County” follow a stereotypical band of six young spellers (played by adults) as they vie to be champion speller. There is last year’s winner Boy Scout Chip Tolentino (Andrew Cannata) and the earnest girl-next-door Olive Ostrovsky (Lucy Jennings).
Long before any of the children win the spelling crown, constantly sniffling William Barfee almost steals the show. As Barfee, Jose Villarreal physically created a disgustingly snotty, but oddly charming boy who spells with the help of his “Magic Foot.” Villarreal brings incredible commitment to his portrayal of the zany nerd by perfecting a stuffy-nosed lip/nostril snarl that becomes one of Barfee’s iconic gestures.
While the children characters center the show, no spelling bee would be complete without a smarmy vice-principal played by Austin’s frequent comedic showman Les McGehee. McGehee’s responses to the children’s requests to use the spelling words in a sentences elicited rolls of laughter from the audience. For instance, for the word “fandango,” McGehee quotes Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody, “Scaramouche, scaramouche will you do the fandango.” McGehee’s commentator sidekick is realtor Rona Lisa Peretti (Jill Blackwood), for whom winning the County’s 3rd Annual Spelling Bee was a lifetime achievement.
Michael Raiford’s set design of, as the children call it, the “cafatorium,” the odd merge of auditorium and cafeteria particular to elementary schools, hilariously frames the show. The onstage band, directed by Adam Roberts who also served as choreographer, had the best and, probably from their perspective, the worst of Susan Branch Towne’s costumes — cafeteria uniforms complete with hairnets
‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 25. www.zachtheatre.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: 'bobraushcenbergamerica'
Robert Rauschenberg was an optimistic goof ball genius. That his more than half-century of art-making that profoundly changed the course of art-making sometimes obscures the sense of fun Rauschenberg brought to visual art.
Rauschenberg’s fun wasn’t lost on playwright Charles L. Mee in his unapologetically entertaining — and fun —“bobrauschenbergamerica’ now getting a spirited thoroughly entertaining production at St. Edward’s University directed by David M. Long.
Himself fond of crafting scripts from found texts just as Rauschenberg crafted art from found junk, Mee presents the ultimate collaged homage from one king of collage to another.
(Rauschenberg isn’t the first artist Mee has paid tribute to. The playwright has also celebrated Joseph Cornell in “Hotel Cassiopeia” along with Jason Rhoades and Norman Rockwell in “Under Construction.”)
With some 40 brief scenes that romp by in 70 minutes, ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ is a hodge-podge, a rapid road trip through Americana, a sloppy mess even. It is Mee’s suggestion of what Rauschenberg might have come up with if Rauschenberg had been a playwright and as Mee has noted, that’s going for “the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go.”
A man in a chicken suit descends from a rope. Three people ride bicycles across the stage. A young woman spends the duration of the show zooming around on roller skates in flouncy red skirt. Two men fall in love. A man slides down a waterslide that’s been slicked up with a giant martini. And there are picnics and chocolate cake and country line dancing and plenty of chicken jokes. (Rauschenberg loved chicken jokes.)
Theatrically it’s a mess and a jumble, and yet somehow it all comes together as irresistibly entertaining and a spot-on riff on Rauschenberg.
The young cast had the perfect energy to manage the manic parade of misfit American characters. Guest actress Babs George as Rauschenberg’s mother — daffy, ditzy (and perhaps deranged?) — is a 1950s housewife with a bland smile stuck on her face. But she deftly captures a most poignant, nuanced moment. ‘Art was never a part of our lives,’ she says in one of the few moments when Rauschenberg’s poor, fundamentalist Christian South Texas upbringing revealed.
That Rauschenberg went so far beyond where he came from is genius. Or maybe he never left who he was and where he came from at all.
Ordinary American detritus is beautiful. Juxtaposition forms beauty. Oddballs are in.
‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ continues 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Sept. 27. Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St Edward’s Univ., 3001 S. Congress Ave. 512-448-8484. www.stedwards.edu/theater
Photo: Babs George and Sarah Burhalter in ‘bobrauschenbergamerica.’ Photo by Bret Brookshire.
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September 17, 2009
Trouble Puppet Theatre forays into 'The Jungle'
Trouble Puppet Theater Company unveils a new production of Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘The Jungle’ this weekend.
Puppet master Connor Hopkins offers a new visually-striking riff on Sinclair’s groundbreaking expose of the exploitative early 20th century labor conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry — as well as the horrifying, unsanitary practices involved in food production.
With food contamination issues still making headlines and an historical recession calling into question America’s labor landscape, perhaps the puppets have something to tell us.
Read more about this story here.
‘The Jungle’
8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Oct. 4
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road
$15
www.troublepuppet.com
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September 15, 2009
Review: Rude Mechs' 'I've Never Been So Happy'
Once upon a time — long before it became fashionable for every artist interested in performance to dub his or her work ‘transmedia’ — the Rude Mechs were making this thing called theater. The Rudes used all kinds of things to make theater — video, lights, overhead projections, sounds, live music, recorded music, puppets, lots of fantastical props and costumes, audience involvement and yes, multi-talented performers who could act and sing and even do the kind of absurd physical movement the Rudes really like to do.
The Rudes are still using the same stuff they’ve been making theater with for 14 years in their latest project, ‘I’ve Never Been So Happy,’ now in a workshop production through Sept. 20. And while they may have dubbed part of the participatory extravaganza a ‘transmedia performance party,’ you can rest assured that what they deliver is just wonderful theater. (Um, the Rudes use of the ‘transmedia’ word is tongue-in-cheek, after all).
“I’ve Never Been So Happy” starts on the Off Center stage where six selections of the operetta — with words by Kirk Lynn and music by Peter Stopschinski — get their first staging. (Early portions were staged last season by the company and this summer at UT). The operetta’s fantasical episodic tale involves clashing notions of what the West means in the 21st century: Where’s the freedom to be an individual? What’s wrong with traditional gender politics? Is there really only one mountain lion left in all of Texas?
Whatever. “I’ve Never Been So Happy” is one big smart 21st-century theatrical valentine to the Lone Star State.
The quirky fairy tale at the root of the plot — a young couple from opposing families falls in love — only get quirkier as absurd subplots entwine (think feminist commune vs. real estate development, sibling dachsunds who can talk, etc.).
Reminiscent of the Grand Old Opry, or perhaps old Texas dance hall bands, musicians and performers take one-half the Off Center stage in Western garb and line up in straight-ahead style on platforms. They clutch mikes and belt out songs; they writhe with ridiculous character movements.
The other half of the stage is occupied by a giant screen onto which a mesmirizing shadow puppet show unfolds to provide the visual for the crazy tale of mountain lions and daschsunds and crazy characters. Crafted by Erin Meyer and Noel Gaulin, the visual storytelling rivets and effects in surprisingly emotional ways.
Stopschinski’s music rockets from shades of country twang to heavy metal to art song, all with elan and delight and with zero sense of irony.
After 45 minutes of this tender, funny, super-intelligent, super-odd story, the audience convenes outside where a dozen booths offer the weirdest Texas-themed attractions you’ll never see at the state fair. You can learn how to make rope, get a haircut, make a prank phone call to a Yankee, sing county ballads karoke style or have your picture taken in a cut-out of an infamous moment in Texas history (like the Kennedy Assassination).
The Rudes’ enlisted a passle of artists to collaborate with them on the realization of the carnival booths, all of which subtly continue the odd-ball Texas story you’ve just been watching on the stage.
Or maybe this: the carnival attractions are the tangential ideas that didn’t quite fit it into the final script but that were just too good to let slip away and not share with the audience. Then again, maybe they’re the ideas that will later bring this show or another show into clearer focus.
Or else the goof-ball fun the audience can have as they stroll around from crazy, whacky attraction to crazy, whacky attraction is the kind of unadulterated fun all participatory ‘transmedia’ theater should offer.
Here’s the difference between what the Rudes do and what so many of today’s transmedia performance strivers do: The Rudes make meaningful connections — with their audience, with the world around them and with the times in which they live.
Now, what’s wrong with having fun with that?
“I’ve Never Been So Happy” continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday through Sept. 20 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $12-$21. www.rudemechs.com
Photos by Bret Brookshire.
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Review: 'Measure for Measure'
For centuries, scholars classified Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” as a comedy.
But the Bard’s tale of sexual morality, justice and hypocritical politics is too complex and ambiguous for easy laughs. Yes, it ends on a happy note. But its consideration of government control over private morality doesn’t make for a tidy tale.
In a new production now playing at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theater, Austin Shakespeare director Ann Ciccolella takes the play’s ambiguity and complexity out of its original Renaissance setting and reconsiders it against the backdrop of the 1920s American South — Savannah, Georgia in particular. Bawdy flappers and gentlemen in seersucker suits reign in this ‘Measure for Measure.’
After all, with Prohibition in effect and a double-standard toward drinking (and its related licentious behavior) practically official, the Roaring Twenties was an era riddled with moral contradictions.
Yet beyond the costumes, props and the sounds of ragtime and jazz that infuses between-scene moments (the music is courtesy of the Asylum Street Spankers), the 1920s Southern twist doesn’t have much of an over-arching effect on this production. Indeed, some Southern accents waver amongst the cast.
As the chaste Isabella — who must defy the hypocritical government to save her brother — Morgan Dover-Pearl never wavers in the intensity she brings to her super good-girl character. Matt Radford, as the Duke of the corrupt city, delivers with a seasoned polish. (Radford has had, after all, more than a decade’s professional experience performing Shakespeare in the U.K.)
If there’s an unevenness in this production it’s perhaps as much the problem of the play as this particular interpretation. The ribald, slapstick goofiness of the secondary brothel and street scenes remains in stark contrast to the serious — and very heavy — scenes the central story occupies. Indeed, that heaviness weighs this ‘Measure for Measure’ down just a bit too much.
‘Measure for Measure’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 27. Rollins Studio Theater, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr. $23-$38. www.austinshakespeare.org
On Friday, Sept. 19, the music starts early when the Asylum Street Spankers will play live in a pre-show concert starting at 6:30 p.m.
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August 25, 2009
'bobrauschenbergamerica' -- Fall 2009 arts picks: 2
When it debuted in 2003, the New York Times called Charles L. Mee’s homage to Texas-born artist Robert Rauschenberg ‘brashly, unapologetically entertaining.’
A collage theatrical tribute to perhaps the most inventive of all visual collagists, ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ will get a staging this fall at St. Edward’s University’s Mary Moody Northen Theatre.
Rauschenberg, who died last year at age 82, embraced pop culture and rejected the angst and self-involvement of the Abstract Expressionists who came to the fore in post-war America. The stuff of everyday life became the medium in which Rauschenberg worked as he forged a breathtaking body of work rooted in the creativity chance and found images and not the authoritarian individual artist.
‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ plays 7:30 p.m. Thursday - Saturdays, Sundays at 2 p.m. Sundays, Sept. 17-27. Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University, 3001 S, Congress Ave. Advance tickets $15 ($12 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community). All tickets $18 at the door.
Image: Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Retroactive I,’ 1963
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August 17, 2009
ACoT Announces 2009 Unified General Auditions
The Austin Circle of Theater is holding Unified General Auditions on Aug. 29. See www.acotonline.org for complete information.
From the ACOT notice:
Austin Circle of Theaters presents their 2009 Unified General Auditions, an annual audition to benefit the Texas acting community and help actors find work, directors find actors, and casting people discover new emerging talent. ACOT will be hosting this year’s event in association with University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film, Central Texas Alliance of Casting Agents, Directors and Coaches and the Salvage Vanguard Theater.
Contenders must first apply to audition and then the selected applicants may perform either a one minute monologue and/or 16 bars of a song for the panel. Applications will be evaluated by a screening panel composed of Austin casting and theater directors.
Also in attendance at this year’s Unified General Auditions will be Central Texas’ top producers, directors, and casting agents.
ACoT’s Unified General Auditions serve professional, working actors in Texas. They are open to all actors, union and non-union, local and regional.
Fees: $10 for Current ACOT members, $36 for non-members, $46 to join ACOT (or renew).
All applicants must meet at least one of the following criteria:
- Be an Actors’ Equity Association Member or Candidate
- Have accumulated the equivalent of one year’s acting training
- Have performed in at least two non-school, non-university/college, public stage productions
To participate in ACoT’s 2009 Unified General Auditions, actors must:
- Submit completed application by Monday, August 24 at 5 p.m.
- The ACOT office must receive 50 résumés with standard 8” x 10” headshots attached from each actor no later than Thursday, August 27.
- Auditions will be on Saturday, August 29 and are by appointment only at the Salvage Vanguard Theater. Actors must call the ACOT office at 512.247.2531 or email membership@acotonline.org to make an appointment.
- Qualified applicants will be notified whether or not they have received an audition slot. In the event that the number of applications exceeds the number of audition slots available, preference will be given to the application that was received first.
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Review: 'The Last Hippie'
The hippies hanging out at the Dairy Queen only look cool as long as you don’t talk to them. This is not the moral of Vincent Mann’s solo show, “The Last Hippie: A Western Novel,” but it could have been.
The play, at the Vortex through August 22, follows Mann’s bonding with San Antonio Dairy Queen hippies in 1974 rather than, as Mann seems to wish, a hippy fairy tale set in San Francisco in 1964. Mann never quite indicts the decade-late hippies he grew up with in San Antonio for being shallow. Instead, his mix of anecdotes of drug use and philosophizing clings to the past, but never offers much reason to rehearse the period.
Perhaps this stems from Mann’s philosophy of art. In a didactic epilogue, Mann tells his audience to avoid “looking for answers in art.” It is odd to receive such an instruction after sitting through a two-hour play focused on one man’s search for answers.
Directed by Pam Ramirez, Mann wanders around the stage, sometimes making creative use of props: an old bench transforms from teenage bed for drug-induced dreaming to a coffin for a drug-overdosed teen.
The show has a few gems of scenes. Mann’s description of his Colorado Springs country band becoming soundtrack to a bar fight paints a funny picture. Mann’s first experience getting high — he stage light actually brightens the first time he says “pot” — has rich details, too. He recalls sitting in a church pew, noticing the elder deacon next to him reeks of ham, an unfortunate coincidence for a fourteen-year-old churchgoer with raging munchies. But in many spots the play’s language is thin, overly generalized and tries far too hard to wring meaning from music lyrics.
Knowing laughter from pockets of the audience suggested the nostalgic trip might have more meaning for those who shared 1974 with Mann. But one audience member offered another telling response, pulling out his fingernail clippers during the play’s second half and clipping his nails through the remaining monologues.
‘The Last Hippie’ continues through Aug. 22 at the Vortex. See www.vortexrep.org. Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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August 14, 2009
Review: 'Wicked'
There can be so much pleasure when witches sing together. “Wicked” flew into Austin this week, riding not on broomsticks, but on the performances of two women: Heléne Yorke as Glinda the Good Witch and Marcie Dodd as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. The Broadway hit, which runs at Bass Concert Hall until Aug. 30, has plenty of megamusicals’ bells and whistles, including a mechanical dragon and magic rain.
But wizardry does not give “Wicked” its heart, the intertwined voices of the leading female roles do.
“Wicked,” with lyrics music by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, draws from Gregory Maguire’s novel of the same name. Like the book, the musical tells the backstory of the “Wizard of Oz.” How did Glinda become good and the Wicked Witch of the West became (supposedly) wicked?
Told by Glinda in a series of flashbacks, “Wicked” chronicles the two women’s adolescences, when green Elphaba and blonde Glinda fell on different sides of their school’s popularity divide.
Although the school story does recuperate Elphaba’s character, the resolution to the musical’s good versus bad question rests more in songs than story. In “For Good,” the song Elphaba and Glinda sing as their goodbye, the two trade a show full of alto/soprano harmonizing to hold the same final note together.
There’s the show’s answer to the good/evil question: good is what the women are when they are together, no matter what the world thinks of either of them. (And yes, as musical theater scholar Stacy Wolf has pointed out, “Wicked”’ flirts with queer — to use the word in a gay-positive way — romance.)
Joe Mantello and Wayne Cilento’s careful staging makes what could be a cartoonish world full of cartoonish characters full and funny. Glinda’s hilarious way of moving,her over-dramatic flop on her bed during “Popular,” for example, pointedly exaggerates her performance of pink hairbow-wearing femininity.
The bulbous curves and rich color palette of Susan Hilferty’s sculptural costumes add sumptuous layers of texture. The supporting cast of Marilyn Caskey as the girls’ teacher Madame Morrible, Tom McGowan as the Wizard and Colin Donnell as the girls’ mutual love interest Fiyero is excellent in purposely peripheral roles.
Sometimes musicals can feel too formulaic, but “Wicked” is a puzzle that feels good as it fits together.
‘Wicked’ continues through Aug. 30. See www.utpac.org/event/wicked for more information. Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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August 6, 2009
'House of Several Stories' -- Comedy or absurdist tragedy?
Austin playwright John Boulanger netted a playwriting from the Kennedy Center before the ink dried on his MFA in playingwriting from Texas State University.
You can read a feature story about that here.
Now, that award-winning script, ‘House of Several Stories,’ is getting a fresh production with a stellar line-up of Austin actors. The show opens this weekend at Austin Playhouse. We caught up with Boulanger, who recently co-founded a new theater company, Imagine That Production.
austin360: Tell us about the ‘House of Several Stories.’ How did you conceive of the storyline and characters?
Boulanger: House of Several Stories was written to fulfill a playwriting course at Texas State in Fall 2007, eventually becoming my thesis project towards my masters degree in playwriting, which I received in May 2009. I wrote the play in three weeks, accidentally, while trying to write my initial thesis idea, ‘Durang is Dead!,’ an homage to the very much living playwright, Chrisopher Durang, which still has not seen the light of page.
I’m not exactly sure from where the storyline came, writing it was a blur, but like all of my scripts, it sprung forth from a single line of dialogue, which in turn had to be answered. It’s not until about 20 pages into a script that I know who occupies the story and the roles they will choose to play in the plotline, but I do remember typing the words “The End” on page 141 and feeling that I had created something special — if only to me. This play had by far surpassed my previous scripts both in scope and style.
The script was initially a three-act comedy (ouch) and has since become what I call a “tragedy” (in two acts of nonsense), with the help of a workshop reading, a Texas State production and the helpful advice from professionals. After receiving the workshop reading directed by Isaac Byrne of Working Man’s Clothes (NYC), it was put on the Texas State 2008-9 season, and directed by Jeremy Torres of Search Party (Austin). It was invited to show at the Region VI Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival last February, and after being judged by a national panel, it was invited to perform in Washington, DC, to close the weeklong festival at the Kennedy Center in April. The script won the National Student Playwriting Award, garnering me an observership at this summer’s Sundance Theatre Lab.
The play has a simple set up, whereby three adult family members come together for the Thanksgiving holiday. But what ensues is far from a blissful family reunion — something with which most audience members can identify. Stories are a huge part of this family’s lives, but perhaps at the expense of not facing reality, not making familial connections or even connections with the outside world. The play is about death, loss, and dysfunction — three feel-good subjects to make up any comedy — and it explores how stories can either abet the hurt or aid in the healing needed to cope with painful subjects or occutrences in the characters’ (or our) lives.
The play’s two acts each have a different feel or mood, which contrast greatly from one another, but I liken it to any visit home for Thanksgiving. What appears to be a well-intended trip invariably has the possibility of cataclysmic results — and yet we return home year after year, sometimes wondering “Why do I do this to myself?” That being said, I LOVE my family, and look forward to the visits each year. But every reunion starts off with the telling of the same stories from our pasts, each person having their own version — each person choosing his/her own memories, which through stories become “truths” — perhaps at the expense of addressing realities. I think this is a universal occurrence — on varying scales.
It’s in no way autobiographical, but several elements of my personal life (the lighter ones) are mentioned throughout the play. Facts have been distilled, as art should be selective, and then amplified greatly to create what I hope to be a fun (sometimes scary) theatrical event.
austin360.com: What kind of plans do you have for your theater company, Imagine That Productions?
Boulanger: Everything that has happened thus far for Imagine That, which has definitely been enough to be extremely grateful for, has all occured from what I feel are happy accidents, or nothing short of constellation alignment. When I graduated in May, I knew no one was going to be on the other side of the stage, waiting to hand me a mapped out strategy for a theater career, neatly tucked inside my diploma cover, though that would’ve been nice. And I had no concrete plans as to what I was going to do the day after graduation. But somehow a few days before graduating, I reconnected with my now production manager, Shannon Richey, who I had not seen in almost a year. We made plans to reconnect for a “catch-up-on-life” date, which, looking back, is the inception of Imagine That.
We had no agenda other than to share chronicles from our lives and maybe to gossip, which is always fun, but by the end of the four-hour play date, we had somehow scribbled out a raw “budget” on a Polvo’s napkin—we even borrowed the waiter’s pen to do so. We “imagined” what it would cost to mount a professional production of my latest play, HOSS, since I had no plans for the summer, and all reunions with theatre friends should be about dreaming. The budget was not nearly complete, and I’m not all too sure we knew the other was even serious—it seemed more like a game than anything, but a few days later, the “ideal” of the situation started to become a reality. Literally, nine days after Polvo’s, we had amassed two-thirds of a design team, secured Austin Playhouse, held auditions, and cast a stellar ensemble of actors.
Between that time, not knowing where the money was going to come from (still uncertain on that—ha!), I had connected with people I truly admire in Austin theater. The advice I’ve received from John Fleming, Ann Ciccolella, and Barbara Chisholm (to name a few) gave me an insight on producing — pros and cons and cons and cons — providing me a clearer direction in which to go, while trying to maneuver through the beast known as play production.
One thing I’ve learned from my recent travels to Washington, DC (Kennedy Center), Independence, Kansas (William Inge Festival), and Sundance, Utah (Sundance Theatre Lab), is the importance of networking and the importance of finding your tribe. I’m now working with a production team that includes upwards of 10 Texas State alumni; our costume and set designers; house manager; production assistants; as well as marketing and dramaturg; carpentar and ushers — all from my university. This was not planned. Simply another set of happy accidents.
We have several new scripts from emerging writers which are primed for a premiere, and we have hopes to mount a follow-up production as early as October. (yikes!) We haven’t chosen a script, yet, but members of our team are evaluating each to find the one which is best suited for our resources. Nothing set in stone — but our imaginations are stirring.
We are always looking for more members to share in the fun. And that is truly what this experience has been, and what it should be — fun.
austin360: You’ve got quite an experienced cast including Lauren Lane, Meredith McCall and Martin Burke.
Boulanger: I feel extremely fortunate to be working with the cast that I have. Once again, the stars have aligned. And I feel that they are bringing to the table exactly what I’d hoped they would — professionalism without egos, talent with a need to be challenged, a work ethic with a sense of play and a need to tell a good story. Devoid of this production, I consider Martin, Meredith and Laura to be friends having worked with all three in different capacities in the past.
I also think the younger cast members, Kelli Schultz and Adam Pearson, match, if not their experience, their professionalism and fervor. And even though we are all friends first, I’ve never felt anyone involved with this project was in any way doing a friendly favor — and who has time for those these days? Without it sounding like a self-gratifying plug, I think Laura, Meredith, and Martin (each in their own way) simply responded to the text, at least enough to throw their hats in the ring. They auditioned, accepted the roles, and have treated it as any other job they’d done in the past. Although, I do have to say that with this cast, along with the entire production team, it doesn’t feel like going to work every evening. It’s more like being in a kiddie-day camp, but with adult, and at night. It’s just a heck of a lot of fun.
‘House of Several Stories’ plays 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 23. Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress, Building C. $15-$20. 476-0084. www.it-productions.org
Images: John Boulanger (top); actor Martin Burke (bottom)
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August 4, 2009
Review: 'Orestes' at the Off Center
“Orestes,” a new adaptation of Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy from writer and director Will Hollis Snider, takes the audience into a dark world where death rules and faith is questioned. If you’re looking for distraction from today’s troubles, you probably should stay home and watch an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance.” But if you’re soothed by the idea that people have long faced down tragedy, “Orestes” might prove to be a paradoxical kind of comfort.
“Orestes” takes place in a world already in ruin. The stage and floor are layered with fine dust, and chunks of concrete litter the edges of the space. The gods seem to have abandoned humankind, and the world is a chaotic placed steeped in tension and revenge.
As the action begins, a desperate Orestes (Gabriel Luna) pleads to the gods for help. Obeying a decree from Apollo, Orestes has just killed his mother Klytaimnestra (Karina Dominguez) to avenge the death of his father. Now Orestes finds himself questioning his faith in the gods as he is tormented by Furies (creepy heads on sticks) and put on trial for his actions by the Voice of the People (La Tasha Stephens). While the original version ends as Apollo returns to solve all the problems, this adaptation has an ambiguous ending that gives the play an even darker twist.
The cast works well as an ensemble and the actors strive to meet the challenge of the text. Luna plays Orestes with passion and stamina, but other performers fall into the trap of shouting as a way to show their intense emotions. The show opens at maximum intensity and stays relentless in its pace, at times leaving the audience wishing for more moments of variation.
What ultimately makes “Orestes” worth seeing is the way this contemporary adaptation focuses on the plight of a confused individual who questions the wisdom of having blind faith in anything — an eerily timely theme as Americans find their faith in higher institutions shaken to the very core.
(Claire Canavan is a freelance critic and writer for the American-Statesman.)
‘Orestes’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Aug. 15 at The Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $12-$15.
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July 30, 2009
An 'Orestes' for the new millennium
Director Will Hollis Snider — who was recently nominated for an Austin Critics’ Table Award for his production of ‘The Nina Variations’ — takes Euripides classic tragedy and tweaks it for our modern sensibilities. The result is a darker and more intimate version of the story of Orestes’ murder of his own mother, Klytaimenstra in revenge for the killing of his father.
‘Orestes’ plays 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Aug. 15 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. www.cambiareproductions.com
Q: Of all the classical tragedies, why chose Orestes to tinker with?
Will Hollis Snider: Orestes’ story has resonated with my personally since I first it read years ago. Here is a young man, Orestes, who grew up away from his family, and is commanded by the God Apollo to kill his mother in revenge for murdering his father. He commits the deed, and is immediately tormented by Furies for doing so. His eyes are then immediately opened to the consequences of that action. He begins to question his faith and wonder if it really was God that commanded him to do this.
For millenia, people have committed heinous acts in the name of God, and these people have truly believed they were doing the right thing. But what happens when they stop believing and see the consequences of the actions committed by their own hands?
Also, it has daggers and killing and stuff.
Q: Explain how you’ve adapted the original play and why you made the choices you did.
Snider: I first boiled the play down to it’s basic elements. What is the story I want to tell? What are the themes I want to explore? Once I had that figured out, I gathered up as much material as I could that touched on this story and these themes. I ended up pulling bits and pieces from Eurpides’ Orestes, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia Among the Taurians; Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides; and Sophokles’ Elektra. I used Euripides’ Orestes as my framework, and began playing with structure, rhythm and timelines. I figured out the arc for each character and came up with a a very detailed outline of what I wanted the adaptation to look like. I marked the scenes I wanted to pull from all of the plays, what needed to rewrite, and what new scenes I needed to add myself.
Then, I locked myself in a room with this outline for about month, and came out with a script that was almost completely different than the outline I went in with.
The play still begins six days after Orestes murders his mother, just as Euripides’ version does, but it now moves back and forth through time as Orestes tries to figure out what led him here. Instead of monologuing about his situation, Orestes is now much more active in his quest for the truth.
Gone is the Deus ex Machina that populates many Greek tragedies. At the end of Euripides’ version, Apollo magically appears before Orestes and fixes everything. In a nutshell, he says, “Orestes, this girl, which you just kidnapped and are threatening to kill, I want you to marry her. Also, when you killed Helen earlier, you didn’t actually. I snatched her up ‘cause, well… I think she’s pretty. She’s going to come live with me now.”
It really didn’t feel like the proper way to end the story. So, there has been some major tinkering, and I hope that I have enhanced Orestes story by the changes that were made.
Q: Besides shifting the focus to Orestes, what other aspects of the production have you built into the show to give the story new direction?
Snider: With the play now moving back and forth through time, I no longer have Aristotles’ Unities to inform the technical elements, which in turn has given my designers much more freedom to play. It no longer takes place in just one location or just one day, but spans many years and multiple locations. The play is now much more fantastical. Orestes is constantly questioning his reality, and isn’t sure himself what time or location he is in at any given moment. The technical elements are now informed by Orestes psychological state, the costume design pulls from many different times and locations, and the language plays with classic as well as modern colloquialisms.
All characters but one appear in other Greek tragedies. To better relate the events of Orestes to today, I wanted to give the ordinary citizens a voice. Typically in Greek tragedy, only characters of noble birth are allowed stage time. If someone is not of noble birth and they get to say something, typically they are giving us a three page monologue about what those noble characters did while they were off stage. So, I simply created the role: The Voice of the People. After decades of tyranny and bloodshed, the ordinary citizens had to have been fed up with the actions of their leaders. So they attempt to take justice into their own hands.
To tease the new direction, I’d like to share the opening moment of the play:
The interior of a war ravaged church. The doors fly open. ORESTES enters, his hands are caked with dried blood, a dagger in one hand, and dragging his kidnapped victim behind him with the other.
The church hasn’t been inhabited in years. Everything is grey… Concrete, wood, stone. The wood is rotting, the walls are crumbling. He walks swiftly to the altar, and throws his victim down beside him. He gently places the dagger on the altar. He kneels. Silence. In the silence there are whispers, we hear the wind blowing through the church. It is night. Then…
Image: Gabriel Luna in ‘Orestes’ Courtesy Cambiare Productions.
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July 23, 2009
Q-and-A with Mary Ellen Butler, artistic director of Georgetown Palace Theatre
With today’s austin360 cover story, ‘Prosceniums on the Perimeter,’ we focus on theaters that are far outside Austin’s downtown core or East Austin warehouses. Our surrounding towns and suburbs are busy with community theater.
One the busiest is Georgetown’s Palace Theatre Housed in an historic Art Deco former movie house, the community group stages up to nine shows during its year-long season.
We caught up with Georgetown Palace Theatre artistic director Mary Ellen Butler.
austin360: How long have you been with Georgetown Palace Theatre?
Mary Ellen Butler: We are currently ending my sixth season as the Palace artistic airector with “Big River” and we will be opening our seventh season with “Driving Miss Daisy.”
Prior to being contracted as the artistic director I had volunteered for about 1-1/2 years, assisting with technical support or directing productions.
My theater resume includes an undergrad degree in education with a minor in speech and drama. I have graduate work in musical theater and Shakespeare. I have been involved with theater for 36 years now either directing or producing shows in America or in Europe. I ran the American Musical Theater Co. in Germany for 4 years touring such shows as “Cabaret”, “Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Fantastics.”
What is your goal as artistic director?
Butler: I have a dual focus;
the first part is to produce the best possible theatrical experience for our audiences with the people and materials available.
The second focus is to create a community event center that offers not just theatricals but also events of community interest such as jazz and rock concerts, a fully developed children’s workshop program and education classes for teens and adults who have an interest in furthering their acting and/or technical skills.
What show are you looking forward to presenting soon?
Butler: I am looking forward to a nine-show season next year with “Driving Miss Daisy” kicking it of on Aug. 28th, “Man of La Mancha’ next which brings us to our holiday offering “Annie” which will run for 27 performances from Nov. 20 through Dec. 30.
What’s your favorite moment in this production of ‘Big River’?
Butler: My favorite is when Huckelberry Finn realizes that Jim, the escaped slave, is a human being. Both actors create a wonderful moment that expresses itself in dialogue and song. The complete show is both uplifting and highly enjoyable.
‘Big River’ plays 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 16. See www.georgetownpalace.com for more information.
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July 21, 2009
Review: 'Dear Fraility'
No one is normal in ‘Dear Fraility’ Arthur Simone’s oddly compelling darkly humorous one-man, multi-character show playing Fridays through August at Coldtowne Theater.
But it is nevertheless easy to sympathize with the eight not-normal characters Simone presents on Coldtowne’s miniscule stage no matter how absurd and grotesque the details of the lives may be. Perhaps that because Simone has carefully crafted each to be remotely believable. Forget the flat character parody. Instead, Simone delivers little jewel-like stories of strange but absorbing characters whose stories you want to hear.
There’s the barely recovered pyromaniac fresh from rehab, an old woman with nary a fond memory of the past, a man still suffering from the bullying he was victim to in his childhood and a single woman unlucky in love even if she doesn’t quite realize it.
With only minimal props, Simone performs each of their stories in short, neatly-paced monologues. And for good measure, Simone throws in a few absurdist presentations of his own, most humorously a rambling and ridiculous slide presentation on the future of capitalism. (The show clocks in a little less than one hour.)
The lanky Simone is something of a naturally jittery performer but that only gives his characters more of a manic edge that grabs the attention. What sets ‘Dear Fraility’ apart from most other monologue line-ups is the quality of Simone’s story-telling. There’s no ad-libbing or improv here. Rather, the writing has a tight, literary quality that unfolds thoughtfully.
Simone, one third of the trio of improvisational actors that founded Coldtowne Theater, delivers an odd odyssey that in the end remains sweet.
“Dear Fraility” continues at 9 p.m. on Fridays through Aug. 28 at Coldtowne Theater, Airport Blvd. www.coldtownetheater.com
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Review: 'Music Man,' parades into Zilker Park
It is the summer of music men from Gary, Indiana. While the world remains focused on Michael Jackson, Austin has shifted interest to another former Gary Indiana resident, Harold Hill. Hill is the central character in “The Music Man,” the annual summer musical from Zilker Park Theatre. On Sunday a dip in heat and an enthusiastic cast made ‘The Music Man’ one of Austin’s more enjoyable ways to spend time outside.
“The Music Man” follows Hill’s invasion of sleepy River City, Iowa. Zilker’s staging, from director Rod Caspers, displays Hill’s ability to enliven the complacent town. Hill may not bring them musical know-how, but he can give them heart. Casper builds kinetically charged crowd scenes, well constructed for Zilker’s large amphitheater. Even if seated far in the back, you’ll be able to follow the musical thanks to snappy gestures that create tiny snapshots amongst a sea of people. Upbeat choreography by Judy Thompson-Price helps keeps the long musical (three hours) from growing tedious.
Hill is a demanding role: a mesmerizing Pied Piper who barely leaves the stage. As Hill, Eric Ferguson dos not quite have the pizzazz the seductive character needs, but Ferguson carries the gargantuan role serviceably. Kara Bliss, as librarian love interest Marian Paroo, also lacks shine when singing. She does construct Paroo’s guarded, but caring sensibility through details that build throughout the show. Scott Shipman as Mayor Shinn, Emily Bem as the mayor’s wife, and Christina Gilmore as Mrs. Paroo have smaller, but sharper performances.
Among the cast’s many adorable children, Ben Roberts as the endearing, lisping Winthrop Paroo is a standout. Musical performances, led by music director and conductor Austin Haller, work well, particularly the men’s quartet, whose voices seemed to float up the hillside, courtesy of rare Austin summer breezes.
‘The Music Man’ continues at 8:30 Thursdays-Sundays through Aug. 15. Sheffield Hillside Theater, Zilker Park. Free ($3 parking). www.zilker.org.
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July 17, 2009
Plans for new Zach theater forge on: Architect chosen, new donations announced
Recession? Sure, but that hasn’t stopped the folks at Zach Theatre from forging on with their plans to build a new 500-seat venue as part of its plans to expand its campus at S. Lamar Blvd. and W. Riverside Dr.
Theater officials have announced that they have selected the Austin firm of Andersson-Wise Architects as the design architect for the new venue. Among the firm’s projects are the W Hotel on Austin’s Block 21, St. Edward’s University Fleck Hall, the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. Principal Arthur W. Andersson was one-time professional partners with noted architect and theorist Charles W. Moore. Moore and Andersson collaborated on the residential compound in West Austin now home to The Charles Moore Foundation.
Zach officials have also announced that Austin philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long have donated $250,000 towards the theater $20 million capital campaign.
The Shubert Foundation has also donated $25,000.
In June, Zach opened its Production and Creativity Center — aka the Z-PACC — a rehearsal studio and production facility. Architectural designer Michael Hsu transformed a former bicycle workshop adjacent to Zach’s Whisenhunt Theatre into the Z-PACC which will also accommodate Zach’s youth programs.
Finally, commercial real estate developer Tom Terkel has been appointed the chairman of Zach’s capital campaign committee.
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July 11, 2009
Zach Theatre unrolls its 2009-2010 season
Zach Theatre has unrolled its 2009-2010 season. Favorites ‘The Santaland Diaries’ and ‘Rockin Christmas Party’ will return over the holidays, but a lively mix of musicals and dramas unfolded throughout the season.
For more info see www.zachtheatre.org.
‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’
September 17-October 25, 2009
Nominated for six Broadway Tony Awards, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ is an offbeat musical that each night challenges audience members and Austin celebrities to a bona fide spell-off.
The Flaming Idiots
Created by Jon O’Connor, Kevin Hunt and Rob Williams
January 28-March 7, 2010
The juggling, joking, flame throwing Flaming Idiots return to the Austin stage for the kind of theater circus antics that brought them to audience acclaim — and got them kicked out of Williamson County.
‘Our Town’
April 15-May 23, 2010
The American classic with an Austin touch.
‘Becky’s New Car’
Written & Directed by Steven Dietz • Starring Lauren Lane
June 3-July 11, 2010
Lauren Lane stars in this life-affirming comedy about an eccentric millionaire who offers Becky the keys to a brand new life. This romantic farce by acclaimed Austin playwright Steven Dietz (playwright of last season’s hit Shooting Star) offers a fantastically funny exploration about class, wealth and selling out.
‘The Drowsy Chaperone’
June 24-August 1, 2010
Favorite Austin actor Martin Burke stars as ‘The Man in the Chair,’ a die-hard musical fan who plays his favorite cast album — a 1928 hit called
“The Drowsy Chaperone,” — to lift his spirits. But then his dream musical becomes real.
‘Metamorphoses’
By Mary Zimmerman
August 5-September 12, 2010
The audience sits intimately around a circular swimming pool, in this visually-arresting production of Ovid’s beautiful myths about miraculous transformations.
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July 2, 2009
Channeling 'Henry V'
For almost two decades actor and Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faire has wanted to take Shakespeare’s history play about England’s most storied warrior king and re-imagine it as a one-man play.
Now, Faires’ dream — or is it an obsession? — has come true. Following Shakespeare’s instructions that the audience just imagine the courts, Faires takes the audience from Henry’s throne across the English Channel into the French court, through a fearful war and into one of the most charming courtship scenes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
Faires will perform ‘Henry V’ at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and 5 p.m. Sundays through July 25 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15. www.rudemechs.com.
And there’s a special July 4th performance at 5 p.m. with sparklers and champagne
Q: Of all the Bard’s plays, why choose Henry V?
Robert Faires: Ever since I saw Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V when I was in college, I’ve been drawn to the play. Part of it is just the character of Henry, who’s like the Errol Flynn of Shakespearean kings — dashing, heroic, good with a sword, gets the girl in the end. Who wouldn’t have fun playing that guy?
But mostly, I just love that the play is so unabashedly theatrical. Right from the get-go, you have the Chorus telling the audience that there’s no way this huge story can be presented the way it really happened, but you know what, these actors are going to do it anyway, and the audience will just have to use its imagination to bring it to life. And he keeps coming back with that message again and again, setting the scene with these beautifully descriptive speeches that are my favorite parts of the play.
And Henry himself, I discovered, is very much an actor. He puts on a number of different roles in the course of the play, pretending to be something that he isn’t to get what he wants. And seeing that made me think about how we all do that. I know Henry V is typically seen as a play about war, and you certainly can’t get away from the war in it, but it also feels very much to me like a play about how we play different parts in life and what it takes to find our authentic self.
Q: How did you distill the story (stories) down for one actor? What kind of creative choices did you make?
Faires: The more I studied the individual scenes, the more I saw them in two voices, usually Henry’s and that of some person or group he was facing off against: the bishop of Canterbury, a French ambassador, the three lords who betray him, his soldiers, the princess of France. So I pared lines and scenes that would help highlight the essence of those conflicts and how they affected Henry. Unfortunately, that meant ditching almost all the low comic characters and most of the French scenes, and with them went a lot of the play’s scope. But what you get in return, I feel, is a heightened intimacy, particularly with Henry, which seems fitting for a version of his story that’s just one actor and the audience.
Q: Why use Shakespeare’s instructions for the audience to use their imagination to conjure the scenes?
Faires: Well, it’s a great way to short-circuit criticism about a lame set and costumes, for one thing. But the real reason I love it is the way it throws an arm around the audience’s shoulder, pulls them in close, and whispers, “You’re in this, too. You’re making it happen.” It’s wonderfully conspiratorial. So if audience members are at all engaged with the show, it raises the stakes for them and makes the experience very personal. I’m very much relying on the audience to be my collaborators here, to be the English lords and soldiers that Henry speaks to, to fill out the French court. This Henry V is a one-man show only in the sense that my name is the only one on the poster. But the truth is, I’ll be sharing the stage with every person who comes to see it.
Photo courtesy Red Then Productions.
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June 14, 2009
Review: Gilbert & Sullivan Society's 'Iolanthe'
“All hail the influential fairy” might be the best line of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of “Iolanthe,” which opened Friday at Travis High School’s Performing Arts Center.
The members of the society, led by stage director and choreographer Ralph MacPhail, Jr., and music director and conductor Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, dedicate themselves with gusto and humor to one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s less often produced operettas. “Iolanthe” chronicles the follies that ensue when the English lady Phyllis (Meredith Ruduski) falls in love with Strephon (Derek Smootz) a shepherd, who, unbeknownst to Phyllis, is half fairy, half man.
The story, like many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, relies on a several twisting plot lines, most of which reveal the group of all female fairies and the all male peers (members of the upper-class British House of Lords) to be equally befuddled beings. I won’t give away “Iolanthe’s” moment of resolution, but the stage picture it creates makes sitting through the almost three-hour production worthwhile.
Gilbert and Sullivan lovers usually cite “Iolanthe” as some of Sullivan’s best music. Several performers brought lovely voices to the Gilbert’s speedy lyrics, which have to be sung almost too fast for projected subtitles to keep pace. As the intensely rigid Private Willis Russell Gregory nearly steals the show. Queen of the fairies Lisa Alexander, Earl of Mountararat David Fontenont, and Lord Chancellor Arthur DiBianca were among the show’s standout voices. Fontenont and DiBianca, with Andrew Fleming as Earl Tolloller had one of the better-staged and funniest scenes, trotting and skipping to the song “If You Go In.” The production continues through June 21.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
‘Iolanthe’ continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information www.gilbertsullivan.org.
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June 11, 2009
Review: 'Love, Janis'
Janis Joplin’s colored sunglasses and uncombed hair are icons of 1960s rock. “Love, Janis,” playing at Zach Scott through July 12, relies heavily on audience’s familiarity with Joplin, but the musical also avoids the trap of superficiality icons offer. The musical does not tell the story of Joplin’s life as a tragedy. “Love, Janis” celebrates Joplin’s voice and performance style: big, wild, and oh, so pleasurable.
“Love, Janis” follows the now familiar formula of jukebox musicals: well-known popular songs interspersed with short scenes stringing together a sparse storyline. Randal Myler created the musical from the book of the same name by Joplin’s younger sister Laura. The book and musical draw exclusively from Joplin’s letters written to her family in Port Arthur, Texas, and press interviews. These materials merge into a musical for two versions of Janis, one who sings and speaks (Mary Bridget Davies) and one who delivers much of the letters turned monologues (Sydney Andrews).
In Wednesday’s performance, much credit for the musical’s depth goes to Davies, who seemed a bit too Texas cheerleader to channel Joplin in early scenes, but then her voice took over. Davies has a sensually gravelly voice in early numbers and elsewhere perfectly mimics Joplin’s sultry mumble in opening song lyrics. Davies also manages to create a full character transformation for Joplin through subtle vocal shifts over the course of the two-hour show. Early on, she is a howler, but by the end her singing has turned to a lullaby, comforting the sadness and anger lurking within the drug-addled Joplin.
Andrews, too, finds nuance in Joplin by these closing moments, having traveled from enthusiastic teen to unsatisfied, lonely star. Davies alternates in the role of singing Janis with Andra Mitrovich, who I saw a week earlier in a show that ended early due to technical problems. Creating Joplin, Mitrovich makes a woman who’s plenty beatnik, but has a stronger Texas outsider quality to her.
For fans of Joplin’s music, “Love, Janis” provides layers of context, particularly around Joplin’s debt to black female performers. Hearing Joplin talk about her love of Bessie Smith brings out “Down on Me’s” blues. Later, after Joplin calls Aretha Franklin the best voice of 1968, I heard “Me and Bobby McGee” anew, recognizing the R&B vocals in Kris Kristofferson’s country melodies.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
“Love, Janis” continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through July 12 at Zach Theatre. $20-$52. www.zachtheatre.org.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
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June 7, 2009
Review: 'KIller Joe'
Posters for Capital T Theatre’s production of “Killer Joe” at Hyde Park Theatre bill the play as a “very dark comedy.” In this case, there is truth in marketing. The company, led by director Mark Pickell, never shies from any of playwright Tracy Letts’s deeply unsettling writing. Nuanced, convincing performances from the cast and clear directing choices don’t allow the play’s comedy to overwhelm the gravity of its violence.
“Killer Joe” is a trailer park family drama, focused on the Smith family. The set, a trailer co-designed by Pickell and Tommy Grubbs, captures the family in detail: broken and lacking any order. Every time the family’s likeable, but inept father Ansel (Joe Reynolds) sits on the couch, he pulls dirty kitchen utensils from the cushions. When sassy, trampy stepmother Sharla (Katie DeBuys) serves dinner, the woven paper plate holders barely make it to the table in one piece. Pieces fall as Sharla walks.
The love between older brother Chris (Joey Hood) and mentally disabled Dottie (Melissa Recalde) seems the family’s only hope. Recalde aptly creates and manipulates Dottie’s robotic shell to reveal her as the family’s wise woman. The Smiths quickly entangle themselves in a web of bad choices. They hire contract murderer “Killer Joe” (Kenneth Wayne Bradley) and then put him on “retainer,” not with money, but with Dottie’s sexual companionship. It’s difficult to tell more of the plot without revealing the play’s secrets, but as Chris puts it late in the play “arrangements just kind of broke funny.”
The most uncomfortable of these broken arrangements is Joe’s relationship to the play’s women. He begins his romance with Dottie, coaxing her into sex by sending her back to memories of being a twelve-year old. Where softly disturbing silences characterize Joe elsewhere, with Sharla his sexual abuse is explosive and degrading.
Reynolds and DeBuys have the most opportunity to contrast the play’s violence against its comedy. Ansel’s inability to do anything right is reiterated with humor and detail. My favorite: As he exits with several beers in hand, we hear him drop several and curse offstage. DeBuys manages to convey subtext through only screams in the play’s most violent scenes, shifting from horror and fear to self-absorption.
‘Killer Joe’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through June 27. Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. $15-$25. www.capitalt.org.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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June 3, 2009
Joey Seiler: 'Goodbye and thanks, Austin'
(Joey Seiler, longtime American-Statesman freelance theater critic leaves town this week and sends an adis to the arts community.)
I’m leaving this Friday to travel around the country for a few months. In the fall I’ll be heading to law school in New York, one of the cultural capitals of the world. I’m really going to miss Austin.
My earliest memory of any sort of art is falling asleep on the Zilker Hillside during the 1988 Summer Musical production of “Camelot.” I was five and my parents had carted me through the park in a red wagon filled with blankets and pillows — it wasn’t a critical judgment.
Far from it: I still remember Lancelot’s joust as was filled with real fighting knights in real shining armor on real thundering horses. If I think hard enough, it shifts to a few guys in pasteboard helmets riding horses made of sticks and cloth. But, then again, I always preferred the bittersweet ending of “Man of La Mancha” to outright cynicism of “Don Quixote.” And since I don’t know (for certain) which memory is more accurate, I’d rather stick with the giants instead of the windmills and remember the onstage magic.
That line of thinking cemented during my two summers at UT’s Shakespeare at Winedale. I was never a great actor, but I loved every minute of it. I got to be a part of the Roman Empire’s birth on a stage in a country barn and a rude mechanical in the woods of Texas. I owe a huge debt for personal, creative and intellectual growth to Dr. James Loehlin. The least I can do to make it up is encourage you all to make the drive to Round Top this summer if you haven’t taken the chance.
For the same reasons, I have an even larger debt to Austin theatre. In the almost four years I’ve been lucky enough to write for the Statesman, I’ve had some of the best experiences of my life. We don’t have the budgets or audiences of New York, but we do have, I think, a real sense of the pure joy and beauty and tragedy and wonder that can walk across a stage.
And that’s Austin for me: passionate people doing amazing things. Even at its most staid, theatre in Austin takes the best part of community productions (excitedly celebrating art) and combines it with real drive to succeed and, often, innovate. I didn’t always like the product, but I’ve been thrilled to be a part, in any small way, of the process. Whether back on the Hillside, in a warehouse in East Austin, a school’s student stage, or in one of our flagship theatres, it’s been my pleasure and outstandingly good fortune to sit quietly in dark rooms and take in Austin.
So thanks to the Statesman for the opportunity. Thanks, specifically, to Michael Barnes for answering an unsolicited email sent when I graduated from UT suggesting, “Hey, you should give me a job.” Thanks to Sharon Chapman and Jeanne Claire van Ryzin for all their help and advice since then. Thanks to anyone who read anything I wrote; I hope it drove you to see at least a few shows. And most of all, thanks to everyone—actors, directors, writers, crew, producers, etc.—who let me sit in the back of your houses and scribble away at notes for the last four years.
Thanks to all for letting me be a part of Austin theatre.
Image: Joey Seiler on the set of ‘Plaid Tidings’ at Zach Scott in December 2007, one of four holiday shows he saw, and reviewed, in one weekend. Photo by Tessa Moll.
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June 1, 2009
Revlew: 'Faster Than the Speed of Light'
“Faster Than the Speed of Light” is billed as new sci-fi, multi-media musical about robots, love, and chaos. It comes off more as a live-action music video for a Bowie/”Blade Runner” concept album love child. It’s catchy, but nonsensical, and fun and occasionally emotional, but with the ephemera of pop.
Brilliant scientist Atom attempts to create the perfect life for himself in the form of robotic domestic bliss. What comes out are two sides of himself, Chaos and Serena. Both want him, for ominous or romantic reasons, and he must choose.
At least, that’s my reconstructed gist of the story. More like an opera than a traditional musical, “Faster” eschews dialogue for music. Unlike an opera, there aren’t notes providing back story and the songs favor capturing the sense of a moment over its plot points. It’s all exciting energy and little clear exposition.
That said, the music, created by producers and lead actors Stanley Roy and Jeremy Roye, is almost enough to push the play forward. Combined with a sci-fi shabby set design and costume aesthetic ripped from a dystopian American Apparel shoot, the music sets a tone that can range from the uncanny to the sentimental. Drawing from a palette rich enough to include stripped down drum, bass and vocal arrangements or piled on with electropop, cello, bassoon, and ukulele, the accompanying album might be a necessary purchase just to satisfy the inevitable earworm.
Ultimately it’s not quite enough to make the experience of the production itself last. The second half, which centers more on Serena’s lost love than the frenetic, mindless followers of Chaos, gets an emotional hook through the presence of a lovelorn and talented Kathleen Fletcher. But by that time it’s hard stay involved with the world of Atom, played by a sometimes off-pitch Roye, and Chaos, played by a permanently leering Roy. Throughout, though, the play is buoyed by Clock. Mute, sentimental, and comic, Clock is assistant to Atom and the latest in a line of Andrew Varenhorst’s standout (and varied) side roles in rock musicals.
A lot of the right elements are in place for “Faster.” It just doesn’t gel well into a final product. The story could be interesting, but the broad strokes push it towards inaccessibility and ridiculousness. The songs could punctuate climactic moments, but they stand alone. And there are hooks to show, but they’re in the music, not on the stage.
(“Faster Than the Speed of Light” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through June 13 at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. $12. 474-7886, fasterthanthespeedoflight.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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May 26, 2009
Review: 'The Long Now'
The Long Now” combines the sweet, sentimental morality of fairy tales, the “Twilight Zone’s” twists and sense of the uncanny, and one frightening puppet. And it works.
As Tish explains from the start, she has a special friend. Her friend, though, appears at first to be of the imaginary sort—a grotesque personification of Time. But Time and Tish have a real arrangement. When she needs to, Tish can travel back to moments in her life, experiencing them like a fortunate addict, ad nauseum and without diminishing returns. And in Tish’s life, filled with the quiet horror of daily mundanities and well-meaning, nosy office mates, the past looks more and more appealing.
Soon it becomes clear that Tish is an addict, Time is a pusher, and the one-sided arrangement is based on the fear of revealing too much of the past rather than reveling in it. The metaphor’s moral — live in the now instead of hoarding it for the future — could be trite if it stopped there. Fortunately, director and writer Beth Burns doesn’t let it. Unfortunately, because it’s so rare that new theatre includes this much suspense and this many deft turns, I don’t want to say more and ruin the story.
Instead, I’d like to celebrate the execution of it. Time is embodied in a grandfather clock shadow puppet with a hobgoblin moon face to give Hieronymus Bosch nightmares. Designed by Jesse Kingsley, the paper puppets emit a sinister susurrus as Time moves and startling snaps when the character about-faces into the scrim.
The rest of the humans, though, are what gives the story its context: Tish is surrounded by people living normal lives. Her boss, played by Heath Thompson, and coworker, Anne Hulsman, offer subdued, natural performances. They initially feel underwhelming on stage. In reality they’re about pitch perfect, grounding the story in reality. Likewise, boyfriend Larry, played by Mason Stewart, is often enjoyably eager, almost going too far, until you realize his place in the larger fantasy.
Tish, played with success across a spectrum of ages, senses, and moods by Shannon Grounds, is the heart. Grounds ranges from the sinking addict, nodding off into a fantasy or scrabbling at her chest just to feel one new sensation, to a child with all her natural wonder to the wounded adult trying to move forward. Each adds a new layer to Tish, and all are affecting.
That’s the real success of “Long Now.” Burns has mixed fairy tale, relationship drama, and mystery into one constantly counter-balancing, turning story. She weaves together first dates with fantastical bargains and humanity with magic. It’s not perfect, but, as the story goes, life often isn’t. This moment, however, is well worth revisiting.
“The Long Now” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. at The Blue Theater, 926 Springdale Rd., $15-$25. 927-118, brownpapertickets.com
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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May 19, 2009
WPA -- Works Progress Austin -- incubates new theater
The formal arts season may be winding down, and Fusebox left everybody a little breathless giving Austin a mass infusion of new performance work. But on Saturday, Salvage Vanguard’s project Works Progress Austin unveils the work of writers, directors, filmmakers, dramaturges, comedians, and musicians who were given a two-week opportunity to incubate and experiment with new work.
Three short plays-in-progress will be unveiled.
8 p.m. May 23. Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road. $10 www.salvagevanguard.org
‘A Brief Narrative on the Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits.’
By C, Denby Swanson. Directed by Sonnet Blanton with puppets by Connor Hopkins.
Characters live on the edge of the imagined and the real in ‘A Brief Narrative.’ Mare, a surrogate for her infertile sister Kitty, has just given birth to her first…. Rabbit. There will be 24 additional rabbits after this. How are we made? By whom?
‘The Collapse’
By Kirk Lynn. Directed by Thomas Graves.
‘I have to collapse. I have to collapse. I’m gonna put everything I
believe into this last collapse. Tomorrow I’m going to walk out my door
believing nothing. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up very early. Tomorrow
I’m going to wake up very early. I don’t want to sleep at all. Tomorrow
I’m going to wake up not believing anything at all. I’m going to go to
bed when I collapse. When I collapse at last. I keep a record every time
it happens. I keep a record every time it happens. Every time it
happens, I record it. I want to know the difference between collapse and
collapse.’
‘Guest by Courtesy.’
By Hannah Kenah and Jenny Larson.
‘A “tea,” even though it be formal, is nevertheless friendly and inviting.
One does not go in “church” clothes nor with ceremonious manner; but in an
informal and every-day spirit, to see one’s friends and be seen by them. A
smaller room is preferable, too much space with too few people gives an
effect of emptiness which always is suggestive of failure.’
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May 18, 2009
Review: 'Oceana'
Vortex Theatre lives underwater for the next few weeks. The new musical “Oceana” created by Bonnie Cullum and Content Love Knowles floods the East Austin theatre space through June 6.
Through movement by Cullum, and design, Jason Amato’s lights and Ann Marie Gordon’s, the production does an excellent job of fully embracing another world. The parable-esque musical has worthwhile messages to send: the sea deserves care and protection. But the story unfolding inside the elaborate world gets murky at times.
The young girl (Betsy McCann) sent on a grand tour of the ocean by god Olokun (Gabriel Maldonado). He hopes she will be the one to save the ocean from destruction. She hopes to survive. But she eventually lets go, letting the water and its many spirits in.
Two groups guide the girl: merpeople who catapult through “Oceana’s” sea with the help of aerial equipment and an operatic doo-wop trio, who sometimes offer explanation. A magical seal (Katherine Craft) forges the deepest connection with the girl, but it is unclear why. The seal says the girl once saved her life, but that story-shifting event escaped me, making “Oceana’s” climax confusing.
The girl also meets a series of goddesses. Hindu goddess Lakshmi (Kira Parra) eventually helps the girl discover desires bigger than her individual needs. Parra has one of the show’s best voices. Karina Dominguez as Pele, Hawaiian deity of earth and volcanoes, is another performance standout.
Pele also has more opportunity to grow into a full character. Most of the spirit presences have one significant scene and otherwise perform with the ensemble. Meeting each goddess so briefly robs the figures of time to make the traditions from which they are borne specific or deep.
“Oceana” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through June 6. Vortex Theater, 2307 Manor Road. $10-$30. www.vortexrep.org.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Image: Rachel Martsolf and Jonathan Blackwell as The Mer in ‘Oceana.’ Photo by Tony Spielberg.
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May 13, 2009
Review: 'Rent'
A round of cheers greeted “Rent’s” fantastic drag queen Angel (Justin Johnston) when she sashayed forward wearing her signature Ms. Santa Claus red fur and striped tights.
Although the touring version of the Broadway show has stopped in Austin before, it’s likely that most of the audience at Bass Concert Hall Tuesday for the show’s opening know “Rent” from its 2005 movie version or the popular cast album. But when singing alone to “”La Vie Boheme” at home, there’s no one to scream with and no way to simulate the thrill of watching a drag queen leap onto a table while wearing four-inch heels. Seeing the musical back onstage made a few aspects stand out.
“Rent” uses its entire space well, opening up a tiny, marginalized world—a bohemian fantasy of New York’s Alphabet City neighborhood just before 1990s gentrification. Marlies Yearby’s choreography finds the clean lines within Paul Clay’s cluttered but sculptured set. The ensemble’s placement around the stage, even just a well-timed group lean, underscores how this diverse community of many races, genders, and sexualities works together.
“Rent’s” final scene, as drug addict Mimi wakes from near death is incongruous with “Rent’s” more progressive politics. Lighting designer Blake Burba makes the moment even more evangelical by sending a huge stream of bright white light onto Mimi’s face. When she awakes, she tells everyone that she saw Angel and he told her to come back to her boyfriend Roger. Why does the straight, HIV-positive woman get to choose life — is even guided back to life by Angel — and the HIV-positive gay man is doomed to death?
Johnston’s Angel was one of several characters that re-invigorate this version of “Rent.” As awkward filmmaker Mark, Anthony Rapp (an original from “Rent’s” 1996 premiere) fretted with a combination of earnestness and fear that makes Mark endearing, particularly when Rapp closed his fists and eyes while belting “What You Own,” with Adam Pascal, another “Rent” original cast member who plays depressed musician Roger. As Joanne half of “Rent’s” lesbian couple, Haneefah Wood worked choreographic details to fashion her character as uptight, but practical. Wood and Rapp’s comfort together made their “Tango Maureen” a first act hit.
‘Rent’ continues ay 8 p.m. through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the. Bass Concert Hall, UT campus. $18-$60. www.utpac.org
Clare Croft is American-Statesman freelance critic.
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May 8, 2009
Hideout Theatre comedy team buys itself, sorta
What to do when the lease to the theater you’ve been using for years is threatened with closure, when the owners of the business title and lease to the place just want to roll-up the show for good?
Buy it yourself.
That’s what a team of improv comedians have done with the Hideout Theatre, the popular yet intimate venue on Congress Avenue. When the owners of the business title decided they wanted out of the biz of running a theater and didn’t seek renewal on the lease, a group of comedians — all of whom started as improve students at the Hideout — did want improvisers do best. They improvised and found a way to buy the rights to Hideout Theatre as well as renew the lease for five years.
That’s clever. And show some business savvy too.
Jessica Arjet, Kareem Badr and Roy Janik are teachers, producers, directors and performers at The Hideout. Arjet is also creator of Austin’s only improv show for kids, Flying Theatre Machine, and Janik and Badhr are founding members of Parallelogramophonograph and co-producers of the Out of Bounds Improv Comedy Festival.
They declined to disclose how much was paid for the rights to the Hideout Theatre name or what the venue rent amount was.
“I don’t think we could have lived with ourselves if we had let the Hideout just go away. It means too much to everyone,” said Badr in a press release.
The group will celebrate its new self-ownership June 5 with a party and show.
In the meantime, the Hideout folks are reprising their popular ‘Improvised Shakespeare’ every Saturday at 8 p.m. in May and June.
See www.hideouttheatre.com for more information.
Image: Roy Janik, Jessica Arjet and Kareem Badr.
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April 30, 2009
Review: Forced Entertainment's 'Spectacular' at Fusebox
The spectacle in “Spectacular” is all imaginary. It’s the stuff of a show that characters only talk about, never perform. Instead, on a stripped down stage, armed only with a microphone, a few spot lights, and a skeleton-painted sweat suit, Forced Entertainment operates purely in the theatre of the mind.
“Spectacular” consists of 90 minutes of an actor in a skeleton suit discussing the show he’d normally be putting on, occasionally interrupted by an actress’ prolonged death scene.
For starters, Robin Arthur would usually enter, following a lengthy warm-up act, down a long staircase to take center stage, a frightening, provocative appearance, he says. Instead, Arthur presents an affable, pot-bellied professional in sagging sweats, simply conversing with the audience about his doubts, desires, and, of course, this other spectacular show.
For her part, Claire Marshall’s death is protracted enough to make even Shakespeare’s Bottom grimace at the liberties taken and imaginary guts spilled—but only because she’s done him one better. Ranging from comedically large spasms to quiet, gasping shudders, Marshall’s death is an odd counter-point to Arthur’s quiet musings.
And, thankfully, that’s the show: a monologue exploring the technique of theatre, the emotions it provokes—the mental—all mashed up with not just the visceral, but mimed viscera. Both levels are compelling alone. Arthur is provocative in asking questions, entertaining in his role as a death’s head jester, and, when he describes what the audience’s reactions usually are, emotionally and hypnotically affecting. Marshall explodes one of theatre’s oldest gags to its fullest, for both laughs and, mirroring her often striking contortions, pain.
It’s when the two combine that they make you grateful this is the show you’re seeing, not some extravaganza with dancers and a house band. Whether that’s Arthur critiquing Marshall’s performance or simply standing over her, a seemingly leering skull next to a dead body, together the two can prompt the heartiest laughs or chilling goosebumps. The swings, though deftly accomplished, between both tones and often-competing focus points can be draining, but that only adds to the overall experience.
With the Fuse Box Festival drawing to an end, be thankful it was able to draw the company from the UK. More importantly, make sure not to miss it.
(“Spectacular” continues Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. at the Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr. $15. 512-524-2041, fuseboxfestival.com.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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April 27, 2009
Review: 'Golf: The Musical'
Caveat: The only 18 holes I’ve ever played involved throwing discs (poorly) at Pease Park. As a game, I just don’t get golf. As a musical revue, though, “Golf” is an entertaining collection of Broadway-caliber talent that more often than not makes up for the fact that the show is, well, almost entirely about golf.
“Golf’s” loose collection of sketches and songs has a vaudevillian feel to it—as if Abbot and Costello had performed “Who’s At Hole One.” In the small space of the Keller Williams Studio with its cocktail seating, the sense is heightened and put to good use. “Golf’s” peppy numbers are catchy and often funny, but the best moments are shared more directly with the audience.
Actor and director Joel Blum, himself a veteran of the original Off-Broadway run, and Austinite Joe Penrod do more than re-create Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, they look and sound like Al Hirschfield caricatures come to life. Their bouncy “Road to Heaven” imagines the duo’s last hole together with plenty of quirks and laughs, but also more than a few groaners. But just like the original charismatic comedians, the duo can entertain even when a pun gets used one time—or twenty—too many.
Likewise, Daniel Herron, another Broadway vet, and Jill Blackwood, for whom Austin is lucky that she hasn’t gone off to Broadway on her own, are adept at bringing the audience in behind the set jokes. Whether as a hard boiled links detective with a penchant for wordplay or, in a separate song, as a wife who’s been abandoned for a mistress composed entirely of misheard double entendres or a vamp singing many of the same, they’re able to wink at the audience and make the performance entertaining past the gag’s own merit.
That’s good, because while “Golf” is if not a one-joke show, a one-themed script. And even for someone who looks forward to the O. Henry Pun-Off each year, two hours of golf jokes is shooting above par. Compounding the problem is that while some bits actually border on clever satire, like the jingoistic “Let’s Bring Golf to the Gulf,” other “topical” references simply fall flat.
But for what it is, an evening of high talent performing largely entertaining, if innocuous, material, I’d still take “Golf: The Musical” over “Golf: The Game” any day.
(“Golf: The Musical” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. through May 10 at TexArts’ Keller Williams Studios, 2300 Lohmans Spur, Lakeway. $30-$34. 512-852-9079 x101, tex-arts.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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April 20, 2009
Review: 'Let Me Down Easy'
In most reporting, a quotation is a punctuation point. A fantastic quote is the example of a character or the pudding where we find proof, but most of the writing in a story, the underlying argument, is still the reporter’s. Sometimes there are quotes that just need room to breathe, though. “Let Me Down Easy” is all breath.
Playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith draws from hundreds of interviews, presenting a handful of them in verbatim excerpts.
Smith brings “Let Me Down Easy” to Austin’s Zach Theatre on her last stop before the play opens Off-Broadway at New York’s Second Stage Theater this fall.
The characters range from Lance Armstrong to a cancer patient and her mother from Midland to the dean of Stanford University School of Medicine. Not all have a personal or professional relationship with cancer, but each has something to say on the subject of mortality.
That includes Smith herself. In the opening speech, and the only one where she’s present as more than an unseen and unheard interviewer, Smith talks with New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr about the motivations behind “Let Me Down.”
Unsurprisingly, as Smith and Lahr point out that she hides within and between her characters, they’re the least dramatically compelling minutes of the production. Lahr reappears several times to offer some sort of advice or academic perspective. The meta-approach and critical dialog feels fussy, but also crucial to the overall project. While Smith is interviewing the subjects, the audience is asked to interrogate the work.
There’s heart, though, as well. Smith’s interpretation of some characters, like evangelist Hazel Meritt talking about her deceased daughter, have all the force of emotional body checks. Others, like a rodeo bull rider from Idaho, abound with confident humor.
Still others, like our former Texas governor Ann Richards, sparkle on the round stage, interacting with the real native Texans. All highlight Smith’s ability to shift, mercurially but precisely, from one human being to the next. And that’s impressive — sometimes stunningly so — but alone it wouldn’t matter.
The thought is as essential as the feeling. It’s the combination of Smith as mimic, reporter and curator of all these personalities that makes “Let Me Down Easy” work. Each sentimental moment is balanced by one weighing public policy ideals against reality, celebrities are compared to just folks, and bitter resignation is matched with an embrace.
Smith says the play is always changing based on past productions and future interviews, so the end result won’t stay the same. This group of characters is worth a visit, but I don’t think there’s an answer hidden in “Let Me Down Easy” — just people and lines of thought that are more or less appealing. And that’s ideal. Smith has laid out the evidence in an engaging collection. The audience can now ask the questions.
(“Let Me Down Easy” continues Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 and 7 p.m. through May 10 at Zach Theatre, 1510 Toomey Rd. $15-$65. 476-0541, www.zachtheatre.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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April 16, 2009
Review: 'Avenue Q'
I have a weakness for puppets. I suspect I’m not alone. There’s probably an explanation in evolutionary psychology and a human need to care for cute, furry things. There’s also years of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppets” drawing in young eyeballs. But as an adult — and, again, I think I’m not alone — there’s not much that’s funnier than a puppet working blue.
While the satire’s softened in the years since its opening (and Tony-award-winning season) in 2003, “Avenue Q” still knows how to find the joy in a foul-mouthed fur monster and even a few subtler jokes as well.
Avenue Q is the fictional lowest-rent section of New York City — a move to Hell’s Kitchen is a step up—and its residents are a mix of humans, puppets, monsters, and Gary Coleman. Their one common bond is that they’re all people, as the opening number explains, whom it sucks to be. But as much of a downer as the thought could be, it’s chirped more than whined and grinned more than gritted. That’s the magic of puppets; even suicide is a laugh when it’s presented by the falsetto-voiced Bad Idea Bears.
But in the central story around Princeton, a recent liberal arts graduated puppeteered by Robert McClure, and Kate Monster, a furry activist brought to life by Anika Larsen, there’s also a little real feeling. The “human” touches about a relationship help keep the material fresh and jokes poignant.
And even though the point of the production is to put the puppets in front of their operators, Kate’s stitched-on grin seems alone in the way it’s out of place with her story. No other character ever really lets their utter failure at life get the best of them, but Kate ranges from happy to sappy to bitter to spiteful. And some of those emotions are out of the range of her googly eyes. So while most of the puppeteers in their dark clothes and practice of standing just outside of the spotlight fade away, it’s easy to fall in to the habit of watching Larsen’s face as much as her hands. The juxtaposition of perma-cheer and changing feelings highlights the absurdity — and humor — of the rest of the production.
Not all elements hold up as well. “Avenue Q” is still, quite literally, a laugh a minute, but just since its opening six years ago, this brand of absurd satire has gained something between a foot- and stranglehold on pop culture. While Danielle K. Thomas’ version of Gary Coleman singing a lesson schadenfreude is still funny on a meta-level and superbly performed on its own, the larger joke has been played out countless times on the small screen.
Fortunately, while satire loses its point after a while, I’m not sure dirty puppets will ever lose their fun. And with this cast, several of whom come straight from Broadway, most of the material feels as fresh as ever. So forgive some nitpicking (my favorite Muppets were always Statler and Waldorf) and don’t miss “Avenue Q.”
(“Avenue Q” continues at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, and at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Bass Concert Hall, 2300 Robert Dedman Dr. $19.50-$73.50. 471-1444. www.utpac.org.) Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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April 14, 2009
Review: 'The Method Gun'
The Rude Mechs can’t help themselves. They have to tweak whatever they do every time they do it.
And with ‘The Method Gun’ — the theater collective’s much-heralded play from last season — the tweaks, and the Rudes, are alright.
Better than alright actually. To this critic, ‘The Method Gun’ still ranks as one of the best productions to grace the Austin theater scene in the past few years.
I said as much last year when I reviewed the show’s premiere, one of the many productions that helped open up the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
But now the Rudes are back home at the Off-Center, their East Austin warehouse performance space. And now ‘The Method Gun’ packs more intensity and more poignancy. In the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theater, the show featured plenty of visual — and theatrical — volume.In the much more intimate Off-Center, there’s no escaping the emotionally raw yet ultimately endearing ride. And the Rudes’ tweaks have made it all much more immediate and personal.
Of course, the sweet absurdity is still there. What’s not absurd about a group of actors still following an illusory acting guru named Stella Burden long after she has disappeared. So fixated with Burden’s acting technique — the method known as ‘The Method Gun’ — this group can’t let their guru go. Burden’s biggest challenge to her troupe? Present a production of Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ performed without any of the principal characters.
Isn’t that an impossibility?
But, oh, does the troupe — superbly acted by Thomas Graves, Heather Hannah, Jude Hickey, Hannah Kenah and Lana Lesley — try hard to make it work. They put themselves through humiliating exercises, frustrate themselves with acting challenges and otherwise unravel their emotions. They fight each other, they kiss each other, they scream at one another. They fumble with out-dated audio-visual equipment, plunk out tunes on a piano and consult a miniature tiger figurine that Stella Burden held dear.
Played in a series of quick-fire almost hallucinatory scenes that ricochet around in time, the play (the script was written by Kirk Lynn) seemingly in brilliant manner builds and unravels at the same time.
And the final scene — Stella Burden’s principal-less ‘Streetcar’ — emerges as one of the most polished, gorgeous, breathtaking and riveting moments on an Austin stage.
The Rudes Mechs plan to take ‘The Method Gun’ to New York’s P.S. 122 next year. Let’s hope the folks realize what we already know: The Rudes craft compelling theater.
‘The Method Gun’ continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through May 2 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. See www.rudemechs.com for ticket information.
Photo by Bret Brookshire.
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Tony Award-winning 'Avenue Q' comes to Austin
Guest blogger and American-Statesman staff Geoff West catches up with John Marx, co-creator of the Tony Award-winning puppet musical ‘Avenue Q.’ You read that right: a puppet musical.
The Muppets have Manhattan. Now “Avenue Q,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway parody inspired by the popular ‘70s TV show “Sesame Street,” brings an adult-themed satire to Bass Concert Hall. The show opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday.
Just like “Sesame Street,” colorful, outspoken puppets and their human pals join up on a fictitious street in New York City — this time called “Avenue Q.”
And though songs and music are delivered in a “familiar sing-song, rubber-ducky kind of way,” the lyrics don’t hit reading, writing and arithmetic, says co-creator Jeff Marx.
“It sort of has the flavor of the ‘Sesame Street’ teaching songs in the vocabulary of a children’s television show but it’s teaching adult themes,” Marx says.
Now, the lovable puppets are stumbling through an awkward post-college transition into real-life, dealing with topics that range from coming out of the closet to porn addictions.
Marx calls the play an “equal-opportunity parody,” as the show pokes fun at nearly every demographic. Most people get the joke; critics love it and the show’s a worldwide hit — now boosting a touring company in the U.S., a Broadway residence and a London offspring. A movie is in the works, too, he says.
“Puppets sort of have license to say blunt things that would be kind of offensive if humans were saying them,” says Marx, a law grad, who co-wrote the musical with Robert Lopez after the two men bonded in a songwriter’s workshop. “Honestly, the only people that have ever really written us letters (of disapproval) are Republicans (upset about a George Bush cameo in the lyrics of one song),” he says.
But the show’s a unanimous hit otherwise — even with the Hensons, the family of the late Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets. Leading up to the show’s humble opening at a small non-profit theatre in New York City in the Spring 2003, Marx and Lopez invited Jim Henson’s widow, daughter (and lawyer) to a reading. The writers feared a lawsuit. But to their surprise, she liked it. And Jim would too, she said. Soon after, The New York Times called it a “breakthrough musical” and four months later, “Avenue Q” was on center stage—now the 23rd longest-running show on Broadway, according to statistics compiled by the Internet Broadway Database.
We never expected that,” Marx says. “Here we are six years later going from kids living in Astoria (New York) to having Tony awards on our shelves.” He says they based the characters on themselves and friends—those from Ivy League schools who expected to “live in a high-rise in Manhattan and have a great job as the vice president of some company” after graduation only to end up Xeroxing and answering phones.
“When we grew up and entered the real world, we realized we missed having those friendly puppets,” says Marx. “The ones who could teach us how to do laundry. How to get out of jury duty.
Through a biting satire, the show teaches hope and optimism, summarized in the show’s last song, “Everything in Life is Only for Now”. Everything passes and everything changes, so hang in there, the cast sings. It’s a happy-ending and a hopeful message. And not unlike “Sesame Street.”
‘Avenue Q’ will be at 8 p.m. Wednesday, 2 and 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, 8 p.m. Friday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Bass Concert Hall, 2300 Robert Dedman Drive. $19.50-$68.50. 477-6060, www.utpac.org.
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April 10, 2009
King Arthur meets heavy metal
Guest blogger and American-Statesman staff Geoff West finds intrigue with the Getalong Gang’s theatrical mash up of heavy metal and the legend of King Arthur. Camelot? Not exactly…
We were intrigued when we got the press release for the Getalong Gang’s latest production, a heavy metal imagining of the King Arthur tale. Co-artistic director Spencer Driggers answers our questions about “Arthuriosis,” which opens this weekend at the Blue Theatre. It’s not the group’s first foray into this territory. Driggers says their production of “Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera” was “a Promethean tale in which Franklin had to climb a mountain and steal lightening from the gods. On his quest, he was beset by the siren song of a French lady of the evening and a giant three-headed eagle.”
American-Statesman: What’s the theme of the show and how did it originate?
Driggers: The show is actually adapted from a concept album we created with a group of friends over a decade ago. We took a long weekend and half-wrote, half-improved our own absurd version of the Arthurian legend. Then we recorded it on a busted-up four track recorder. For years, there was only one existing cassette tape, and the sound got progressively more awful with each listen. Luckily, we were finally able to convert it to digital, so the legacy shall remain intact.
Is there a metal opera (or any other performance) that you could compare to Arthuriosis?
The album was inspired by a Manowar song that chronicles the Trojan War, called Achillies: Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. We strive to be as epic and over-the-top as those guys. I’ve never been to a metal opera myself, but we did see a German rock opera on YouTube that was based on Faust. That looked pretty bold. And hilarious. Not sure it was intentionally funny or not, but they seemed pretty serious about it.
How closely will the performance follow King Arthur’s tale?
We tried to hit the high points, but we did add a few narrative flourishes. For instance, we felt the story needed a gnome.
Did you read any specific text by a particular author?
We drank a lot of beer and watched the movie Excalibur. That’s about the extent of the research we did. The rest was based on memories of high school English class and The Sword and the Stone.
What interests you about his story?
It’s got all the components of a classic myth. Archetypes like the hero, the innocent, the sage, the betrayer. Utopia, ruination, love, war, the supernatural. Basic good vs. evil.
Who’s the target audience?
I think metal heads will appreciate the authenticity of the music. There’s no shortage of satire for comedy fans. The overblown spectacle of the costumes, lights and set should appeal to followers of Broadway musicals and/or GWAR. There’s even a smattering of language jokes for all the grammarians out there.
Are the musicians the actors or are they separate?
The band performs live on stage, and the lead guitarist plays Arthur’s son, Mordred. He has a couple of scenes, but he only speaks through his guitar. That being said, he speaks volumes.
What was Blue Theatre’s reaction to the idea?
The Blue has always been cool with whatever shows we’ve done there. The sound was initially a challenge, since the space is not really acoustically designed for a metal show. But we got it under control once we put some foam castle walls around the drum kit.
What can the audience expect?
They can expect to laugh, cry and rock like there’s no tomorrow. Free earplugs with admission.
‘Arthuriosis’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays through April 18 at Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. www.bluetheater.org
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April 6, 2009
Review: 'Common Ground'
“Common Ground” is not a subtle play. Characters say what’s on their mind, act on their impulses, and put down wild dogs when they need to illustrate their own, potentially irreversible, failure as moral human beings. But in the space between unnaturally open dialogue and descriptions that don’t fly quite high enough to justify their artifice, Pro Arts Collective finds moments of full-force emotion and sentiment that are unmistakably powerful.
Writer Antoinette Winstead tells an old story of two brothers, but in this case the prodigal has stayed home with a knee injury while the paragon followed the Air Force to Vietnam. The particular moment in history doesn’t much affect the story, though. The bitter, almost-was rodeo star competing with his successful hero of a brother for the love of a made-to-order family could slot into most settings. The ‘60s schmaltz of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” just adds an extra punch.
Luke has, to the tune of the old standard, returned from his tour unannounced and ready to move his family away from the home where his brother and mother have provided for them in his absence. Brother James, through a mix of sincere emotion and a need to compete, is unwilling to give up his role as patriarch. As that becomes clearer and Luke must find a space for himself, the Christmas-card portrait dissolves.
Unfortunately, the characters aren’t much more nuanced than those of the parable. Descriptions and judgments fly thick in the play’sclimax, but there’s not much opportunity for us to see characters live up to those roles. Instead, we see more of the happy family—tickle fights and cookies that don’t advance the plot—and then abrupt switches into adultery and shouting.
The benefit of the no-pretense, low-subtext style is that each emotion is heightened. When Aaron Alexander’s Luke is angry, he is furiously so. When Robbie Ann Darby as the wife is conflicted between love and duty, she is poignantly so. When LeVan Owens as James sulks or dawdles his makeshift daughter on his leg, it’s wrenchingly bitter.
I was once told that if you simply take each of Shakespeare’s line at face value, the emotion and transitions come through as sudden and intense as a shotgun blast. But Shakespeare’s language is heightened by poetry. Winstead’s is straddling the fence between natural and plain. We’re given a collection of actors who can wring anger or tenderness from those lines, but the effect comes largely from the basic plot and their strength of emotion.
One perfect marriage is between Feliz McDonald and the part of Rosa Young. As a boozy, effervescent b-girl, she struts, shrieks, and snaps with impunity and lack of perception of the larger situation—a regular fool—and draws loud laughs with each step across the stage. As a scorned woman drawn into the dysfunctional family, she knows more than she lets on, until it’s time for a pointed reveal.
All that emotion makes for a powerful climax, though it’s muted by moralizing and a need to suddenly show a tender side to relationships with no introduction. Regardless, the blow-ups and confessions can’t compete with smaller, quieter moments. Taking a break from explaining his thoughts, Luke simply does. As the rest of the family gathers at the table, Aaron Alexander stood in the back of the stage and idly fingered a branch of the Christmas tree, looking in from the outside of a 2-year tour abroad.
Blunt honesty is powerful, but those hidden moments are the real Christmas gifts.
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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March 30, 2009
Texas Biennial brims with brio: 4
Oh, Jill Pangallo is so funny. But mostly she is smart. And when she weaves funny and smart together as she did Friday night with “Let Me Entertain You,” her solo show presented as part of the Texas Biennial, she comes up with something poignant and a little painful in its truth telling.
Conceived, written and performed by Pangallo, “Let Me Entertain You” was nonetheless culled from writings, emails and notes by 11 of Pangallo’s peers who respond to her email asking for “donated” writing. The theme? Identity.
About 200 people braved a freakishly cold and windy spring night on Friday to fill the seats at the Fiesta Gardens stage and courtyard, a modest municipal facility with its own identity problem of sorts. (It’s plays host to everything from community fundraisers to quincenañeras.)
To such a motley stage, and with a certain do-it-yourself production value of over-the-top costumes and campy style, Pangallo brought a cast of equally motley characters. Some appeared via video; others we saw live.
There was a painfully shallow couple who met on one reality show and auditioned for another. A dowdy woman who found comfort and meaning via YouTube cat videos. An anxious college student who spilled her heart to an answering machine. Even the eccentricities of a Renaissance fair don’t have room for the fantasy self of Pangallo’s sad characters.
These are 21st-century lonelyhearts — people whose ability to communicate has become over-mediated by media to the point that they are trapped by their own utter inability to communicate at all.
That’s sad. It’s also comical. In Pangallo’s hands, it’s Facebook-age schadenfreude writ live and on stage. (Pangallo’s all-too-true monologue about Facebook’s time-sucking erstaz communication made for a real highlight.)
Pangallo understands that ultimately, performance art has to be theater, no matter what conceptual conceits are foisted on it. And theater is what she delivered.
After all, like she said, she was there to entertain us.
Photo: Jill Pangallo as P.J. Chavez.
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March 19, 2009
Review: Remaining truthful to 'The Grapes of Wrath'
When Nobel Prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck penned “The Grapes of Wrath” in the 1930s, the world was gripped in an historic economic, political and social crisis that would end only after fundamental changes that came about thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and its programs — programs that are still instrumental safety nets today such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Social Security system.
We face tough times now, though in very minor measure when compared to the profoundly wide-spread deprivation of the Great Depression.
Still, Steinbeck’s story of the Joad family’s exodus from the ruined Dust Bowl of Depression-era Oklahoma — now in its stage iteration at Zach Theatre — makes for a timely reminder of the power of community, as it would no matter when it’s staged.
Almost 20 years ago, Frank Galait, of Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company, took on the challenge of adapting Steinbeck’s now-iconic novel for the stage. And the resulting play netted Galati a Tony Award in 1990 for Best Play.
Zach Theatre artistic director Dave Steakley now brings his vision of Galati’s faithful adaptation to Zach’s Kleberg Stage in a solid and sure production.
Galati’s packed plenty of Steinbeck’s long and winding narrative into a two-and-one-half-hour two-act drama. And it dashes along, with the plot and exposition fairly whisking by in a blink at times. Still, it’s all crammed in there: the Joad’s journey in a decrepit truck to California in search of a better life, the realization that there is no promised land of abundant well-paying work, the harsh injustices of an exploitative agri-business system and the call for an collective action and understanding.
Perhaps true to Steinbeck credo of collection action, Galati’s theatrical treatment offers a showcase for ensemble acting. And the 22-member Zach cast pulls it off with aplomb. A passle of Zach Theatre and Austin acting veterans — Dirk Van Allen, Marc Pouhe, Lana Deitrick, Harvey Guion, Janelle Buchanan, Tom Green, Zach Thompson - front the tight ensemble, some of whom seamlessly shape-shift through multiple characters.
Music director Allen Robertson has crafted an effective musical overlay of traditional songs and hymns that lace throughout the drama, sung by cast members (led by singer/actor John Pointer on guitar), setting mood and serving as nice transitional interludes between scenes.
Set designer Cliff Simon conceived of sparse stage that through color and simple effects evoked the dusty, parched fields. An inventive wheeled wooden contraption played the part of the Joad’s jalopy.
Most importantly, though, Galati’s stage adaptation includes Steinbeck’s original ending — a symbolic act of humanity in which a starving man is breast fed — a scene omitted from the popular 1940 John Ford film version, likely because of its then-controversial nature.
That simple yet profound act gives Steinbeck’s story the resonance that’s carried through some 80 years after it was first published. As Tom Joad himself says “Maybe I can do somethin’… maybe find out it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t something that can be done about.”
“The Grapes of Wrath” plays 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through May 10. Kleberg Stage, Zach Theatre, W. Riverside Dr. and S. Lamar Blvd. $36-$46 ($20 on Wednesdays)/ www.zachtheatre.org.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck, courtesy Zach Theatre.
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March 11, 2009
Review: 'Spamalot'
Guest blogger and American-Statesman features writer Patrick Beach review’s “Monty Python’s Spamalot” while American-Statesman freelancer John DeFore asks the show’s star, Richard Chamberlain, a few questions
Coconut shells. The “Fisch Schlapping Dance.” “Not dead yet.” A black knight who insists on continuing the battle, never mind the pesky amputations and arterial spray. And a killer rabbit.
By this point, we all know these bits will be in “Spamalot,” the musical “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail,’ ” as they put it in the playbill. The show, with book and lyrics by Python alum Eric Idle, won a Tony for best musical in ‘05 and made enough dough to fill a moat while on Broadway. We can’t expect many surprises. We’re going to get an adaptation of a 1975 movie and a few of the Pythons’ greatest hits. Thematic or tonal coherence? Who cares? The original Python cast never did.
But at Tuesday night’s opening of a six-day run at Bass Concert Hall, the show felt like a comfort food entree with a twist for the side dish. The sound was spot-on, the sets dizzyingly adaptable (moving clouds that served as supertitles for a closing sing-along) and the full house was just waiting to laugh at lines they’d heard only a thousand times before. (Wait for it, wait for it … ni!) It must be said that Richard (“Dr. Kildare,” “The Thornbirds”) Chamberlain is a very fine King Arthur, playing him as both oblivious and in on the joke, and that Merle Dandridge as the brazenly ambitious Lady in the Lake — a part she also played in the Broadway production — is a near show-stealer. I still don’t get how the Pythons’ version of wanton silliness and deadpan dadaism could ever be translated into a Broadway musical, which is all extravagance and hyperbole and light, but it does and does so even while grappling with the greatest theological brow-furrower ever to confront the human race: Why can’t God find another cup?
The best moments not cribbed from the film or the TV series arguably are when the show pays fromage to cheesy Broadway and Vegas musicals, but let’s face it, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a record-busting pike in a thimble-sized barrel. The audience’s laughs were genuine, but it’s cheap and easy sport.
But a cow falling out of the sky and squashing somebody? Now that’s comedy. And I really, really hope God has John Cleese’s voice.
— Pat Beach, AA-S features writer
‘Spamalot” continues 8 p.m. night throughSaturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. $21.50-$65.50. 51-477-6060, www.utpac.org.
Richard Chamberlain, who takes the stage next week as King Arthur in “Spamalot,” owes the bulk of his fan base not to Monty Python-style irreverence but to dignified melodrama and globe-spanning adventure. He emerged in the 1960s as television’s “Dr. Kildare,” made hit movies in the ’70s and then became king of the miniseries in the ’80s with “Shogun,” “The Bourne Identity,” and (be still your beating heart) “The Thorn Birds.” Speaking to us on the phone recently, he was just as genial and charming as legions of admirers would expect.
Austin American-Statesman: Were you very aware of ‘Monty Python’ when it was originally on TV?
Richard Chamberlain: Yes, I was living in London from ’68 through ’74, and we were avid fans. We thought they were just miraculously funny.
Any favorite bits?
Well, (laughs), the one that sticks in my mind — I hate to be boring — is the Bureau of Silly Walks. Oh, what an amazing thing!
When they started making the transition to features, what did you think?
Well, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the features. Matter of fact, the first time I saw the movie that this musical is based on was just a few weeks ago.
How did you like it compared with the play?
Well, I think the musical is about 10 times funnier than the movie.
What’s it like filling Tim Curry’s shoes? Did you see him do the show?
No, unfortunately. I wanted to see him so badly, but I was never in the right place at the right time. I didn’t see the musical until just before Christmas in New York last year. They’ve had many kings now, and according to what I’ve heard, they’ve all been very different.
So there’s no temptation, given that the play has been so successful, not to stray too far from the performance fans know.
Oh, no, no, no. With the king, the two kings I’ve seen, the one in New York and the one who preceded me in the road company, were totally different. And I’m completely different from both of them. The thing about Arthur is he’s the only one onstage who doesn’t get the jokes. He’s fun to play.
Just as ‘Spamalot’ has turned ‘The Holy Grail’ into a musical, one of your most famous television outings, ‘The Thorn Birds’ is being staged as a musical.
I just heard that, about a week ago! I was absolutely bowled over. I can’t imagine it. I mean, it would be more of an opera, wouldn’t it, than a musical, because it’s just one tragedy after another.
Any advice for them as they try to adapt it?
Oh no. I wouldn’t dare! I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like.
Well, that’s such a trend now, of trying to make musicals from unlikely sources.
They tried to make a musical of “Shogun”! But it didn’t work.
— John DeFore, AA-S freelancer
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March 4, 2009
Horton Foote: 1916-2009
Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote has died, the AP reported today.
A master storyteller and native of Wharton, Texas, Foote chronicled the human experience through the lens of the ordinary people who populated the small town America in such “The Trip to Bountiful,” “Tender Mercies” and his Oscar-winning screen adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
In all, his scripts earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards.
Although Foote left Wharton when he was 16, he kept the family home and in many ways, never left artistically. His plays and screenplays focused on the misleading pull of nostalgia.
“My first memory was of stories about the past — a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived,” Foote wrote in 1988. “It didn’t take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone and nothing could be done about it.”
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March 1, 2009
Steven Dietz: Working playwright
How do you get your plays performed around the country?
Work, work, work.
A no-nonsense work ethic is what keeps Steven Dietz in the position as one of the most produced playwrights in the country. Self-effacing and modest, the 50-year-old Denver native and long-time Seattlite recently relocated to Austin to teach playwriting at the University of Texas, his first-ever teaching gig.
Read more on DIetz and his earnest approach to theater-making.
Read a review of “Shooting Star” Dietz’s bittersweet comedy now getting a smart premiere at Zach Theatre.
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February 23, 2009
Review: 'Heroes'
Don’t go to “Heroes” looking for Tom Stoppard. Although the French play, originally by Gerald Sibleyras, was translated by the writer of “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead,” it has almost none of his characteristic complications or often bitter wit. And it would be a mistake to miss them. Instead, in Austin Playhouse’s new production, we’re treated to wistful banter and a story about French veterans of World War I looking for a better life than their retirement home.
Within the first few moments of the play, we already know essentially what will happen: Michael Stuart as Henri will capitalize on his hangdog eyes and gentle nature; David Stahl’s Phillipe will drift between paranoia and epileptic flashbacks; and Don Toner’s Gustave will provide a brusque, curmudgeonly counterpoint. Those patterns and personalities play out as the three plan for a getaway—“a commando expedition”—to a hill some miles away where the wind blows through the poplars.
There are other events that happen off stage, but what action there is is constrained to a garden terrace and three old men arguing with each other. What keeps it from becoming “The Odd Trio” is a more measured, paced, and friendly tone to the group’s ribbing. Felix and Oscar have grown up, developed a sense of nostalgia, and found a friend
There is zaniness to be sure, ranging from a canine statue that takes on an imaginary life to physical comedy as the threesome preps for its trip, but it’s always balanced by more heart and pondering than Neil Simon or Stoppard usually managed. There’s a sentimentally that threw me off initially when I was expecting more bite than warmth, but under Lara Toner’s direction, the veterans don’t so much grow so much as grow on you.
Indeed, there isn’t much variation, and that’s the only real problem with the production. The trio’s comic timing is by and large on point, but, by the end, that means you can see more than a few of the laughs coming. It has the effect of building affection, but in the same way you grow to love a grandfather who tells the same jokes over and over again. It can be amusing, comforting, and a little wearying all at once.
Fortunately, the play itself is short and the three never really wear out their welcome, even through an ending that carries the one heavy handed note of symbolism in the play. Instead, we’re left, as after a pleasant visit, with fond memories and good laughs.
(“Heroes” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m. through March 15 at The Austin Playhouse, Larry L. King Stage, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C. $10-$20. 476-0084, austinplayhouse.com)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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February 22, 2009
Review: 'An Ideal Husband'
Would that Oscar Wilde could be a media pundit for our times. The ultra-clever Victorian wordsmith and incisive observer of human behavior could inject some sorely needed wit and ironic humor into today’s culture of unceasing and shallow chatter.
Alright we can’t resurrect Wilde the man. But we do have Austin Shakespeare’s current smart and charming production of “An Ideal Husband,” Wilde’s comedy of blackmail and political scandal, to enchant us with — and remind us of how timely and relevant Wilde’s criticism of politics and society is today.
A co-production with the University of Texas’ theater program, and directed by Austin Shakespeare artistic director Ann Ciccolella, this “Ideal Husband” snaps thanks to uniformly sharp acting. And played in the round in the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre (the first production to take advantage of the black box theater’s flexibility), Wilde’s intrigue-filled drawing room comedy clips along briskly. And sumptuous period costumes by Abbey Graf aptly suggest the materialistic milieu.
A rising young member of parliament, Sir Robert Chiltern (Mark Scheibmeir) has the ideal career, the ideal adoring wife (Sydney Andrews) and the ideal society ranking in the hyper class-conscious London of the late Victorian era where, just like today, politics is celebrity.
But all of Sir Robert’s social and political eminence is suddenly endangered when the scheming Mrs. Cheveley (Verity Branco) — a mysterious woman from his wife’s past — threatens to blackmail him and expose the youthful act of corruption that leveraged his fortune.
“Everybody turns out to be somebody else,” Wilde’s one-liner filled script quips.
Indeed. The ambitious upstanding Sir Robert isn’t exactly what he seems. And to rescue his career, marriage and social standing he must rely on best friend, Lord Goring (Shaun Patrick Tubbs), a dandy who spends his days dressing fastidiously for one silly social event after the other. Yet for all his foppery and carefree lifestyle, it’s Goring who saves the situation thanks to his supreme understanding of the follies of human nature, particularly the vagaries of love.
Branco makes a devilish icy beauty of the kniving Mrs. Cheveley while Scheibmeir’s Sir Robert is suitably full of a combination supreme self-regard and total naiveté.
But it’s Tubbs, one of five UT graduate student actors in the show, who shines brightest as Goring, combing impeccable comedic timing with a dollop of psychological complexity to make the dandy Goring well-rounded.
“Ambition is unscrupulous always,” Goring observes. Indeed. More than a century after Wilde penned his satire of political ambition, its incisive observations still ring true.
“An Ideal Husband” plays 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3p.m. Sunday at Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center, 711 W. Riverside Dr. $20-$32. www.austinshakespeare.org.
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February 16, 2009
Review: 'Shooting Star'
We’d all like to think we’ve escaped our youth. Actually, we’d all like to think that everyone else forgot us too when we were flush with idealism, when we were confident that our life would go exactly according to a grandiose plan, when we were certain we would do great and different things.
Steven Dietz sends a tender valentine to middle-age in “Shooting Star,” a smart and sweet comedy from one of American theater’s most-produced playwright and now getting a polished premiere at Zach Theatre.
Years ago, when they were in college, Elena Carson (Barbara Chisholm) and Reed McAllister (Jamie Goodwin) were madly in love and living the bohemian life together. Elena was the ultimate free-spirit and Earth mother-in-the-making; Reed tried be a free-spirit, but wrestled with his more thoughtful nature. They experimented with an open relationship, they told each other they were both destined for significant and soul-changing lives.
Then they broke up. And they didn’t see each other for 20 years. Now they’ve run into each other again, both stuck at a snowed in airport.
Dietz’s gift as a writer is an acute attention to our modern language. He elevates ordinary conversation to a kind of music with precise rhythms and exquisitely timed phrases. In Dietz’s hands conversation sounds natural, but smart.
That kind of linguistic precision could weigh down an actor. But Chisholm and Goodwin deftly handled the clever banter, never letting the energy slide during the 80-minute intermission-less play. And though the plot may see the characters traverse a mountain of emotion — the regret, the unfulfilled dreams, the acceptance of the reality of one’s present life — Chisholm and Goodwin shoulder it with sincerity.
Played tightly in the round on Zach Theater’s Whisenhunt Stage, “Shooting Star” doesn’t let you get far away from the bittersweet actuality of life considered at middle-age. But then why try to? Dietz makes reality poetic.
“Shooting Star” continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays—Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through April 5. Whisenhunt Stage, Zach Theatre, 1510 Toomey Road. $15-$39. 476-0541. www.zachtheatre.org.
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February 9, 2009
Review: 'The Secret Live of the InBetweeners'
“The Secret Lives of the InBetweeners” launches with a musical number exploring the mind of the urban hipster as an artist, two women, a gamer, and rich Lothario pine for a breakthrough, love and independence, the next level and sex. Unfortunately, the mind of a stereotype doesn’t leave much room for secrets.
The new musical from Aaron Brown proceeds largely according to the pattern set by its first song. Joe is struggling to get his play and love life together. Tina, his sort-of sweetheart, wants affection, but falls for slime ball Harry. Her friend Charlotte, a computer programmer with dreams of the stage, warns her off but becomes caught up with video game fanatic Waldo instead.
Were it not for the addition of personified Hope and Fear, the plot would run like “Rent” revised by the “Sex and the City” team—with less of a sense of humor. Even these, though, are more clichés than archetypes. Hope, played by a doe-eyed, Raphaelite Betsy McCann, is indeed hopeful, but Fear, played as a snarky goth by Rudy Ramirez, doesn’t exactly set the knees knocking.
That may be part of the point. His opening number — in the vein of “Sympathy for the Devil,” but with less bravado — establishes him as the source of history’s problems, though he’s reduced by modernity to playing on personal insecurities rather than terror. Regardless of how the last eight years might stand against that, it makes for a less-than-compelling emotional conflict.
That’s particularly problematic as the second act of the play makes an abrupt jump from an urban relationship story to a supernatural wager, replacing Job with Joe. Except where Job had boils and a family massacre, Joe is a 30-year-old director with an overbearing mother who, in his moment of catharsis, he runs away from before getting scared and hungry after an hour.
The music itself is prone to quick switches, with most songs bouncing wildly around the thematic map and to the border of or out of many singers’ ranges. Instead of catchy hooks, it feels more like a mash-up collection of Muzak.
That’s too bad because the book and score obscure some performers that could do well elsewhere. While I found Waldo’s constant video game references annoying (or, as a gamer who also enjoys musical theater, almost frustratingly mocking) at first, Errich Petersen’s bouncy enthusiasm for Waldo’s lack of shame is winning. And when Charlotte, even more charmingly energetic and strong in Jo Beth Henderson’s jazzy numbers, finally sees that in him, the love story gets one of its few “awww” moments.
Musicals don’t have to be big and epic — Penfold Theatre Company’s recent staging of “The Last Five Years” proved that — but “Secret Lives” just doesn’t feel original.
(“The Secret Lives of the InBetweeners” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through March 7 at the Vortex, 2307 Manor Road. $10-$30. 478-5282. vortexrep.org.)
[Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance critic.]
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February 6, 2009
Rude Mechs grow new Shoot
Congratulations to Austin theater collective Rude Mechs. They’ve raised $80,000 toward the creation of a new home for Grrl Action, the Rude’s writing and performance program for teenage girls.
The Rudes have secured 1,400-square-feet of warehouse space adjacent to their current East Austin venue, the Off Center, to transform into the Off Shoot, a dedicated space for Grrl Action participants to research, write and rehearse for performances and to create their multi-disciplinary year-round projects. It will include a studio space with sound and light equipment, desks, lockers, seating and a resource lab with video and computer equipment, and a library.
A recent gift of $40,000 from The Laos House—Center for Personal Learning brings the campaign closer to finishing in time for the 10th anniversary class of Grrl Action beginning July 2009.
Local architectural designer Nicole Blair, of Studio 512, is providing her services pro bono to realize the design. She has enlisted local contractor Ramirez Homes, Inc to oversee the project.Also providing support for the Off Shoot are Impact Austin, The Meadows Foundation, Austin Community Foundation and Dollar General Corporation.
Go girls!
A room of her own: before. Raw warehouse space waiting for renovation.
A room of her own: after. Designer Nicole Blair’s plan to tranform warehouse space into a workshop for Grrl Action.
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January 26, 2009
Review: 'The Bird' and 'The Bee'
“The Bird and The Bee” is essentially two very good plays within one great production.
“The Bird,” by Al Smith, and “The Bee,” by Matt Hartley, were originally staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as two separate offerings, giving audiences the chance to view them a la carte or take in the double billing. In Capital T Theatre’s new take, it’s hard to imagine them apart.
Each play tells the story of a different teenager and how they came to meet, fall in love, and die. In “The Bee,” Chloe, played by Tayler Gill, weathers the death of her brother in a traffic accident and is confronted by the insincerity of her friends and neighbors’ mourning. While Gill stands silent, lost in her own feelings, her fame-seeking friend Hannah, played to comically loathsome hyperbole by Melissa Recalde, sets up a virtual memorial, trite pop songs and all.
In “The Bird,” we meet Jakob, who appears only as a silent figure on the other end of Chloe’s instant messages in “The Bee.” While his looming presence there makes him seem a predator taking advantage of Chloe’s suburban discontent, we soon find out that the poor teen’s life is in a whole new category of misery. The crippled son of an immigrant Russian prostitute, Jakob’s only father figure is a teacher who quickly chooses to become a John instead of an inspiration. And yet Jakob remains, for the most part, hopeful and romantic.
I won’t give away the rather dramatic plot revelation that ties the two pieces irrevocably together, but it certainly makes viewing them individually hard to understand. The playwrights add in other little motifs and themes that run across both works, but the more impressive connections are brought out by director Kelli Bland.
“The Bee” is a quiet, bitterly comic play. Chloe is precocious and naïve and prone to ruminating on the nature of public and private spaces, online and off. It’s a work of sweet, subtle connections, with conversations between a drawn-in Gill and her brother, friends, and silent Jakob filling the time.
“The Bird,” however, is largely a monologue by Jakob, played here by Chase Wooldridge giving the best performance that I’ve seen from him. As Jakob relates his life story, he begins with a child’s magical perspective on the world: the clothes left behind by his mother’s visitors are relics of ghosts, the bees in an ever-expanding hive reminiscent of their spirits. The narrative builds like a sad fairy tale until, in a burst of rage, Wooldrige explodes on the ghosts, trying to stop their visits and save his mother. It’s portentous, but disquieting in its own sudden transition.
That switch is the key to the two plays that Bland and her talented ensemble have found to unlock their strengths. On its own, each play is poignant and well executed. As a dual offering, they take on a new tenor of both beauty and horror. “The Bee” strings out the audience’s tension as Gill goes through an arc of ennui to happiness even while the play itself grows tragic. While the cast wrings out all the comedy they can from the horrible townspeople, it can still be a slow build, focusing more on thoughts than actions. That it’s punctuated by the gut punch of “The Bird,” though, makes it a perfect prelude and the pair a wonderful, if emotionally exhausting, combination.
(“The Bird and The Bee” continues at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 28 and at 7 p.m. Jan. 30 at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. $10. 479-PLAY, fronterafest.org)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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