Upcoming: Antigone by Jean Anouilh, Oh Dragon Theatre Company at Casa de Luz, November 9 - 18

Oh Dragon Theatre Company

presents

Antigone
by Jean Anouilh

directed by Nathan Brockett
Casa De Luz Auditorium - 1701 Toomey Road Austin, TX 78704 (click for map)
Saturdays Nov. 10 and 17 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Friday, November 16 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 18 at 8 p.m.Ticket price - $10.00




Nathan Brockett adapts French playwright Jean Anouilh's modernized version of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The story is set in the sleek palace of a fascist state ruled by Creon. His niece Antigone is horrified by Creon's order that the body of her brother--who led a rebellion against the state--be left on the battlefield to rot. When she violates the edict, guards haul her before Creon, who struggles to convince her that his reasons are honorable, despite the ugly consequences, but Antigone remains steadfast, even though her death will result.

Featuring the talents of Danielle Evon Ploeger, Richard Dodwell, Samantha Wiley, Austin Amelio, Anna Schatte, Cami Eastman, Kel Sanders, Michael Davis, and Dalton Hamilton.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Secondary Cause of Death, Sam Bass Community Theatre, September 24 - October 16

The Sam Bass players put their energy and ingenuity into Peter Gordon’s Secondary Cause of Death and I did get some smiles from it. The Round Rock thespian crew under Lynn Beaver's direction were performing the equivalent of CPR on a piece that probably should have been selected for unfavorable triage at a much earlier date.

With this play the British playwright wrote the second in his “Inspector Pratt” trilogy, a follow-up to his Murdered to Death, done successfully last year at the Sam Bass Community Theatre. That was a parody of the never-out-of-print-and-ever-popular Agatha Christie’s “Miss Marple” series of detective stories. In addition to “Miss Joan Maple” played by Veronica Prior, the murder-in-the-mansion story featured Frank Benge as Inspector Pratt ( = in British slang, “idiot”), a sort of looming English version of Inspector Clouseau. Richard Dodwell was the old chap retired colonel from India. That play wound up in the classic confrontation in the drawing room, during which (spoiler alert!) Miss Maple herself was revealed to be the culprit and the colonel’s good wife went off to the loony bin.

A general rule of thumb in the cinema is that follow-up pieces, the ones bearing those Roman numerals II, III, IV and so on, are not going to be as good as the originals. The surprises of the initial story become familiar background, the thrill is gone, and one waits to see the ingenuity of the scriptwriters and the director. Infrequently, it works – if one has the resources and the imagination of, say, George Lucas or of Gene Rodenberry and the fleet of creative teams that followed him. Even the playwriting trio of Jones, Hope & Wooton managed it, because the antics of their insane Futrelle sisters have some outrageously silly things to say to us about contemporary small town Texas. (Check out their newest in a Sam Bass exclusive in December.)

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Sunday in the Park, Musicale, Bastrop Opera House, April 17 - May 9

Bastrop's serenely strolling musicale Sunday in the Park recalled that quaint Victorian device, the cardboard puppet theatre -- an elaborate dollhouse stage in which children could push forward stylized cardboard cutouts, imagining dialogue and story. In this production, Engela Edwards of Easy Theatre, Bastrop Opera's long-serving general director Chester Eitze and choreographer Laura Goff create for us a never-land version of an America small town, circa 1915.

They draw on songbooks of the era, lightly and whimsically staging almost 50 songs with fetching melodies, most of them familiar. These are the agreeable melodies you might find on player piano rolls or, once upon a time, in the yellowing music sheets inside Grandma's piano stool. The large cast performs them with affection, in a succesion of tableaus and skits without spoken dialogue (except for "Delaney's Donkey," a mock-epic comic tale about a village race, done by Nick Collier in his character as the village policeman).

Click to read more on AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .