Alvida and the Airship Pirates, Weird City Theatre Company

I was on the last airship with Alvida out of Weird City on March 12 and as sometimeshappens with scribes errant, I got too busy and distracted to send her, author John Carroll and their band of adventures a proper bread-and-butter note.

Your mother may have admonished you about good manners, as does the mother of my children. It’s never too late, although sometimes it’s too late to do much good. I prefer the warm glow of virtue associated with writing the first review to hit the electronic doorstep, for there’s the cyberghost of a chance that it’ll attract another spectator. Or, to use the Britishism entirely appropriate to this steampunk adventure, it’ll put an additional bum on the seat.

The Weird citizens like to play with their plays. With this script John gave colleague Patti Teff-Niven as the eponymous Alvida a hand into chick adventure with the warm and vivacious Bridget Farias as her best buddy. The Alvida stage at the familiar imagination station of the Dougherty Arts Center featured a fine crew of female troopers on both sides as well as Weird regulars Kevin Gouldthorpe and Robert Berry.

I confess that I don’t know much about steampunk, a curious genre that seems half Victorian and half sci-fi, but I’ve noticed that it’s capturing a lot of imagination these days. Earlier this week, while I was checking background for the steampunk Tempest that Frank Benge is putting together for the Sam Bass Community Theatre in Round Rock, I found that there’s even a steampunk Shakespeare website encouraging submissions of bard-derived steampunk adventures. That invitational tournament is open until the end of May.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .