A MINISTER'S WIFE, Penfold Theatre at Trinity Street Theatre, March 28 - April 14, 2013,

presents

A Minister's Wife

Music by Joshua Schmidt, lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen, and book by Austin Pendleton
Directed by Michael McKelvey
Featuring Jill Blackwood, Andrew Cannata, Amy Downing, Greg Holt and Nathan Jerkins

March 28 - April 14, 2013
Playing at Trinity Street Theatre, 4th floor of First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street, Austin

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm. Sundays at 5:00pm.
Opening night party following the show on Thursday, March 28th.
$25 Opening night, $20 Regular, $18 Students, $18 Seniors (age 60+).


For more information, email us at info@penfoldtheatre.org or dial (512) 850-4849. On performance days, we are available by phone from 1pm to the start of the performance.

In this regional premiere of a new American musical, George Bernard Shaw's riveting drama, Candida, is given an innovative and emotive score by the award-winning composers of Adding Machine. The piece whisks us away to 1890's London to experience the love triangle between the charismatic Reverend James Morell, his strong-willed and beautiful wife Candida, and the idealistic young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who aims to win Candida's love.

In this regional premiere of a new American musical, George Bernard Shaw's riveting drama, Candida, is given an innovative and emotive score by the award-winning composers of Adding Machine. The piece whisks us away to 1890's London to experience the love triangle between the charismatic Reverend James Morell, his strong-willed and beautiful wife Candida, and the idealistic young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who aims to win Candida's love.

Running time: About 1 hour 35 minutes, without intermission.

Recommended for ages high school and up.

In the news

"The most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza. To say that you mustn't miss it is to grossly understate the case." -The Wall Street Journal

Sponsors This production would not be possible without support from the City of Austin, the Creative Fund and Dramatists.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris with Martin Burke, Zach Theatre, November 24 - December 23

by Michael Meigs



The Zach says that this is the last time -- for a while -- they'll stage David Sedaris' The Santaland Diaries. This is the 15th (!) season they've done it, so perhaps it's time for retirement, but if like me you've abstained from witnessing this Zach holiday ritual, it's time to swing on board before the caboose gets out of reach. Director Dave Steakley notes that Martin Burke has been doing his role as Crumpet the elf since the first production. Burke took a sabbatical of sorts in 2009 when African-American Espy Randolph did the show to appreciative reviews but the Austin originator was back again in 2010. For the 2012 run they're selling tickets only through the 23rd. On that Sunday Martin Burke does his last Crumpet the Elf at two shows, one at 2:30 p.m. and the other at 7 p.m.

Sedaris' text is smug and sarcastic, an appropriate antidote to all the sugar swirlilng in the air at this time of year, but Martin Burke himself is the reason to go see these sayanora performances. Burke has the fresh, guileless enthusiasm of a child, regardless of the scores -- no, hundreds -- of times that he has done this material. The contrast between that expressive, often beaming face and the cynical account of a season working as an elf-by-the-hour in Macy's Santland triggers your funny reflexes, and Burke has such happy charisma that he's instantly your friend. He's practically within reach, for the Zach's Whisenhut stage is a 150-seat theatre in the round.

Since the Macy's bit is intense but short, Zach and other companies that do this popular piece inevitably couple it with something else. The Zach production opens with a different Sedaris monologue, with Burke as an enthusiastic boy who discovers that his working class mother is friends through her job with a real, live workin' prostitute. The script is not so amusing in itself, but Burke's wide-eyed enthusiasm makes it pleasing. (The Playhouse in San Antonio is balancing its 'Santaland Diaries' featuring Jimmy Moore with 'Season's Greetings,' also by Sedaris, featuring Molly Cox -- slugging down booze from the bottle in the production promo photos.)

Zach's presentation is spiced up by some sly and somewhat naughty Christmas songs delivered femme fatale style by Amy Downing during the week and by Jill Blackwood on weekends, to the accompaniment of Jason Connor, the man with the accomplished fingers and unflappable presence of a lounge player who has smiled at it all.

I shared this experience with a friend from out of town, transplanted back to the United States after decades in Europe. He was particularly impressed by the warmth of Burke's performance and the man's ability to move our emotions in an instant from jolly mocking laughter to an unexpected pang of sympathy by capturing us with his actor's heart-catching sincerity. My friend vowed that this was a particularly American artistic characteristic and he found Burke marvelous at it.

Perhaps The Santaland Diaries has indeed arrived at the end of its useful life as a holiday chestnut and revenue raiser for 'Austin's theatre.' But we're blessed to have little big man Martin Burke still very much with us. He's scheduled to inhabit Elwood P. Dowd, friend of Harvey the rabbit, this coming May and June. You can be certain that the performance will be unique, perhaps with just the tiniest echo of Jimmy Stewart, but with a great deal of the charisma of Mr. Burke.

EXTRA

Click to view excerpts from the Zach's program for The Santaland Diaries with Martin Burke

Upcoming: The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris and Joe Mantiello, Zach Theatre, November 24 - December 23

presents


THE SANTALAND DIARIES

written by David Sedaris • Adapted for stage by JOE MANTELLO • Directed by DAVE STEAKLEY • Starring MARTIN BURKE, AMY DOWNING (for evening performances) and JILL BLACKWOOD (on matinees)

Musical Director and Arrangements by JASON  CONNOR
Original Set Design by HEYD FONTENOT • Lighting Design by JASON AMATO • Sound Design by CRAIG BROCK • Properties Design by BLAKE REEVES • Costume Design by BLAIR HURRY

THE SANTALAND DIARIES previews November 23 - Opening night is Saturday, November 24 (Press night) - Performances continue through December 23, Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
To order tickets call 512-476-0541 ext. 1 or visit www.zachtheatre.org. Tickets range from $35-$65.

Student Rush Tickets: $18 one hour before showtime (with valid ID). 
 ZACH’s bar opens one hour before showtime.

ZACH’s intimate Whisenhunt Stage, 1510 Toomey Road, (Toomey intersects S. Lamar Blvd. between W. Cesar Chavez and Barton Springs Rd.)

ZACH’s production of THE SANTALAND DIARIES is sponsored in part by Lina’s Cocoa Couture.

Austin's favorite irreverent elf returns in the 15^th — and final — edition of Sedaris' hysterical tale of elfin woe. Enjoy the real-life story of Sedaris' tour of duty at Macy’s as Crumpet the elf, and what it takes to juggle tots and tottering Santas during a painfully festive time of the year. A laugh 'til you cry evening of merrily subversive entertainment to delight adult audiences! (Note: mature themes.)


For real-time updates on ZACH Theatre news, events and happenings, visit http://www.zachtheatre.org/blog, be a fan of ZACH Theatre on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/zachtheatre, and follow ZACH on Twitter @zachtheatre http://www.twitter.com/zachtheatre.


About ZACH Theatre ZACH Theatre is Austin’s leading professional producing theatre, employing more than 600 actors, musicians, and designers annually. Founded in 1932, ZACH is the longest running theatre company in Texas, serving 95,000 adults and youth annually. ZACH creates its own nationally recognized plays and musicals that ignite the imagination, lift the spirit, and engage the community under the proven leadership of Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley and Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. Launching its 80th season in 2012, ZACH continues to expand and engage with Austin, adding the new 420-seat, 32,000-square-foot Topfer Theatre to its performing arts campus, nearly doubling ZACH’s capacity while retaining its hallmark intimate theatre-going experience. Visit www.zachtheatre.org for more information.


ZACH Theatre is sponsored in part, by Applied Materials, Austin Catering, Four Hands Home, Holiday Inn-Lady Bird Lake, Kirk Tuck Photography, Marquee Event Group, OnRamp, Austin American-Statesman, KXAN TV 36, and Time Warner Cable; and by grants from Junior League of Austin, The Shubert Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, which believes an investment in the arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.


(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

I Love You Because, Penfold Theatre, June 9 - 26

by Michael Meigs

Michael McKelvey set up his collaboration with Penfold Theatre and Andrew Cannata six months or more in advance, long before the announcement that he will be leaving Austin for Pennsylvania this coming fall.

Remembering their previous successes Five Years and Three Days of Rain, I arranged specially to return early from a family celebration in Houston in order to catch the show on Sunday, June 19. When we turned up at the Hyde Park Theatre, we discovered the show had had a success beyond administrative expectations: we and many others received no programs for the production.

That was an inconvenience for a journalist but it probably made little difference to the crowd. I Love You Because was a cheerful, cute and ironical-sentimental-comedic-up-tempo-muscial on a shoestring, the perfect "date movie" -- but even better, because it was live theatre.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Just So, musical for families, Zach Theatre,

Found on-line:

presents

Just So

a musical for families

by the Zach Headliners performing arts school

Saturdays April 16 - 30 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. and Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Zach Theatre Whisenhunt Stage, 1510 Toomey Rd. near Lamar Blvd.

Buy tickets online or call (512) 476-0541 ext. 1.

Music by GEORGE STILES, Lyrics by ANTHONY DREWE, Inspired by the Stories of RUDYARD KIPLING,| Orchestrations by CHRISTOPHER JAHNKE, Associate Orchestrator JOHN CLANCY, Directed by ADAM ROBERTS, Associate Director AMY DOWNING, Featuring ZACH's HEADLINERS, Originally produced by CAMERON MACKINTOSH

ZACH PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL by arrangement with CAMERON MACKINTOSH LTD presents JUST SO. The world has just begun and all the animals of Africa have yet to become unique. But, they are all united in their fear of the great Pau Amma, the Crab, who keeps flooding the lands. One curious little elephant is determined to find a way to stop her. On his journey to the base of the Limpopo River to confront Pau Amma, he makes new friends and helps them discover their special stories of becoming just so. How did the leopard get his spots? How did the rhinoceros get his skin? And how did the elephant get that long nose?
Find out in JUST SO, an imaginative, family musical about growing up and being true to yourself.

“If there’s a niche that you can fill
In a fantastic way you will
Until at last you know
You’ve done all your growing head to toe
Becoming Just So”

Heddatron, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 11 - March 5

Central Texas is about to be knee-deep in Heddas. Dustin Wills and friends down at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre start that unplanned festival with this "back to the future" version. The promising, term-limited Palindrome Theatre opens a "world premiere" (!) adaptation by Nigel O'Hearn at the Blue Theate, beginning next week. And then in May Tony Ciaravino will do another, presumably more classic, with the Classic Theatre in San Antonio.

SVT's jangly, mystifying absurdist staging of Heddatron runs riot with Ibsen's play. To tell the truth, you don't need to be familiar with the original in order to appreciate this funhouse madness. Precocious young Ava Johns plays a smug-beyond-her-years sixth grader giving a book report on the play.

A sixth grader assigned to read Ibsen's subtle portrait of the destructive, self-destuctive young Norwegian bride? That should give you a hint and a warning.to fasten your seatbelts for a theatre ride that outdoes Honey, I Shrunk The Kids for weirdness, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly for menace, and The Iron Giant for cybernetics. The script riffs explicitly on the first two. And on Ibsen -- both on Hedda Gabler and the mutton-chopped, sometimes oblivious incarnation of the Norwegian writer himself.

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

Upcoming: Heddatron, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, February 10 - March 5

Found on-line:

Salvage Vanguard Theatre presents

Heddatron

by Elizabeth Meriwether
directed by Dustin Wills
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 E Manor Rd
February 10 - March 5, Thursday- Saturday at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m.
(Thursdays Pay-What-You-Can at the door)
Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/145755

www.salvagevanguard.org

Like any well-made play, this one starts with a booming voice from the sky - though this booming voice arrives in the form of a hardcover copy of Hedda Gabler torpedoing into the lap of a terribly bored Michigan housewife. Suddenly, Jane Gordon finds herself captured by robots and whisked off to the Ecuadorian rainforest to perform the titular role in a robo-version of Henrik Ibsen’s famous drama. Jane’s ten-year-old daughter, Nugget, with the aid of her milquetoast father, an eager documentary filmmaker and her small arms dealing uncle must rescue her mother from the mechanical grip of her robot captors - whether she wants to be saved or not. Heddatron takes us on a hi(tech)storical journey through our trigger happy-TV-4G-machine-obsessed world to ask that great question, “What does it mean to be human?” Salvage Vanguard Theatre, with the help of the University of Texas’ tech-savvy IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, is ecstatic to offer a look at what happens when “real” robots and ever realer humans battle it out on the stage in the Austin premiere of Elizabeth Meriwether’s genre-defying head-trip Heddatron.

Feauturing: Amy Downing, Robert Pierson, Cyndi Williams, Jennymarie Jemison, Jude Hickey, Scott Daigle, Jarrett King, Matt Hislope, Kyle Lagunas, and Ava Johns
Design by: Lisa Laratta, Natalie George, Jessica Gilzow, Buzz Moran, and Lee Webster

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Zach Scott Theatre, September 17 - October 25

UPDATE: Zach Theatre will hold over The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee through November 8





This show is a charmer. It has the zing of a small scale musical, the familiarity of all those school auditoriums you endured while growing up, the uncertainties of a tournament, the highs of competition, the quips and laughs of improv comedy, and -- unexpectedly -- a second act that resonates with drama and tenderness.

Michael Raiford's set is bright, functional and simple, using the Kleberg Stage's thrust stage as a "cafetorium" in an anonymous middle school in the equally anonymous Putnam County. The unobtrusive background music dates back mostly to the 50's and 60's. Musicians are tucked back in the center alcove and the stage is provided with the appropriately sparse furnishing of folding tables and folding chairs.

The lights don't go down when the show starts. Instead, Jill Blackwood as Rona Lisa Peretti strides around with her impossibly angelic smile and authoritatively friendly manner, speaking in turn to various sections of the audience. We are part of this spectacle. This is a spelling bee finale and we are the friends, family and supporters of a collection of six bright or simply lucky kids. They all have the smarts or at least the unusual mental wiring to be spelling whizzes.

Yes, in the first half of the show four or five audience members will be recruited as contestants to sit with the kids and spell against them. But don't worry -- they've volunteered for the job. You won't be pulled out of your seat and into the spotlight without your consent. Jill Blackwood gives a chirpy introduction each time a speller comes forward and the audience volunteers are subjected to some gentle razzing ("Bill is devoted to the concept that casual Fridays really should be casual!").

Read more and see video at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .