Video: Director Norman Blumensaadt on Emlyn Williams's Night Must Fall, Different Stages, June 21 - July 13, 2013

In Tom Chamberlain's three-minute video director Norman Blumensaadt outlines the origins and the tensions of the 1930's mystery by Emlyn Williams, presented by

 

Night Must Fall

directed by Norman Blumensaadt

June 21 – July 13

The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd - click for map

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.

No performance on Thursday July 4; added performance on Wednesday July 10.

“Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30

For reservations call 478-5282

Different Stages continues its 2012-2013 season with Emlyn William’s classic mystery Night Must Fall. In a bungalow in a forest in Essex lives Mrs. Bramson, a fussy hypochondriac. She pays her niece Olivia a small salary to act as her companion and the household also includes her cook, Mrs. Terence, and her maid Dora.


When Dora gets pregnant, Mrs. Bramson is determined to get the boyfriend to marry her. At the same time, a woman disappears from a nearby hotel. The police begin investigations and, when Dora brings home her boyfriend Dan, Olivia immediately notices that his behavior is not quite normal. He is perpetually putting on an act and soon he worms his way into the affections of Mrs. Bramson, leaves his job as pageboy at the hotel and moves in. Then the woman’s body is found – headless.....


Directed by Norman Blumensaadt, Night Must Fall features Ben McLemore as Dan, Mary Kennelly as Mrs. Bramson and Bethany Harbaugh as Olivia. The cook is Played by Paula Gilbert and the maid by Laura Artesi . Daniel Norton plays the police inspector and Jonathon Urso plays Olivia’s boyfriend

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NIGHT MUST FALL by Emlyn Williams, Different Stages at the Vortex Repertory, June 21 - July 13, 2013

presents

 Emlyn Williams’s

 Night Must Fall

(image: www.ilkleyplayhouse.co.uk)

directed by Norman Blumensaadt

June 21 – July 13

The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd - click for map

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.

No performance on Thursday July 4; added performance on Wednesday July 10.

“Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30

For reservations call 478-5282

Different Stages continues its 2012-2013 season with Emlyn William’s classic mystery Night Must Fall. In a bungalow in a forest in Essex lives Mrs. Bramson, a fussy hypochondriac. She pays her niece Olivia a small salary to act as her companion and the household also includes her cook, Mrs. Terence, and her maid Dora.

When Dora gets pregnant, Mrs. Bramson is determined to get the boyfriend to marry her. At the same time, a woman disappears from a nearby hotel. The police begin investigations and, when Dora brings home her boyfriend Dan, Olivia immediately notices that his behavior is not quite normal. He is perpetually putting on an act and soon he worms his way into the affections of Mrs. Bramson, leaves his job as pageboy at the hotel and moves in. Then the woman’s body is found – headless.....

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (Quills), Night Must Fall features Ben McLemore (Dr Faustus) as Dan, Mary Kennelly (You Can’t Take it with You) as Mrs. Bramson and Bethany Harbaugh (Plus meets Minus) as Olivia. The cook is Played by Paula Gilbert (Too Many Husbands) and the maid by Laura Artesi (Two Gentlemen of Verona). Daniel Norton (A Skull in Connemara) plays the police inspector and Jonathon Urso (Is Life Worth Living?) plays Olivia’s boyfriend
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Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m.

For tickets and information call 478-5282

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Design for Living by Noel Coward, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, February 6 - 24, 2013

presents

by Noel Coward

Savor the wit of Noel Coward's provocative comedy Design for Living!

February 6 - 24, 2013
Rollins Theatre of The Long Center for the Performing Arts

Tickets on sale now at thelongcenter.org or (512) 474-5664.

Join us in this merry dance of three friends who begin as Bohemian artists and rise to high society, as they discover that real love and true friendship often collide. Delight in Noel Coward songs, too!

Featuring Martin Burke, Helen Merino and Michael Miller in the lead roles. This will be Martin Burke's first time with Austin Shakespeare. Martin has been drawing crowds at ZACH for more than a decade. Local audiences can see him currently in The Santaland Diaries at ZACH. Austin Shakespeare audiences are familiar with Helen Merino for her performances in Mary Stuart, Anthem and Hamlet. Our audiences will remember Michael Miller as Mr. Darcy in our recent production of Pride and Prejudice.

FULL CAST

Otto - Michael Miller

Gilda - Helen Merino

Leo - Martin Burke

Ernest - Michael Dalmon

Miss Hodge - Kathy Lagaza

Mrs. Helen Carver - Sara Cormier

Mr. Henry Carver/Mr. Birbeck - Ben McLemore

Chanteuse - Kara Bliss McGregor

Introducing Martin Burke to Austin Shakespeare: ZACH: The Santaland Diaries (1998-2012), Fully Committed (2003 & 2012), The Laramie Project (2002 & 2012), The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Drowsy Chaperone, Take Me Out, Shakespeare’s R&J, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Angels in America. Imagine That Productions: House of Several Stories, A Writer's Vision(s), Down the Drain. Other: Celebrity Autobiography (The Long Center), Greater Tuna with Joe Sears, Twelfth Night (Sneck Up!, Vortex), Richard III/2 Actors (Public Domain), Shopping and F**king and Fur (Vortex).


Awards: Austin Critics' Table Award "Best Actor in a Leading Role" forThe Drowsy Chaperone, B. Iden Payne Award “Outstanding Ensemble” for The Drowsy Chaperone, The Laramie Project, and Shakespeare’s R&J; B. Iden Payne Award “Outstanding Lead Actor, Comedy” for House of Several Stories; B. Iden Payne Award “Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama” for Take Me Out; Austin Critics’ Table Award “Best Actor, Drama” and B. Iden Payne Award “Outstanding Lead Actor, Comedy” for Circumference of a Squirrel; Austin Critic’s Table Award “Best Actor, Comedy” for The Santaland Diaries; B. Iden Payne Award “Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play” for Twelfth Night, Angels in America: Perestroika and Family Affair; Austin Critic’s Table special citation, “Show Savior” for Richard III/2 Actors, Family Affair, and Lucifa. Martin holds a B.F.A. in Acting from UT.

Join us in this merry dance of three friends who begin as Bohemian artists and rise to high society, as they discover that real love and true friendship often collide. Delight in Noel Coward songs, too!

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Last Act Theatre Company, October 12 - 28

by Michael Meigs

Faustus, why do you torment me so? This production of the work of the mercurial Christopher Marlowe, an exact contemporary of Shakespeare, stabbed to death in a tavern at the age of 29, held me at an uneasy distance despite its robust verse and stark dilemma.


Austin's Last Act Theatre Company, just over a year old, demonstrates its art and vaunting ambition in daring to take on this text. Their productions for love of the art have been low-budget stagings in a succession of found locales around town. Doctor Faustus is presented, appropriately enough, behind a tavern -- the Pour House on Burnett Road -- in an edifice in stone that must have been used as a garage, judging from the stout girders, chains and decommissioned hoist overhead. Lengths of black curtain mask the corners. The audience is seated in the depth of the room and the principal entrances are through the same wide doorway that gave spectators access to the space. Props are few and simple; director Kevin Gates relies on his cast of 13 to create this work in the style that it would have been done in a tavern courtyard or a church portico.

Karen Alvarado, Ben McLemore (image: Jim McKay)

In theme and presentation Doctor Faustus is directly in the tradition of the medieval mystery plays. Few texts of them are extant. Those works may have been largely improvised, but both the French and English manuscripts that remain confirm the traditions of staging Bible pageants to communicate to the people the stories mostly sealed up in the impenetrable Latin of Jerome's Vulgate. The struggle to translate the Bible into vernacular languages didn't really begin until the mid-1500's. 


Marlowe wrote this text, his second drama, in about 1588 (before Shakespeare had produced anything he could put his name to). It was probably based upon a German text of about that date, registered in English translation only in 1592. To complicate matters further, Marlowe's work exists in two variants, the first printed in 1604 and the second printed in 1616. Theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe recorded in his account book for 1602 that he had paid two dramatists for additional scenes to be added to Doctor Faustus. The drama continued to be produced up until 1642, shortly before Cromwell and the Puritans closed the theatres.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .