THE SECRET GARDEN, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, June 13 - 30, 2013

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

presents

The Secret Garden

Music by Lucy Simon, Book and Lyrics by Marsha Norman
Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Directed by Robert Westenberg

June 13 – 30, 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   Map: http://www.stedwards.edu/map/maincampus

Tickets: $25 Adults Advance ($20 Students, Seniors, SEU Community); $25 at the door
Available through the MMNT Box Office, 512.448.8484 -- Available online at http://www.stedwards.edu/theatre    Box Office Hours are M-F 1-5 p.m.

STUDENT DISCOUNT NIGHTS: Friday, June 14 and Thursday, June 20: Student tickets $8 with ID.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, the award-winning producing arm of the St. Edward’s University professional theatre training program, concludes its 40^th anniversary season with The Secret Garden, music by Lucy Simon, book and lyrics by Marsha Norman, based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett and directed by Broadway veteran Robert Westenberg, running June 13 - 30, 2013. This coming of age story based on the classic children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett is filled with suspense, magic and wonder. 11-year-old Mary, orphaned by a cholera outbreak, is sent from India to Scotland to live with her reclusive widower uncle. Lost in their grief and surrounded by visions and voices from the past, Mary and the rest of the family struggle to regain their footing. The young girl’s discovery of a secret garden, coupled with her dedication to revive the magical space, leads to rebirth and renewal for all. This Tony-award winning musical will set your heartstrings aflutter. Featuring Equity guests Greg Holt, Cara Johnson, Ev Lunning Jr. and David Long.
A must-see for any of us that have retained the sense of magic and wonder from childhood. - TalkingBroadway



About Robert Westenberg
After a lengthy performing career that included work on Broadway and Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, national tours, television and film, Mr. Westenberg is now concentrating on teaching and directing. He is perhaps best remembered for his roles in the original Broadway casts of Into the Woods as the Wolf and Prince, for which he received a Tony nomination and Drama Desk Award, Secret Garden as Neville Craven, and Sunday in the Park with George, where he replaced Mandy Patinkin in the title role. He also performed the role of Javert in the Broadway production of Les Miserables. Other Broadway credits include leading roles in 1776, Company, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, A Christmas Carol and Zorba, for which he received a Theatre World Award. His national tour credits include Zorba, Funny Girl, and The Full Monty. His film and television credits are The Ice Storm, Before and After, The Stars Fell on Henrietta, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Swift Justice, Central Park West, and Law and Order: SVU. He recently performed the roles of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook opposite Cathy Rigby’s Peter Pan in Branson, Missouri. Mr. Westenberg is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and teaches at Drury University where he serves as Chair of the Theatre Department.


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 5,300 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 ten 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 . . . .

A MINISTER'S WIFE, Penfold Theatre at Trinity Street Theatre, March 28 - April 14, 2013,

presents

A Minister's Wife

Music by Joshua Schmidt, lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen, and book by Austin Pendleton
Directed by Michael McKelvey
Featuring Jill Blackwood, Andrew Cannata, Amy Downing, Greg Holt and Nathan Jerkins

March 28 - April 14, 2013
Playing at Trinity Street Theatre, 4th floor of First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street, Austin

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm. Sundays at 5:00pm.
Opening night party following the show on Thursday, March 28th.
$25 Opening night, $20 Regular, $18 Students, $18 Seniors (age 60+).


For more information, email us at info@penfoldtheatre.org or dial (512) 850-4849. On performance days, we are available by phone from 1pm to the start of the performance.

In this regional premiere of a new American musical, George Bernard Shaw's riveting drama, Candida, is given an innovative and emotive score by the award-winning composers of Adding Machine. The piece whisks us away to 1890's London to experience the love triangle between the charismatic Reverend James Morell, his strong-willed and beautiful wife Candida, and the idealistic young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who aims to win Candida's love.

In this regional premiere of a new American musical, George Bernard Shaw's riveting drama, Candida, is given an innovative and emotive score by the award-winning composers of Adding Machine. The piece whisks us away to 1890's London to experience the love triangle between the charismatic Reverend James Morell, his strong-willed and beautiful wife Candida, and the idealistic young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who aims to win Candida's love.

Running time: About 1 hour 35 minutes, without intermission.

Recommended for ages high school and up.

In the news

"The most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza. To say that you mustn't miss it is to grossly understate the case." -The Wall Street Journal

Sponsors This production would not be possible without support from the City of Austin, the Creative Fund and Dramatists.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Cyrano De Bergerac, Mary Moody Northern Theatre at St. Edward's, February 12 -22

Director Michelle Polgar orchestrates a fine, vigorous production of the wonderfully romantic French drama Cyrano de Bergerac, playing through this coming weekend at St Ed's Mary Moody Northern Theatre. Edmond Rostand modeled the lonely, pugnacious cavalier with the big nose on the historical figure of Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a duelist and dramatist who did, in fact, fight in the Thirty Years' War between the French and the Spanish.

One of my French professors dismissed Rostand's play as clap-trap sentimentality, to my great dismay. My father, a reticent man, had given me a copy of the Modern Libary edition when I was about 15, and in my own lonely hours I had soared with the eloquence of Cyrano, mused at his contempt for death and admired his casual heroism. I suffered with him the colossal irony of his unwanted obligation to support and protect cadet Christian, that young fop who had attracted the admiration of Cyrano's secret belovéd, his own cousin Roxanne.

Anyway, those pompous profs in the French Department were wrapped up in existentialism, Camus and Sartre, those lurching intellectuals at the bleakest extremes of literature and philosophy.

Ah, to live greatly, like Cyrano! He speaks and lives so fully, steadfast to his muse and his friends, defending them selflessly with a flash of the rapier and a swift scribble of the pen. Rostand's play was a great success in Paris in 1897 and his version of Cyrano has been alive with us ever since. José Ferrer won an Oscar as best actor for his 1950 film portayal of Cyrano and the great, inevitable Gérard Depardieu was a memorable Cyrano in his 1990 film (subtitles furnished by Anthony Burgess, translator/adapter of the verse script used in St. Ed's production).

The play's four acts take us to a public theatre, to the pastry shop of the baker Rageneau, to the barracks of the cadets of Gascony, to their hungry existence in the fortress besieged by the Spanish troops, and finally, years later, to a quiet convent garden where the aged Cyrano regularly calls to bring widowed Roxanne his mocking comments about news from court.

Polgar's staging of the opening act uses the theatre's in-the-square configuration to great advantage. As spectators, we in the audience embody the public in that fictional theatre, ranged around the hollow square, awaiting the appearance of the tragedian Montfleury while observing the idle and the aristocratic who are milling about just in front of us. A narrow stage occupies one corner of the square playing space; perched high above us, diagonally across the open area, are the elegant Roxanne, her chaperone and an oily-looking pair of aristocratic suitors. At times the crowd of actors may block sightlines, especially for those spectators in the front rows, but Polgar subtly clears the space for Cyrano's first appearance, his elegantly derisive replies to the challenge of a presumptuous young nobleman, and the fast-moving, fatal duel that follows.

David M. Long is a vivid, quick-witted Cyrano. His friend Le Bret (Greg Holt) frets about Cyrano's delight in insulting the powerful, but Long is airily dismissive of poverty and pains. He quickly wins our sympathy, just as he has won the fascinated loyalty of the corps of cadets.

Roxanne (Julia Trinidad) is the focus of all sentiment in this piece. She is enchanted by the sight of the aristocratic young Christian de Neuvillette, whom she has eyed from afar at the theatre, and Christian responds with silent fascination. Cyrano is deeply enamoured of Roxanne but convinced that she could never love someone with as disfigured a nose as his own. The Count De Guiche (Marc Pouhé), self-assured nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, schemes to put Roxanne into a marriage of convenience so that he can take her as his mistress. Julia Trinidad must play this as an ingenue throughout. She begs Cyrano to protect Christian as he joins Cyrano's regiment; tongue-tied Christian begs Cyrano to lend his eloquence to woo Roxanne.

Long as Cyrano (left) and Christopher Smith as Christian (right) craft their relationship well. On his first day with the cadets, Christian tosses Cyranoesque gibes at the older man and the cadets are confounded to see that for once, Cyrano does not simply skewer an insulter. Banishing the others, Cyrano dutifully tells Christian of Roxanne's hopes. The mentor-protegé relationship between them is clever, touching and credible. They're particularly comic as doppelgänger suitors, a pair of Romeos falling all over one another in the dark of the garden below Roxanne's window.

So our hero woos and wins Roxanne, but only by proxy. He helps foil the wicked De Guiche. Marc Pouhé as De Guiche is so smooth and well-mannered that we have some trouble imagining him as really evil; he's closer in attitude to Peter Pan's Captain Hook.

The pace is snappy throughout, at times too quick -- for example, in the sequence of Cyrano's witty replies to the lame insult, "Sir, your nose is -- rather large!" Cyrano tells his adversary, "You could have done much better!" and extemporizes a dozen or more -- announcing a style of insult and then delivering a hilarious example. Each is more comic than the preceding, and when the cadence is captured, the full scene builds, to be capped off by Cyrano's extempore sonnet during the duel.

And then there's Cyrano's melancholy, which Long captures fully only in the sublime final scene. For me the divine spark of poetry lights a darkness of disappointment in this man, bravely covered by his jests and commotion. Cyrano at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre is epic and captivating, a hero never daunted. Rarely in this version does he pause to acknowledge or contemplate his disappointment. If we were to glimpse that tragic sense at moments during the play, his final face-off with Death would be even more moving for us.

Elizabeth Cobbe's enthusiastic review for the Austin Chronicle, February 19

Upcoming: Cyrano de Bergerac, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, February 12 - 22

Postcard picked up at Austin Playhouse, January 23:

St Edward's Mary Moody Northern Theatre
presents
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand
Translated by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Michelle S. Polgar

February 12 - 22

Soldier, poet and philosopher of heroic proportions, Cyrano de Bergerac is plagued with an enormous nose and believes he can never win the love of the fair Roxanne. A tale of honor, love and heroism filled with humor, intrigue, swordfights and poetry. Cyrano will warm your heart, delight your senses, and nourish your spirit.

"[A]n immortal. . . entertainment that pushes emotional buttons just as effectively today as it did. . . 110 years ago." -- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Featuring Equity guest artists Greg Holt, David Long and Marc Pouhé