Video Promo Parody: (Mac)beth, City Theatre to November 3, 2013

A fond parody of 'Beth' by Kiss, using photos by Aleks Ortynsky, posted by rarestbean on YouTube,
using the






production of
Macbeth

by William Shakespeare
directed by Kevin Gates
featuring Brian Villalobos as Macbeth
and Heath Allyn as Banquo

October 10 - November 3, 2013
3823 Airport Rd., Austin - click for map

Macbeth by William Shakespeare, City Theatre, Austin, October 10 - November 3, 2013

by Michael Meigs

Shakespeare's most frequently performed works have remained vivid and vital for centuries in part because he creates characters caught in life's fundamental, archetypical dilemmas. Young lovers Romeo and Juliet rebel against constraints of family and society. Hamlet, the solitary hero, disappointed and deceived, seeks justification for taking action against a sea of troubles. Lear rages against old age and arrogant, indifferent children. And Macbeth is a good man undone by temptation and headed straight to hell.

Macbeth, noble, dutiful and valiant, is lured by ambition into the evil sequence of deceit, regicide, murder, slaughter, oppression and war. In opening scenes he's victorious and devoted, a central figure whom all admire; over the course of these five acts he abandons obedience and scruple, wading ever deeper into mortal sin and bloodletting, alienating our initial sympathies. This is an enormous distance to travel, both for the actor and for the audience.

Dawn Erin, Brian Villalobos (photo: City Theatre)

Brian Villalobos establishes City Theatre's Macbeth as fit, athletic and eloquent but haunted by the sensitivities of a modern young 21st century man. In opening scenes we see him less as a tempted hero than as a hesitant victim of the witches' tempting prophecies and the cold hearted insistence of Dawn Erin as Lady Macbeth. Villalobos uses one particular and distinctive gesture again and again in the opening acts: in confusion and indecision he seizes his head with both hands.

Indecisive, but not inarticulate. His delivery is well paced with good scansion and no grandiloquence or bombast. One senses a Macbeth engaged in an ongoing interior dialogue. Some replies Villalobos played more quietly than the house really allowed -- though the City Theatre with its 85 seats is an intimate space, there's a lot of cloth and space behind the players to swallow up sound.

Villalobos moved Macbeth away from that initial confusion toward greater decision and clarity. In contrast to the play's more familiar traditional arc -- showing the usurper as single-minded but ever more out of control -- this Macbeth seemed to comprehend more fully the consequences of his actions. He does grasp at the straws of the witches' mendacious assurances, but he's calmer, stronger and increasingly more determined in the final act. Villalobos is on one knee at center stage when he's given the news of the death of his queen; he pauses, not rising, and delivers the memorable monologue "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . " quietly and without bitterness.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

MACBETH by William Shakespeare, City Theatre, October 11 - November 3, 2013

(3823 Airport Rd. at 38 1/2 St., behind the Shell station)
presents
Something wicked this way comes…


Opening City Theatre’s 8^th season

October 11 – November 3. Thursday - Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78722 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street. 

General Seating $15. Guaranteed Front/2^nd Row Reserved $25.

Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

www.citytheatreaustin.org


Ambition. Desire. Witchcraft. Blood. Murder. The City Theatre Company is excited to open its 8^th anniversary season with William Shakespeare’s darkest and most powerful tragedy Macbeth, coming to Austin this fall. The story of a Scottish king consumed by an evil, corrosive ambition for power will run October 11 thru November 3 at The City Theatre. It is directed by Kevin Gates and stars Brian Villalobos and Dawn Erin.
“Life ... a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Macbeth is the infamous chronicle of a Scottish hero’s fall from grace, through spellbound seduction and the pursuit of power. Shakespeare’s study of ambition leads us from battlefield triumph to bloody assassination as our title character gains the crown, but forfeits his soul. Spawned by three mysterious witches who offer him an intriguing prophecy and an ambitious wife urging murderous actions, Macbeth begins a maddening descent into war, insanity and death where nothing will ever be the same again. Superstitiously referred to as “the Scottish play,” Shakespeare’s Macbeth has enjoyed considerable success despite its notoriety as a cursed play, and CTC breathes new life into this wickedly brutal and chaotic tale.
The City Theatre is no stranger when it comes to producing Shakespeare’s plays as the company takes classical works geared towards bigger and bolder demands, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and provides the challenge and opportunity in a more intimate, subtle approach. “What’s different about this production is that we're trying to present Macbeth in a very personal context,” mentions director Kevin Gates. “The themes of Macbeth are timeless with ambition and desire no less relevant today. Setting the play in a non-specific time and place is intended to put the focus on the text and the actors, rather than draw focus away from them. This makes the audience a part of the story.”
CTC has assembled an exciting cast for the show including two talented veterans of the City Theatre stage Brian Villalobos (The Crucible) and Dawn Erin (Agnes of God, The Miracle Worker.) The cast also includes Brad Hawkins, Clint Harris, Trace Pope, Heath Allyn, Dave Yakubik, Eric Daugherty, Tony Baker, Nick Kier, Brett Tribe, Darren Scharf, Levi Gore, Hallie Strange, Austen Cabler, Maria Latiolais, Nicole Oglesby, Cara Juan, Elly Stevens and Whitney Blake Dean. CTC is also thrilled to have as a first-time director, Kevin Gates, whose other directorial productions include Dr. Faustus with Last Act Theatre and Cymbeline with the EmilyAnn Theatre. He has also played lead roles in CTC’s productions of Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado about Nothing. The costume designer is Jessica Frymire with set design by Andy Berkovsky and fight choreographer Nick Lawson.
The City Theatre Company is an Austin-based not for profit arts organization and is sponsored in part by the Austin Creative Alliance and the Austin Cultural Arts Division. Founded in 2006, the company has been recognized by the Austin Critics Table Awards, the B. Iden Payne Awards and is twice voted “Best Theatre Company” by Austin-American Statesman’s Austin 360. CTC is dedicated in providing quality theatre experience and entertainment for Austin artist’s and its community.
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Images by Bret Brookshire: Too Many Husbands by W. Somerset Maugham, Different Stages at the Vortex Repertory, June 24 - July 16

Images by Bret Brookshire for

presentation of

W. Somerset Maugham’s

Too Many Husbands

June 24 – July 16
The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd (click for map)
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.
“Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30
Call 478-5282

Different Stages closes its 2010–2011 season with W. Somerset Maugham’s comedy Too Many Husbands. A fast, frivolous, comedy the plot focuses on Victoria, a delectably pretty but ruthlessly self-centered young woman whose husband; William was reported killed three years earlier in World War I. But William is not dead; he is on his way to London for a reunion with his wife, unaware that she is now married to his best friend, Freddie.

The situation is complicated further by the discovery that the avaricious Victoria already has a third husband in view, a rich entrepreneur, for who she plans to dump both Freddie and William, feeling she has made sacrifice enough for the war effort. Through their ingenuity the two friends finally win their freedom and Victoria her wealthy third husband.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Night of the Iguana), Too Many Husbands features Martina Ohlhauser (Hay Fever) as Victoria, Joe Hartman (MilkMilkLeomnade) as Freddie and Brian Villalobos (The Crucible) as William. Tony Salinas (The Night of the Iguana) plays the rich entrepreneur. Paula Gilbert (An Inspector Calls) plays the cook and Phoebe Greene plays the parlor maid and Ashley McNerney plays the nanny. Phil Cole (The Skin of Our Teeth) and Julie Winston-Thomas (Spider’s Web) play the divorce lawyer and his assistant.

Click to view additional images by Bret Brookshire at AustinLiveTheatre.com

The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Renaissance Theatre Company at City Theatre, October 28 - November 13

Arthur Miller's play The Crucible deals with dark and frightening times. Though the setting is 1692 Salem, Massachusetts during the wide-ranging hunt for witches, this 1953 piece is equally an evocation of America's sudden dark fear of enemies in its midst. Just years earlier, in World War II the Soviet Union had been considered a valiant ally; with the division of Europe, the threat of the atom bomb and the populist hectoring of politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, many American intellectuals, civil servants and diplomats found themselves targeted for "communist sympathies."

This was the context for The Crucible. It's a strong, at times poetic piece, but much of the play's power and lasting relevance comes from Miller's admonitory lesson about hysteria, prejudice and injustice. In an essay about the play written in 2000 when he was eighty-five, Arthur Miller commented,

The Crucible straddles two different worlds to make them one, but it is not history in the usual sense of the word, but a moral, political and psychological construct that floats on the fluid emotions of both eras. As a commercial entertainment the play failed [it opened in 1953]. To start with there was the title: nobody knew what a crucible was. Most of the critics, as sometimes does happen, never caught on to the play's ironical substructure, and the ones who did were nervous about validating a work that was so unkind to the same sanctified procedural principles as underlay the hunt for reds. . . . Several years after, a gang of young actors, setting up chairs in the ballroom of the McAlpin Hotel, fired up the audience, convinced the critics, and the play at last took off and soon found its place. There were cheering reviews but by then Senator McCarthy was dead. The public fever on whose heatwaves he had spread his wings had subsided.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ongoing: The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Renaissance Theatre Company at City Theatre, October 22 - November 14

UPDATE: Feature by Sarah Pressley for the Daily Texan, October 21

Received directly:

The Renaissance Theatre Company and City Theatre present

THE CRUCIBLE

Arthur Miller’s classic tale of the American theatre

Directed by Stacey Glazer

with Brian Villalobos, Craig Kanne, Laura Ray, Gabriel Smith and B. Iden Payne winners Rachel McGinnis and Angela Loftus.

October 22 – November 14, Thursdays – Saturdays 8:00 p.m. and Sunday 5:30 p.m.

at The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd, Suite D, east corner of Airport Blvd and 38 ½ Street.

For reservations, call 512-524-2870 or contact info@citytheatreaustin.org.

Tickets $15 - $20. Front Row Reserved $25. Thursdays all seats $10. Group and student discounts. www.citytheatreaustin.org

The Renaissance Theatre Company, in cooperation with City Theatre, begins its 2010 – 2011 theatre season with Arthur Miller's American classic The Crucible. Based on the witch trials in Salem, the stage drama begins performances

Hell and heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretenses ripped away. God’s icy wind will blow.

The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s most performed play, was first produced in 1953 and won the Tony Award for Best Play later that year. Set in 1692, it uses the Salem witch hunts as an historical allegory for McCarthy’s blacklisting of Americans and the Red Scare in the 1950’s. The same mob hysteria takes hold in both periods as Miller examines religious intolerance, perversions of justice and the individual’s role in society. The Crucible, which never seems to lose its relevance, explodes with passion, fear, and danger when a group of teenage girls, caught dancing in the forest, take their revenge on their Salem Puritanical society by naming names of townspeople whom they claim are witches.

Known for centering a play around an ordinary man's moral crisis within American society, Miller with his sense of social consciousness gave us some of the greatest dramas of the twentieth century, including All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955). His extensive list of works spans the last six decades and includes plays, screenplays, novels and essays. Some of his other notable plays include Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), Broken Glass (1994) and Resurrection Blues (2002).

“You never tire of watching a masterpiece and The Crucible proves the point as Arthur Miller’s name may be most singularly associated with great American Theatre,” says production director Stacey Glazer. “Innocent people being accused of crimes they didn’t commit; a dynamic story of fear, courage, religious conviction and personal integrity. It’s hot stuff!” Stacey has also directed The City Theatre productions of The Laramie Project, How the Other Half Loves and the Austin Critic’s Table Award nominee Rabbit Hole.

B. Iden Payne award-winners Rachel McGinnis (as Elizabeth Proctor) and Angela Loftus (as Abigail Williams) lead the cast and introduce Brian Villalobos (as John Proctor). The Crucible features Craig Kanne, Gabriel Smith, Laura Ray, John McNeil, Michelle Alexander with Bridget Farias, Lorella Loftus, Callie Boatman, Carrie Stephens, Nathaniel Reid, Daniel Norton, Clay Avery, Brett Shaw, Dewayne Mangan, Liz Roark, Kati Pike and Mikayla McIntyre.

The City Theatre Company is a non-profit organization and is sponsored in part by the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, the Austin Cultural Arts Division and the AMD Foundation.