South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Georgetown Palace, February 22 - March 24, 2013

by Michael Meigs

The Georgetown Palace Theatre has done it again. The production of South Pacific playing weekends through March, 2013, is energetic, polished and entertaining, a celebration of the classic 1949 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s a reminder that at mid-century American musical theatre pioneered new directions in entertainment for a public newly aware of the world beyond Main Street, USA.


With their first collaboration Oklahoma in 1943 Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II drew a symbolic picture of the home that Americans were then fighting a war for, including the banding together that excluded misfits such as poor Judd Fry. The post-World-War-II South Pacific, in contrast, is situated retrospectively at a low point in that conflict, showing sailors and Navy nurses sidelined in paradise, amusing themselves with shenanigans and camp entertainment while waiting to engage a distant and faceless enemy.

(photo: Andy Sharp)

It touches, although every so lightly, upon heartland Americans’ instinctive distrust of foreigners. The work conveys a message about bigotry and prejudice: “You've got to be taught/ Before it's too late/ Before you are six or seven or eight/ To hate all the people/your relatives hate;/ You've got to be carefully taught.” That thought is even more relevant seventy-plus years after it was first staged.


The musical numbers are stirring and delightful by turns. Many of them are still instantly recognizable from the opening chords of the live orchestra on an elevated platform hidden behind the backdrops: Some Enchanted Evening; I’m Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair; Bali Hai; A Cockeyed Optimist; This Nearly Was Mine; and Younger than Springtime. The comic ensemble numbers are the carefree There Is Nothing Like A Dame and Honey Bun. Taken as a whole, the music of South Pacific constitutes in itself an extended chapter in the American songbook of popular music.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

ALT Video for Georgetown Palace's 'South Pacific': Interviews and Dress Rehearsal Scenes

AustinLiveTheatre interviews leads Christine O'Connor Jean-Jacques and Bob Beare and offers dress rehearsal scenes from the

 

presentation of

South Pacific

the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein

directed by Ron Watson with musical direction by Justin Langford and choreography by Jesse Smart

playing February 22 - March 24

Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Special Needs inclusion show on February 28; Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. on March 9

Georgetown Palace Theatre, 810 S. Austin Avenue, Georgetown, Texas

Ticket prices are $24 General Admission, $22 Seniors (55+), $14 Students (10-22) and Active Military, and $10 Children (9 and younger).  Select your tickets on-line at www.georgetownpalace.com.

Rated for General Audiences

Video: Blood Brothers by Willy Russell, Trinity Street Players, June 1 - 24

Austin Live Theatre's backstage visit with director Bob Beare and the cast:

Blood Brothers

by Willy Russell

directed by Bob Beare

Jun 1-3, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24

Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Black Box Theatre, 4th floor, First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street (click for map)

free admission; reservations at (512) 402-3086; donations gratefully accepted

Written by award-winning author Willy Russell, the plot of Blood Brothers revolves around the story of two twin brothers separated at birth. One brother, Eddie, was adopted by wealthy parents and lives an affluent life with endless opportunities. The other brother, Mickey, not blessed with similar circumstances, is raised in poverty by his birth mother. The tale spans more than 20 years of the boys’ lives and finds Eddie going to prestigious University of Oxford, while Mickey turns to a life of crime and ultimately prison. While trying to overcome the social divide, the boys both fall in love with the same girl. This proves to be too much, splits their relationship, and leads to tragedy.

Tech Call: Opportunity for Costumer and Sound Designer: Trinity Street Players' Blood Brothers, opens June 1

Trinity Street Players is still seeking a Costumer and a Sound Designer for the Austin premier of Blood Brothers! Join the production team of Cathy Jones (producer), Bob Beare (director), Giacomo Leone (AD), James Lindsley (SM), James Jennings (lights), and Steve Williams (set design) on this dark but beautiful musical opening June 1st! TSP is a volunteer-run community theater putting on professional productions in the heart of downtown Austin. Contact rkbeare@hotmail.com for more info!

Auditions for Blood Brothers by Willy Russell, Trinity Street Players, March 3

Audition Notice for Blood Brothers at Trinity Street Players

"... the most accomplished community ensemble in the greater Austin area." -- Michael Meigs, Austin Live Theatre

901 Trinity Street, 4^th floor (click for map), Saturday, March 3 , 2 - 6 p.m.with callbacks Tuesday evening, March 6^. The show runs weekends, June 1 - 24. Directed by Bob Beare, musical direction by David Blackburn.

Trinity Street Players announces the Austin premiere of Willie Russell’s blockbuster musical, Blood Brothers. This is the tuneful, heartwarming, and heartbreaking tale of twins separated at birth whose paths cross again years later in friendship and conflict. The show examines the nature vs. nurture debate as the twins' different backgrounds take them to opposite ends of the social spectrum. When both twins fall in love with the same girl, the results are intense and deeply moving. The show has been running in London for over 25 years to packed houses and cheering crowds.

Please bring a resumé and headshot.

Everyone sings in this show. Auditioners are asked to prepare two 16-32 bar songs; one up-tempo and one ballad preferably from pop or rock musicals. An accompanist will be provided.

Trinity Street Players also need tech personnel and musicians.

Email director Bob Beare for an audition time slot or more information at BloodBrothers@trinitystreetplayers.com

Click to view character list and descriptions at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Three Viewings by Jeffrey Hatcher, Trinity Street Players, October 22 - November 6

by Michael Meigs

Those who attend Trinity Street Players' Three Viewings by Jeffrey Hatcher will be spending some time in the dark with these faces. Each will feature in a solo act, navigating the fragile thread of human emotion like a tightrope walker. Or, to use the German expression for it, like a 'rope dancer,' because these narratives are not as predicable as a taut line. These characters inhabit the same world and speak to us from the same space -- a barren smoking lounge in a funeral home in the northeastern United States -- but they don't appear together until the curtain call

That black box theatre up on the fourth floor of the First Baptist Church puts them within arm's reach of the audience. Director Bob Beare builds that up-close-and-personal feeling by having two of his talented actors enter through the audience ("excuse me; excuse me; coming through, here") and the other one emerge from the audience.

Jeffrey Hatcher has written three monologues as intimately eerie as pieces by Edgar Alan Poe and as surprising as short stories by O. Henry. The narratives are not in the least morbid, despite the setting and even though they speak frankly of funerals and of the recently deceased. These are the living, bereaved but not bereft.

Trinity Street Players stages three plays a year and they often fill up this space with characters and actors. That's what happened in their productions of Steel Magnolias, You Can't Take It with You and Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. Shadowlands was really a two-character play but those characters were well surrounded.

The three solo one-acts of this piece by Hatcher require different strengths. Each actor must establish rapport, create the character and tell the story as if delivering it to the ear of an old and trusted friend. Their success here reinforces the impression that Trinity Street Players are by far the most accomplished community ensemble in the greater Austin area.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Video: Three Viewings, Trinity Street Players, October 22 - November 6

Received directly, a video by David McCullars for

Three Viewings

by Jeffrey Hatcher

directed by Bob Beare
October 22 - November 6; Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Opening night is Saturday, October 22^nd at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free to the public, but reservations must be made by calling 512-402-3086. Donations are appreciated.

4th floor black box theatre, First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street (click for map)

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to YouTube]

Auditions for Three Viewings by Jeffrey Hatcher, Trinity Street Players, August 13

Found at www.AustinActors.net:

Trinity Street Players is presenting a unique theatre experience for the Halloween season. Jeffrey Hatcher's Three Viewings is fast-paced, and consists of three touching and darkly funny monologues set in a funeral parlor. Tell Tale is the story of a quirky mortician with an unspoken passion. The Thief of Tears is about an attractive corpse robber with a shocking and painful secret. And in Thirteen Things about Ed Carpolotti, we meet an adorable and recently widowed matron whose horrific situation is rescued from beyond the grave.

The monologues are loosely related, but each role is a separate showcase opportunity for three committed actors:

Emil (30-55) – A mortician with a secret passion for a real estate broker who markets to the bereaved. He is a bit repressed and buttoned-down, and the passion threatens to undo him.

Mac (30-late 40’s) – The attractive, wise-cracking daughter of an upper-class family who steals jewelry from corpses as an occupation. We find out that a terrible secret is behind the obsession.

Virginia (Late 50’s or older) – A straight talking woman of character who has been left with a giant burden of corruption by her deceased husband. We see her innocence crumble as the story unfolds but her dignity and good-nature remain to the touching final moment.

The show runs Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, October 21-November 6

Auditions:
Trinity Street Players Blackbox Theatre, 4th floor, 901 Trinity Street (click for map)
Saturday, August 13, 10 a.m.
Callbacks Monday, August 15, 7pm
Actors are asked to bring a resume, headshot, and to prepare a 1-2 minute comic and/or dramatic monologue.

For additional information email director Bob Beare: rkbeare@hotmail.com

Incident at Vichy, Trinity Street Players, April 2 - 17

The black box on the fourth floor has a claustrophobic feel. The central space is stark and looks more like a basement than an attic -- a couple of benches, neutral gray walls, a narrow high window, a couple of empty beer bottles left on the sill. As you gather and settle into the ranks of seats around that central space, the theatre serenades you with recordings of French music -- Jacques Brel, an anachronism, singing his lament about the 1914 assassination of pacifist Jean Jaurès, then a better calibrated sucession of ballads by Edith Piaf.

The house lights are up when a couple of men in overcoats and fedoras bring in a man from your right and summarily deposit him on a bench. He sits, bewildered. A few moments pass, and the plainclothesmen bring another arrested man in from your left. Eventually the house lights go down, the collect continues, and the spectators face an unwilling, withdrawn and involuntary group of about a dozen males.

This is Vichy, some 400 kilometers south of Paris. It's the administrative capital of the "free" zone administered during early years of World War II by a government headed by Marshal Pétain. Expressionless French police do not respond to the uneasy questions of the detainees. We gradually learn that they've been picked up off the streets by cruising patrols. None appears to have broken the law, except perhaps for the sullen gypsy presumed to be a thief by vocation.

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