Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Austin Shakespeare at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, February 2 - 19

Last Friday the first question to Director Ann Ciccolella during Austin Shakespeare's regular post-performance talk-back with the audience was "How do you choose the plays for the Austin Shakespeare season?"

"The language," Ciccolella replied without hesitation. 'I'm always looking for plays that are rich in language, like this one."

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia shines with wit and whimsicality. The dialogues between these characters are so quick and clever that sometimes you perch on the edge of your seat, breathlessly holding back your laughter so that you won't miss a single syllable. This is wit writ deep -- in the characters, their contrasting views of the world and their social positions; in dissembling, feuding and courtship; and in the juxtaposition and then the overlapping within the same genteel English estate of events that occurred in 1809 and modern- day investigations of those events by archeologists and academics. The message is that truth is unknowable and that life occurs only in the flicker and illumination of the present moment.

Unlike other arts, theatre performances occur in all four dimensions. The fourth, that of time, is the most challenging, for actions occurring before your eyes will never exactly replicate themselves.

For example, we attended this remarkable production on the second day of a three-weekend run. Perhaps you witnessed it the night before or at some succeeding performance. We can exchange views about it -- about the superb acting, the richness of language, the verisimilitude of those English accents, Jonathan Hiebert's costumes, Jason Amato's mastery of mood and lighting, the startling simplicity and sublime concept of Ia Ensterä's set. But we were not there at the event. Language fails to capture adequately even a shared reality; how much more tenuous it becomes when we describe different although related events.

In keeping with that theme, Arcadia is both an investigation and a detective story. It opens in 1809 as impecunious tutor Septimus Hodge is artfully avoiding difficult questions posed by his aristocratic pupil Thomasina Coverly. "Carnal embrace" becomes a theme of equivocation, not only in the classroom but also when outraged versifier Ezra Chater accuses Hodge and demands the satisfaction of a duel.

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

Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 - November 15

Director Jeff Hinkle and the City Theatre cast led by Aaron Black as Hamlet give us a gripping up-tempo version of the famous events in Elsinore. Elapsed playing time from the first challenge on the battlements to Hamlet's dying gasp, "The rest -- is silence" is just a little more than two and a half hours.

That fits the play well within the max bounds for today's young movie-going public and gives them the bonus of a break in the middle for snacks and bathroom. The nearly full house for opening night offered the encouraging prospect of a well attended four-week run to open City's fourth season.

It's a good ride, with some surprises along the way.

Aaron Black paints a two-speed Hamlet. From the first, alone or speaking to us directly in his monologues, Black establishes the prince's intelligence. His deft timing and effectively calibrated pauses show Hamlet's mind at work and establish a bond with the audience.

In company with any but Horatio or the player king, however, Black speeds up, provokes and antagonizes. His diction is precise but as his lines move toward rant, he seems to be less the master of his own thoughts. They burst forth in hectoring images.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images: Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 - November 15

Images received directly from City Theatre Austin,
for

Hamlet

October 22 – November 15
Thursday – Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.

The cast includes Aaron Black (Hamlet), Tim Brown (Claudius), Christy Smith (Gertrude), Shannon Davis (Ophelia), Jeannie Harris (Polonius), Collin Bjork (Laertes), Bryan Headrick (Horatio), McArthur Moore (Fortinbras, Ghost, Gravedigger), Clay Avery (Rosencrantz), Alexander Hall (Guildenstern/Marcellus), John McNeill (Player King), Leslie Robinson (Player Queen/Barnardo/Osric), and Colter Creech (Captain/Voltemand/Cornelius).

The City Theatre Company production of Hamlet will have a run time of two hours and thirty minutes including intermission. The director and cast invite audiences to the talkbacks after shows on Sunday, October 25 and Sunday, November 8.

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

View more images at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 -

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 26

UPDATE: Article by Sara Pressley in the Daily Texan, October 21: Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' Gets Modern Twist at Local Venue

Received directly:


Hamlet

City Theatre, October 22 - November 15
After show talk-backs October 25 and November 8.

A murdered king. A usurped kingdom. A promise of revenge. Returning to court to find his father murdered and his mother remarried, the young and melancholy Dane faces his most terrible dilemma between duty and doubt, madness and mistrust, and “murder most foul.”

[photo by Jordy Wagoner, Daily Texan]
An undisputed masterpiece of world theatre, William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy of passion, corruption and revenge has captivated audiences for more than four hundred years and remains as relevant and urgent as ever.

With Aaron Black, Collin Bjork, McArthur Moore, Christy Smith, and Tim Brown and featuring the live music ensemble orchestra of Mother Falcon.

Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed reserve $25. Thursdays pay what you can. Group and student discounts. www.citytheatreaustin.org

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

The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D. – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38½ Street.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Frontera Fest Short Fringe, Hyde Park Theatre, February 3

The Hyde Park Theatre house was full last Tuesday and once again the staff put down an additional front row of folding chairs. It was a varied and, ultimately, a rich evening.

Collin Bjork's (Dys)Connected opened with four actors doing a choreographed stamp around the stage, for no obvious reason other than, perhaps, to make sure that the audience was paying attention. The story is a one-quirk exploration, in which a mom, Martha (Natalie Sharpe), is so loquaciously enamored of her portable phone that she pays no attention to daughter Eleanor (Angela Moore) and in fact wonders out loud repeatedly why the daughter hasn't said a word in months. We're clued pretty quickly that Eleanor does try to speak but gets no hearing from mommy Martha. When avid consumer Mom wanders off into a shop to examine a red camisole, Eleanor wanders off to listen to a fairly unconvincing thoughtful spiel by a fairly unconvincing Homeless Person (Brad Murphy). Mom, discovering Eleanor gone, accuses everyone but herself and gets into a phone quarrel with exasperated husband George (Paul Anderson). All turns out well in the end. Credits on this one go to Paul Anderson as George and to the diminutive Angela Moore as the child. Natalie Sharpe carries the narrative in a whirlwind of words. The message, reinforced by stalking actors with portable phones: we just don't listen.

In Edges: Reflections on Female Identity, Amy McAndrew and Cindy Vining under the direction of Johanna Whitmore serve up a sweet-and-sharp buffet for the feminine condition. The single song (Rain and Snow, sung by Dry Branch Fire Squad) and five pieces take such remarkably different approaches that the effect is a bit like dipping repeatedly into a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Have a taste of - -

• A formal debate in which it is asserted alterately that a) Angelina Jolie or b) Jennifer Aniston is the most effective embodiment of Woman;
  
• a time-warped exchange between Joan of Arc and her inquisitor over Joan's failure to embrace scrapbooking;
  
• an adopted girl calling her birth mother for the first time, to announce that she's pregnant and in trouble;
  
• a mom's repugnance and then growing fascination with the kid's playing Grand Theft Auto; and
  
• a scene from Sophocles' Ajax, with a single woman as chorus as Ajax (Michael Lee) in his delirium slaughters the sheep. Surprising, thought-provoking and unusual.

Surprising, thought-provoking and unusual.

Austin bard David Jewell took the stage to great acclaim (maybe he's the reason the house was so crowded?). He did not disappoint. Dressed in a spiffy red jacket and clutching his red portfolio of clown poems, Jewell explored the quirkiness of a universe in which clowns are really people (or people are really clowns, take your pick). His blank verse is stark and witty, his stories tickle your fancy, and his utter seriousness about the utterly unreal is droll and seductive.

Marcella Garcia laid it all out in My Darkness. My Inheritance. She tells a long, involved story reaching back to the age of five when something very bad happened in her family and her relatives evidently expected her to understand it by some kind of osmosis. Garcia is slim and intense, carrying her striped box of many colors with sundry props, and her emphatically non-theatrical presence argued strongly that she was relating the truth and nothing but. Her writing was vivid, funny, thoughtful, appalling and convincing -- as she paced about the stage she provoked cackles from the audience, sympathy, horrified silence and, at the end, huge applause. Was this psychotherapy? It hardly matters. I was totally seduced by her fierce innocence and her patent vulnerability. For me, the best of the evening.

McSki, Confessions of A Couch Potato was a totally trivial character piece, written and performed with gusto by Bill Johnson with direction by Tim Mateer. Johnson had all the assurance and huge stage presence that Marcella Garcia lacked. We were all tickled at his concept of a "Couch Potatos Anonymous" with a membership of one, and a 12-step program that involves 6 steps to the refrigerator and back again. We ascended with him solo into the hazy revelations of a universe where physics is ruled by unknown particles, imagined by our cocooner to include "positivicles" and "optimisticles." And when Johnson boogies, he boogies -- to the great delight of the audience. This was fun.