THE DEAD PRESIDENTS' CLUB by Larry L. King, Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall, October 18 - November 3, 2013

[Austin Playhouse, temporary facility at Highland Mall, 6001 Airport Blvd - click for map]

presents

directed by Don Toner
October 18 – November 3, 2013
Thursdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m. (no performance on Oct. 31)
Austin Playhouse at Highland Mall, 6001 Airport Blvd., Austin, TX 78752

TICKETS: $28 Thursday/Friday, $30 Saturday/Sunday
$50 Opening Night Benefit, October 18th
BOX OFFICE: 512.476.0084 or online at: www.austinplayhouse.com
DISCOUNTS: All student tickets are half-price. $3 discount for Seniors 65 and up.
Half-Price for Season Ticket holders and their guests. Season Ticket holders must call the box office or email to receive their discount!
No discounts for October 18th benefit.

WEB: www.austinplayhouse.com

In this comic gem by the famed Texas playwright best known for "The Night Hank Williams Died" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," four former presidents - Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, Calvin Coolidge and Harry S. Truman- find themselves in an exclusive holding pen outside heaven awaiting the decision of an admissions committee. "Just who is on that committee?" asks the recently arrived Nixon. "That's the problem: a buncha narrow-minded damned saints!" Johnson replies. As the sanctified weigh the leaders' good deeds against their sins of omission and commission, "Landslide Lyndon" and "Tricky Dick" plot to get around the bureaucracy and go straight to the Boss.

The cast includes Austin Playhouse Company members David Stahl as Nixon, Michael Stuart as LBJ, Tom Parker as Harry Truman, Huck Huckaby as Calvin Coolidge, and Hans Venable as the Heavenly Bureaucrat, with a special appearance by Jacqui Cross.

This show is rated PG-13 due to somewhat "salty" language (mostly LBJ's).

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

MUSEUM by Tina Howe, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, September 26 - October 6, 2013

(St. Edward's University, 3001 South Congress Avenue)

presents

Museum

by Tina Howe

directed by David M. Long
September 26 – October 6, 2013
Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St Edward’s University
3001 South Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78704 -- click for map
Tickets: $22 Adults Advance ($17 Students, Seniors, SEU Community), $22 at the door
Available through the MMNT Box Office, 512.448.8484 and
Available online at http://www.stedwards.edu/theatre
Box Office Hours are M-F 1-5 p.m.
STUDENT DISCOUNT NIGHTS: Friday, September 27 and Thursday, October 3: Student tickets $8 with ID.
Reserved Seating -- Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, the award-winning producing arm of the St. Edward’s University professional theatre training program, kicks off its 41^st anniversary season in fine comedic style with Museum, by Tina Howe, running September 26 – October 6, 2013.

Obie award winner Tina Howe sets her effervescent comedy on closing day at a contemporary art exhibition called “The Broken Silence.” And break silence she does, with glorious irreverence. All makes and models of people weave in and out of the exhibit hall, offering us a hilarious and heartfelt glimpse at the intersection of life and art. Inspired by actual comments overheard at the Whitney Museum biennial art exhibition, this play promises to engage everyone who has visited a mind-bending art exhibit, created contemporary artwork, or tried to find meaning in abstraction. Featuring Equity guests Babs George, Jarrett King and David Stahl.

“Eighty-five laugh out loud minutes.” – Curtain Up

About Mary Moody Northen Theatre Mary Moody Northen Theatre operates on a professional model and stands at the center of the St. Edward’s University Theatre Training Program. Through the Mary Moody Northen Theatre, students work alongside professional actors, directors and designers, explore all facets of theatrical production and earn points towards membership in Actor’s Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. MMNT operates under an AEA U/RTA contract and is a member of Theatre Communications Group. For more information, contact the theatre program at 512-448-8487 or visit us online at www.stedwards.edu/theatre.
About St. Edward's University St. Edward’s is a private, liberal arts Catholic university in the Holy Cross Tradition with more than 5,000 students. Located in Austin, Texas, with a network of partner universities around the world, St. Edward’s is a diverse community that offers undergraduate and graduate programs designed to inspire students with a global perspective. St. Edward's University has been recognized for 10 consecutive years as one of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks in the top 20 of Best Regional Universities in the Western Region. St. Edward’s has also been recognized by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 14 - 24, 2013

by Michael Meigs

Measure for Measure

is one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, an intimate and claustrophobic study of misrule. There are no great battles here, no dazzling displays of fancy; this mythical Vienna has a stifling ambiance, a combination of bureaucratic neglect, fetid bordello and sterile cloister. One can seek to read it as a comedy, which to some extent director Michelle Polgar has done, but one can also see it as a meditation on zealotry.

Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, is an introspective, bookish fellow who has long neglected public affairs. In the opening of the play he abruptly announces his departure to points unknown and confides to the ascetic nobleman Angelo and to ducal counselor Escalus letters granting Angelo full power to administer the dukedom. We quickly learn that Vienna is a stew of moral corruption, thick with brothels and generally immoral behavior. Our jaunty guide to that underworld is Lucio, a "fantastic" well acquainted with it, and we make the acquaintance of the tapster-pimp Pompey and the brothel keeper Mistress Overdone.

Hannah Marie Fonder, Curtis Allmon (photo: Bret Brookshire)

Empowered by the absent duke, Angelo becomes the swift and merciless instrument of justice. He orders brothels in the city limits pulled down, despite -- in fact, because of -- their thriving business. Lighthearted Lucio is appalled to find that Claudio, a young gentleman, is under arrest and on his way to jail for having gotten Julietta his beloved with child without sanction of marriage. Angelo is unyielding: the law specifies death for the offense, regardless of any excuses or extenuating circumstances. Lucio turns to Claudio's sister Isabella, a novice in the convent, and persuades her to beg Angelo to spare Claudio's life.

No one else could be as appealing as the virginal Isabella. She does move the Duke's harsh deputy -- but to her dismay, it's not toward an act of public mercy but toward the dark side of his initially tenative but then increasingly insistent offer of a trade: her virginity, in secret, in exchange for her brother's life.

Shakespeare dwells upon human fallibility in Measure for Measure. In law, in religion, in dealings with one another in society generally, we are urged and constrained to ethical behavior even though our weaknesses are legion. Angelo the zealous executor of the laws falls immediately prey to temptation; worse still, he resorts to prevarication, making promises that he has no intention of keeping. Isabella is trapped between the corporal purity imposed by her order and the pressure to seek to spare her brother's life with the forbidden sin of yielding her body. Claudio, the acknowledged and to some degree repentant condemned sinner, is equally torn and tormented; he pleads, apparently in vain, for his sister Isabella to yield to the abuser of power.

And central to all this is Duke Vincentio himself, whose long neglect of the law and flight from responsibility have brought about these conflicts. One central question in staging Measure for Measure is how to portray Vincentio as he disguises himself as a holy friar and dabbles around the edges of this developing catastrophe. Is he the most reprehensible of them all? Or is he instead a thoughtful ruler who's engineering all of this to teach everyone a lesson about law and mercy, guilt and responsibility, temptation and absolution?

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

Upcoming: The Duck Variations by David Mamet, Sidetrack Productions at the Hyde Park Theatre, August 19, 26, September 23, 30

THE DUCK VARIATIONS by David Mamet with David Stahl and Michael Stuart, Sidetrack Productions at Hyde Park Theatre, Sundays, August 19 , 26, September 23, 3030

Two gray haired old friends, George and Emil, meet in the Park and ponder the important issues that shape the World. The Law of Life, the Meaning of Death and,,,,,Ducks Starring David Stahl and Michael Stuart at The Hyde Park Theatre 511 W. 43rd street, Austin, Texas

four performances only, August 19 & 26 -- September 23 & 30 (sundays) at 5pm

tickets $15.00 call (512) 825-1623 or e-mail: sidetrackmail@aol.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

A Room with a View, Austin Playhouse, March 23 - April 22

by Michael Meigs

A Room with a View at Austin Playhouse in Lara Toner's graceful adaptation of Forster's novel is serene fun. An ungracious critic -- say, someone who regularly posted grumbling letters to the Times of London -- might ask why the Playhouse bothered to concoct a presentation of the style regularly served up by the BBC on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, but that imaginary critic would miss the point entirely. Another curmudgeonly observation might be that Mssrs Merchant and Ivory did the definitive cinema version back in 1985, certainly still available from video sources. One might even be able to stream it from Netflix.

The story itself is not the issue, for Forster's witty and sympathetic if somewhat patronizing portrayal of Lucy Honeychurch and those around her features amusing characters caught up in the most basic dramatic dilemma of all: who best deserves to make our sweet heroine happy? Most of us know exactly how it's going to turn out, and we willingly participate in the re-creation and recreation of that make-believe.

No, the response to that hypothetical critic is simple. It's symbolized by the contrast between your comfortable sofa or desk chair at home and the seat in the theatre. At home you may choose to sit alone or even in company to witness A Room with a View, passively absorbing a crafted vision identical in all respects for everyone who sees it. Or you may go to the theatre instead, where each comfortable seat with a view offers a subtly different experience and features actors who live and breathe and share the space with you. Last week I wrote of Zach's Laramie Project and the power of familiar faces. In Toner's staging of A Room with a View, actors well known to theatre-goers quite transform themselves from citizens of 2012 Austin to self-aware representatives of the educated English middle class of 1908, experiencing the threatening joys of Florence and then returning to bourgeois life in London.

That's the advantage of working with a repertory company, however loose. David Stahl is a jovial, good-hearted Anglican clergyman; Tom Parker is an abrupt, truth-speaking businessman; Rebecca Robinson serves as the spinster cousin charged with chaperoning young Lucy; Cyndi Williams is a colorful busybody woman novelist in the first act and the heroine's strait-laced mother in the second.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 16 - 26

by Michael Meigs

One measure of the power of Arthur Miller's drama about the Salem witch trials of 1692 is the startling transformation of familiar actors. Tiny Sophia Franzella, now a junior at St. Edward's, has charmed audiences with her wildly comic and mischievous personae in The Imaginary Invalid, Urinetown and A Year with Frog and Toad. Here, as the malicious and vindictive accuser Abigail Williams, Franzella is smooth faced duplicity, a murderous woman-child driven by spite and lust. Hers is a finely understated performance, one that makes her all the more hair-raising because of her almost silent conviction and the restraint of her lust for her former employer John Proctor.

David Stahl, an Equity regular at Austin Playhouse, has acquitted himself of a wide range of characters in Austin theatre but those which remain most vivid in memory, for better or worse, are clowns -- the unnamed all-purpose player in The 39 Steps, the hypochondriac in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the old actor Henry in The Fantasticks, and Sagot, the prancing rouge-cheeked art dealer in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Director Michelle Polgar recruited Stahl for the role of Deputy Governor Danforth, the chief inquisitor who entirely dominates the second half of The Crucible. Stahl is nothing less than terrifying, with his baleful stare, self certainty and the immense self regard of a small man in a position that surpasses his capacities.

Arthur Miller studied the historical records of the Salem witch trials, but he wrote this 1953 piece principally as an indictment of the obsessive Communist hunting led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (a body that three years later convicted Miller of contempt of Congress for his refusal to furnish names during a hearing). The witch hunt metaphor stuck like pitch to the investigators and did a great deal to turn public sentiment against them.

Ironically, the meaning of the play's title remains obscure for many -- so much so that the student calling from the Mary Moody Theatre box office was asking whether I wanted to make an early reservation for "the curcible." A crucible is a bowl or other recipient capable of withstanding high temperatures. Miller's title is drawn from the technology of smelting -- melting and then shaping ingots from white-hot metal. It's an inexact metaphor for the content of the play, for the hysterical and then judicial processes described in the work are not transformational but, rather, purely destructive.

Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, Austin Playhouse, February 25 - March 27

Neil Simon's set-up for Laughter on the 23rd Floor is simple and classic, if you can abstract from the biographic aspects of it. A newcomer enthusing about his new job discovers that his work colleagues are eccentrics, each more bizarre and devastatingly verbal than the previous one. Their employer, initially unseen, has enormous stature with the public, but they all know that he is a generous, distracted borderline psycho. Set 'em ricocheting off one another, bring the boss in, interrupt it from time to time as the newcomer addresses the audience with a rueful smile. Eventually, toward the middle of the second half, pressures from craven commercialism and the indifference to genius of the unwashed bring about the disbanding of the work unit, with much sentiment among its members and the megalomaniac disbelief of the boss.

With slight adjustments and a naval theme, you could be on board ship with Mr. Roberts or with Captain Queeg or with William Bligh. Or before Agincourt with Henry V. These few, this band of brothers, they bind together and then disappear into memory, greater and even more eccentric than they really were. This particular ship is an office in a New York skyscraper where the eccentrics are comedy sketch writers, the boss is a neurotic comedy star on live television in the early 1950's, and the newcomer is a surrogate for the playwright, Neil Simon.

Simon and his brother Danny did indeed write for live television before Simon embarked on his series of sweet and often nostalgic comedies. Sid Caesar saw a review they'd put together in a Catskills resort and hired them to write for his Show of Shows with a team that included the most successful writers, comedians and writer-comedians of the time. The Wikipedia article on this piece offers a table linking Simon's eccentrics with the real live eccentrics who probably inspired them, including Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbard, Carl Reiner and more.

Images by Christopher Loveless: Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, Austin Playhouse, February 25 - March 27

Images by Christopher Loveless, received directly:

Laughter on the 23rd Floor

by Neil Simon

directed by Don Toner

Feb. 25 - March 27

Austin Playhouse Main Stage, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress (click for map)

Tickets are $26 Thursday and Friday and $28 Saturday and Sunday.

All student tickets are half price!

For Tickets, Call (512) 476-0084 or click here to order tickets online.

Hot on the heels of our most successful show ever, we're thrilled to bring theatrical legend Neil Simon's nostalgic comedy Laughter on the 23rd Floor to the stage! Set in 1953, Laughter recalls Simon's days as a young writer on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. The play is a fast-paced and very fun comic romp through the behind-the-scenes antics in the writers' room.

Laughter features an all star cast including Kimberly Barrow, Brian Coughlin,Huck Huckaby, Jenny Larson, Jason Newman, Steve Shearer, Blake Adam Smith, David Stahl, and David Stokey!

Directed by Don Toner, Costume Design by Buffy Manners, Lighting Design by Don Day, and Sound Design by the Gunn Brothers.

Click to view additional images by Christopher Loveless at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Austin Playhouse, February 25 - March 27

Received directly:

Laughter on the 23rd Floor

by Neil Simon

directed by Don Toner

Feb. 25 - March 27

Austin Playhouse Main Stage, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress (click for map)

Tickets are $26 Thursday and Friday and $28 Saturday and Sunday.

All student tickets are half price!

For Tickets, Call (512) 476-0084 or click here to order tickets online.

Hot on the heels of our most successful show ever, we're thrilled to bring theatrical legend Neil Simon's nostalgic comedy Laughter on the 23rd Floor to the stage! Set in 1953, Laughter recalls Simon's days as a young writer on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. The play is a fast-paced and very fun comic romp through the behind-the-scenes antics in the writers' room.

Laughter features an all star cast including Kimberly Barrow, Brian Coughlin,Huck Huckaby, Jenny Larson, Jason Newman, Steve Shearer, Blake Adam Smith, David Stahl, and David Stokey!

For more information, visit our website!

Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 3 - 13

In Sarah Ruhl's world, stones can talk, the dead can send letters to the living, and the devil connives to send a fragile bride to her death so he can court her in the afterlife. On the far side of the river of forgetting, memory fades and the ability to read disappears. Young Orpheus, bereft in this life, telephones a long-distance information operator in an effort to try to locate his dead wife.

Despite the striking mythic beauty of its concepts, Ruhl's Eurydice made me profoundly uneasy last year when Different Stages did it at the City Theatre. Perhaps because the shade of Eurydice's father clings to his memories and continues to dream of her, despite the emptiness and unchanging nature of life after death.

Ruhl has a frank and direct consciousness of the all too transitory nature of this existence. She wraps that message in the reworking of the Greek fable of the musician Orpheus who braved the underworld and came close -- just that close -- to bringing his bride Eurydice back.

Jamie Goodwin as the quietly grieving dead father has depth, dignity and stature, in contrast to the simplicity of Nathan Brockett and Cassidy Schiltz as the eternally naive lovers.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming; Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 3 - 13

Received directly:

The 38th anniversary season at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre

presents

Sarah Ruhl's

EURYDICE

directed by Michelle Polgar and featuring Equity guests Jamie Goodwin and David Stahl

February 3 – 13, 2011

Thursdays–Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University

3001 South Congress Avenue (Campus map: http://www.stedwards.edu/map/)

Reserved Seating Tickets available through the MMNT box office at 448-8484.

Advance $15 ($12 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community), All tickets $18 at the door.

Box office is open 1-5 p.m. Monday–Friday and 1 hour prior to curtain.

