Video: Wimberley Players Reflect on 'Stay' by Sheila Cowley, September 13 - October 6, 2013

David McCullars' video with glimpses of the performance and comments by the cast of







production of

Deanna Lalich, Aaron Johnson (photo: Wimberley Players)

Stay

by Sheila Cowley

Sept. 13 – Oct. 6, 2013

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

Reserved Seating $18; Opening Night $20; Students $9 with ID, except opening night.

450 Old Kyle Road, Wimberley, TX -- click for map

A Texas premiere! A gripping psychological drama about a marriage on the brink whose pulse refuses to stop throbbing. It’s the story of dark, complicated relationships and the nature of trust, love, sacrifice, and ultimately letting go. Stay revolves around an eye surgeon who, in a desperate attempt to keep her husband from leaving her, convinces him that he’s been blinded in an accident. As she struggles to keep him, her lies grow and become all too real.

Featuring comments by Will Mercer, Deanna Lalich and Aaron Johnson

with them and Leigh Shelton in scenes from the play

Video by David McCullars 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Stay by Sheila Cowley, Wimberley Players, September 13 - October 6, 2013

by Michael Meigs

The Wimberley Players give Sheila Cowley's Stay a quality production with a strong cast and superb production values. This piece by the Florida playwright had its premiere with the Players Theatre in Sarasota, and its transfer between local theatres ready to try out new work is an encouraging sign that not all such venues are in lockstep with the likes of Arsenic and Old Lace, Neil Simon and the Texas gothic comedies of Jones, Hope & Wooten.

Deanna Lalich is Leanne Abrams, a quietly moody physician separated from Mark, her journalist husband of twenty years, played by Aaron Johnson. He's one of those lost sheep that keeps returning; although he has a new girlfriend, he inevitably gravitates back to the apartment to pick up clothes, books and the mothering of his perhaps-soon-to-be-ex-wife. Early in the opening act Mark deposits a legal document requiring Leanne's signature, presumably necessary for some sort of no-fault divorce.

Flashbacks designated by special lighting effects take us back to the couple's earliest years, when Mark had just gotten his big job and Leanne was on her way to med school. Playwright Cowley explores repeatedly the dynamic between them, with Mark's excited, distracted talk about The Places He'll Go and Leanne's ever-patient tracking and correcting of his schedules. We hear this trope again and again, with Leanne always resorting to a wistful, unsubstantiated, "It'll be all right. . . ."

These two appealing actors work that territory as far as it can be worked, but their relationship never becomes more vivid or understandable. Cowley is asking us just to assume the best and believe that they're real people. Though Leanne turns out to be an opthalmologic surgeon, a wizard in transplanting corneas, we never hear her talk about medicine other than to lament that a girl patient of hers is still waiting for transplants. Cowley has Mark the journalist bubble about the exotic destinations that his media organization is sending him to, and evidently has been sending him to for the past twenty years, but other than that the character doesn't have a thought in his head. The two don't give us any real insight into their de facto decision not to have children, and we hear almost nothing about their history or relationship, other than his bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm like a five-year-old and her solid acceptance of him like an eternally indulgent mommy.

Aaron Johnson, Deanna Lalich (photo: Wimberley Players)

The title Stay voices Leanne's yearning for her husband, and the promotional photo of the blindfolded Mark and the contemplative Leanne suggests the central ploy of this plot. Applying her medicines, Leanne deceives Mark into thinking that he has been in a car accident and has only just roused from lengthy unconsciousness to find himself with eyes blindfolded, utterly dependent upon the wife he would sort of like to stay with if only he wasn't fascinated by his much younger female editor and feeling obliged to stay with that woman, who's pregnant by him.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

THE ELEPHANT MAN by Bernard Pomerance, EmilyAnn Theatre, February 1 - 24, 2013

[EmilyAnn Theatre and gardens, 1101 FM 2325, Wimberley - click for map]


presents in its Burdine Johnson indoor studio


The Elephant Man

by Bernard Pomerance
directed by James Brownlee
February 1 - 24, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

The EmilyAnn Theatre  and Gardens presents THE ELEPHANT MAN, by Bernard Pomerance, in our new Burdine Johnson Studio Theatre, February 1-24 (Fridays and Saturdays 7:30pm, Sundays 2pm). Directed by James Brownlee and featuring Carl Galante, Ian Ramos, Deanna Lalich, Darren Scharf, Carter Holland, Jym Evans, Kathy Brewer, and Meret Slover.

This beautiful and enthralling story of rejection, acceptance, and humanity is sure to enchant and engage audiences of all ages. Buy tickets online NOW at www.emilyann.org. Seating is limited.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcomiing: For Better by Eric Coble, Gaslight Baker Theatre, Lockhart, June 10 - 25

Found on-line:

FOR BETTER
A Comedy for Our Connected World

by Eric Coble
Directed by Lori Cordova

June 10 - June 25

EVENINGS - Fridays and Saturdays ,June 10 - 25 at 8 p.m.
MATINEES - Sunday June 19 & Saturday June 25 at 2 p.m.
Regular Adult Tickets $12 - Senior & Children Tickets $10

Click Here to Buy Tickets

In this plugged-in world of email, text-messaging and camera phones, do a bride and groom really need to be in the same country to go on a honeymoon? Karen and Max are getting married. At least, if their jobs will ever let them be in the same city at the same time. A romantic comedy for the digital age. This hilarious new farce pokes fun at our overdependence on the gadgets in our lives.

"Coble's work is a tour de force with physical and verbal comedy to spare" - The New Yorker

"Coble's comedies are, of all things, genuinely funny" - Newsday

"Eric Coble's hilariously funny, psychologically astute portraits hit home with rib-tickling acuity" - New York Times

Click to view cast list at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Rumors by Neil Simon, Wimberley Players, September 25 - October 18

Received directly:

The Wimberley Players
opens the 2009-2010 season with

Rumors
by Neil Simon

September 25 - October 18, weekends

Rumors begins when an evening gala is planned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Myra and Charley Brock. Guests are arriving two by two, but the host and hostess are nowhere to be found and, although the food is laid out in the kitchen, the cook is missing. Charley Brock, the deputy mayor of New York City, has shot himself through the earlobe. Is it an attempted suicide?

Comic complications arise when the upper-crust guests do everything in their power to keep the evening’s events from the police and the press.

This production is recommended for adults only and contains strong language. It is inappropriate for young children.

Rumors is directed by Lee Stubbs, who most recently directed Mousetrap at the Wimberley Playhouse and performed in Rose’s Dilemma and Man of La Mancha. Linda Addeo is producer and her most recent credit was producer of last season’s Christmas Belles.

The cast of Rumors includes a number of familiar faces and several new ones. Whitney Marlett Mollahan last appeared on the Playhouse stage in Christmas Belles. Perry Redden also appeared in Christmas Belles and wowed the audience as Elvis. Deanna Lalich most recently performed in the chorus of Stop the World, I Want To Get Off. Ted Kozlowski last appeared several seasons ago in Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

Although newcomers to the Wimberley Playhouse, Carol and David Cain both have extensive backgrounds in all phases of live and recorded performances. Other newcomers to the Playhouse are David Schneider (president of the Gaslight Baker Theatre in Lockhart), Cindy Forsyth and Rick Fitzgerald.

Rumors runs Friday, September 25 to Sunday, October 18. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8:00 p.m. Sunday matinees begin at 2:30pm. Tickets ($18, opening night champagne reception $25) can be purchased online at www.wimberleyplayers.org or through the box office at 512-847-0575.

The Wimberley Playhouse is located at 450 Old Kyle Road, Wimberley, Texas 78676.