SPECIAL STUDENT NIGHT: Thursday, February 10 at 7:30 p.m. (all student tickets half price with ID)

Orpheus and Eurydice are in love — crazy, delirious love. All is going well until a strange man lures Eurydice away from her wedding reception with a letter from her long-dead father. This luminescent, lyrical and surprisingly funny play weaves a tale of love, compassion, memory and longing, reminding us of the enduring bonds of love.

Ruhl’s story is a contemporary re-imagining of the classic Orpheus myth, where the young lovers are torn apart on their wedding day by the bride’s untimely death. Distraught, Orpheus resolves to retrieve her, using his music to charm the guardians of the underworld. The Lord of The Underworld agrees to release her, so long as Orpheus does not turn to see her until they are both safely above ground.

“I've always been fascinated by Greek myth, and I like that everyone knows a story I'm telling,” says Ruhl. “There's a kind of structural vibration in knowing what the bones of the story are, but not how it's going to be told. It's the change-ups that are the sticking points." And change-ups abound. Ruhl tells the story from Eurydice’s perspective and adds Eurydice’s Father to the mix. The play is rife with theatrical flair, quirky humor, and a heart full of love and longing.

A Pulitzer finalist, winner of a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Sarah Ruhl is one of the finest playwrights of her generation. Other works include The Clean House, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Melancholy Play, In The Next Room and Orlando.

“ [R]hapsodically beautiful. [A] love letter to the world.” NY Times

About St. Edward's University Founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross, St. Edward's University is named among the top five "Up-and-Coming Universities" in the Western Region by its academic peers in a 2011 U.S. News & World Report survey. For eight consecutive years St. Edward's has been recognized as one of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News & World Report and this year by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. St. Edward's is a private, Catholic, liberal arts university of more than 5,200 students located in Austin, Texas. For more information on St. Edward’s University, visit www.stedwards.edu.

The 39 Steps, Austin Playhouse, September 10 - October 30

Austin Playhouse scheduled Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps for a run of almost two months, but I didn't manage to use my season tickets until the penultimate weekend of the run. Not that I expected to be disappointed; The 39 Steps won an Olivier award for best comedy in 2007 and the Broadway version, with the added tag tying it to Hitchcock, ran for two years before moving off-Broadway. And not too far off Broadway -- to New World Stages at 340 West 50th Street, where it is still playing. A road version did a limited tour in 2009-2010.

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps was nominated for six Tony awards in 2008 and walked away with two. The marketing people don't mention that those Tonys were for best lighting design and best sound design.

Never mind all that. The important thing is that it's more fun than a barrel of actors. The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England, pioneered this one, applying the ingenious notion of using only four actors to put onstage the entire plot of the Hitchcock movie. Here in Austin, Benjamin Summers as Richard Hannay is the only player with an immutable role (unless you count his momentary masquerade as a milkman in order to flee from the police). Lara Toner gets to play three characters -- a German-accented femme fatale who rapidly becomes a femme morte, much to Hannay's surprise, a dreamy lassie in the wilds of Scotland, and a self-assured young blonde who winds up kidnapped and handcuffed to the fleeing Hannay.

The comic duo of Michael Stuart and David Stahl play everyone else in the movie -- oops, I mean, in the play. Bad guys, local notables, a dour Scots crofter, an innkeeper and his wife, the red-turbaned mysterious professor, a pair of vaudeville clowns and many, many more. In fact, the two of them are listed in the program simply as Clown #1 and Clown #2. They change identities as easily as changing hats, and sometimes they're carrying three hats at a time.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Austin Playhouse, March 27 - May 2

Kimberly Barrow as the enamored Suzanne comes to the "Lapin Agile" -- the "Nimble Rabbit" -- bar-bistro, looking for Pablo Picasso, the man who enraptured her by drawing a dove on the back of her hand and then having his way with her. She learns, eventually, that maybe the second time is not as good as the first.

I can share that feeling. I reviewed Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile last year as done by the Sam Bass Community Theatre in Round Rock. Theirs was, I reported, "a charming production of a quirky play by America's quirky funnyman Steve Martin." My review tracked through the plot and had a tone of satisfied amusement.

On viewing this Austin Playhouse staging, the thrill was gone, It seemed to me that Steve Martin, like his character Picasso, was seeking too hard to amaze.

Martin sets us in a Paris bistro in 1904, when the young Albert Einstein worked as a clerk in the patent office and the young Pablo Picasso, hungry and unknown, was seeking artistic expression, money, fame and women. His premise is that their encounter at the "Nimble Rabbit" bistro-bar was a defining moment for the twentieth century.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin, Austin Playhouse, March 26 - May 2

Click for ALT review, April 22

UPDATE: Review by Olin Meadows for AustinOnStage.com, April 12

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, April 8

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

Picasso at the Lapin Agile
by Steve Martin

March 26 - May 2, 2010
Austin Playhouse, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m .
Prices: $26 Thursdays, Fridays, $28 Saturdays, Sundays
$35 Opening Night, March 26, 2010
All student tickets are half-price
Tickets/Information at (512) 476-0084

It’s 1904 in Paris and a young Albert Einstein is working on a very famous theory. At the same time, a young Pablo Picasso is almost ready to “leave Blue behind.” At the Lapin Agile, a cabaret bar in Montmartre, Paris,frequented by artists, anarchists, and dreamers, these two young visionaries meet and engage in a lively debate on the creative process and the true nature of genius.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile was written in 1993 by famed comedian and actor Steve Martin. It is set on October 8, 1904, a time when Einstein and Picasso were both on the verge of executing a tremendous act of genius. Einstein will publish his theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon' in 1907.

Martin has written, "Focusing on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Picasso’s master painting 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,' the play attempts to explain, in a light-hearted way, the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science."

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a playful, witty, incredibly funny look at how artists, scientists, and other inventors bound past society’s norms to enhance and advance humanity’s understanding of itself. Bringing the play to life is an incredible ensemble including Ben Wolfe as Picasso, Robert Matney as Einstein, Huck Huckaby as Freddy, Cyndi Williams as Germaine, Tom Parker as Gaston, David Stahl as Sagot, Kimberly Barrow as Suzanne and The Countess, Barry Miller as Schmendiman, and Jason Newman as The Singer.

The play is directed by Austin Playhouse Associate Artistic Director Lara Toner (Age of Arousal, The Turn of the Screw), with set design by Jessica Colley-Mitchell (Misalliance, A Flea in Her Ear), costume design by Buffy Manners (Misalliance, Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and lighting design by Don Day (Misalliance, Frost/Nixon).

Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw, Austin Playhouse, January 22 - February 21

Is it only coincidence that Austin theatre is staging a rolling centenary celebration of George Bernard Shaw? Not of his birth or death -- we'd have to wait another forty or so years for either of those, since the man lived well into his 90's --but of his plays exploring matrimony.

In late 2008 Different Stages gave us a twinkling production of Shaw's 1908 comedy Getting Married and now Austin Playhouse is offering Misalliance, first staged in 1910. Despite their talky amusements, in the canon of Shaw's 63 full-length dramas they are relatively unknown. You can browse the length of the shelves at Half-Price Books or consult the catalog at the Austin Public Library, and neither will appear.

So we have all the more reason to thank Austin stages for blowing the dust off GBS's mischievous social commentary. Getting Married looked at the dilemmas and disadvantages for the Edwardian chattering classes of the marriage contract; Misalliance pushes the boundries a bit further, as the rascally Fabian looks at the delusions of romantic love, the practicalities of extramarital liaisons, advocating a degree of female sexual liberation that must have left those proper Edwardians agog.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Life of Galileo, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edward's University, November 12 -22

A lot is going on in Brecht's The Life of Galileo, and not just onstage. The program notes at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre will help you some, with a tidy summary of the historical figures, the heliocentric Ptolemaic model of the universe, and the heretical but accurate Copernican revision of it, and some of the elements of the plot.

With that crib sheet you can comfortably follow the depiction of that impatient and skeptical scientist's lifetime tussle with the Catholic Church. Director Michelle Polgar, three Actors' Equity members and the student cast and crew will give you the story, unrolling it much of the time in a design of curiously reduced lighting, as if the dark ages were lingering, literally, in the period 1610 - 1634.

You will not get much of a sense of the intensely brainy Bertolt Brecht or his reasons for fastening upon those 400-year-old events. Study of any of the several texts that Brecht crafted between 1938 and 1955 would show you that ideas and apprehension -- Angst -- are fundamental to the work.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edward's University, November 12 - 22

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, November 16

Found on-line:

The Life of Galileo

by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare
Directed by Michelle Polgar
November 12-November 22, 2009
Mary Moody Northern Theatre
St Edward's University, 3001 South Congress Avenue

In 1609, in a small study in Padua, Galileo Galilei raises a telescope to the skies. What he finds there reverberates from the streets of Padua to the Vatican palace in Rome, sparking a debate that threatens his very survival. From master playwright Bertolt Brecht comes a theatrical discourse on reason, faith, power and the tension arising from scientific progress running headlong into age-old assumptions.

Featuring Equity guest artists David Stahl and David Stokey.

Tickets: Season and Flex passes go on sale August 26 through the MMNT box office. Passes start as low as $40 for four shows.
Box office hours are Monday–Friday from 1–5 p.m. Info phone: 512.448.8484

Map to St. Edward's University (theatre is at eastern end of campus)

[image is taken from the article Galileo and The Telescope, 1609 published by American Physical Society]

Wikipedia on Brecht's The Life of Galileo

Frost/Nixon, Austin Playhouse, September 11 - October 11

Almost thirty years had gone by when British dramatist Peter Morgan wrote this piece. The Gielgud Theatre picked it up from an "off-West-End" theatre in 2006. It moved to Broadway for 137 performances in 2007. Frank Langella won both a Tony Award for best actor, as well as the corresponding Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.

Thirty years is about the right lapse of time before one exorcises demons and rehabilitates felons. Pain is remembered but no longer throbs, and different issues occupy the public mind.

The audience members at the Austin Playhouse were almost without exception of an age to have vivid memories of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and David Frost's 1977 interviews, watched by some 45 million persons. That is reportedly still the record viewership for a televised political interview.

The play is structured as a hunt, a negotiation, and a verbal contest. Don Toner and his cast keep the suspense tight, almost convincing us that we don't know how this will turn out. The pull of the piece, however, is in the acting.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Frost/Nixon, Austin Playhouse, September 11 - October 11

Click for ALT review of October 4

UPDATE: Review by Olin Meadows at AustinOnStage.com, October 1

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

Frost/Nixon
by Peter Morgan
September 11 - October 11, 2009

Austin Playhouse proudly opens their 10th anniversary season with the Austin premiere of Peter Morgan’s Tony Award-winning play, Frost/Nixon.

Frost/Nixon is set three years after Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency in disgrace. Throughout those three years Nixon remained silent. But in the summer of 1977 the former commander-in-chief agreed to sit for an interview to confront the questions of his time in office and the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency.

Nixon selected David Frost as his interviewer, confident that he would outwit the lightweight British talk show host. But as cameras rolled, a charged battle of wits resulted. Would Nixon evade questions of his role in one of the nation's greatest disgraces? Or would Frost confound critics and elicit a confession from the man who'd built a career out of stonewalling?

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Fantasticks, Austin Playhouse, May 22 - June 28

The Fantasticks at Austin Playhouse is charming. The reliable, charming low-budget winsome musical that has been charming 'em since its low-budget opening off-Broadway in 1960.

This is the show that smashed the records for long runs -- with a 42-year run by the original production and 17,162 performances. Then a New York City revival that ran 655 performances in 2006-2008 at the Snapple Theatre Center's Jerry Orbach Theatre on 50th Street, paused, then resumed and is still going. You can check out their website with perky piano audio, theatre description, ticket info and pages and pages of press clippings. Regular tickets are $75 (twofers, $112.50) and premium seating tickets are $125, which by comparison makes the Austin Playhouse production a grand bargain.

Wikipedia records that there have been 11,103 U.S. productions in 2000 U.S. cities and towns, as well as more than 700 productions in other countries, including 200 in Canada and 45 in Scandinavia.


What's the secret? There are several:

A comfortable formula (boy meets girl, fathers stage fake abduction, boy saves girl; boy discovers trickery, boy ventures into world, girl falls for cad and is disabused, couple are reunited, now more experienced and wiser).

Simple, memorable melodies and lyrics (Try to Remember, Why Did The Kids Put Beans In Their Ears?, Soon It's Gonna Rain, I Can See It).

The simple staging that evokes a troupe of traveling players. With duos: two lovers, two clownish dads, two actor-clowns. And with a mysterious master-of-ceremonies named "El Gallo" who moves the plot, fakes the abduction, seduces (or almost seduces) the jilted heroine, and exposes the lovers to the world's cruelties.

Click to read more on AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .