The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

by Michael Meigs


Nigel, this is stupid stuff. There, now I've said it.


You and your friends of Palindrome have made arresting, sometimes astounding art in the three years that you promised yourselves for the experiment after your graduation from the theatre program at St. Ed's. 


You have shown yourself to be an impressive actor and promoter of our dear, beloved and commercially moribund art of live theatre, gathering award nominations and recognition along the way.


You made contacts with some Austin's best in the field, many of them teachers -- Ev Lunning, with whom you worked in the Ar Rude Actors's Equity project of McNeil's A Long Day's Journey into Night directed by Lucien Douglas, and Babs George in that fine Cherry Orchard by Breaking String where appropriately enough you portrayed the eternally yearning and optimistic student Trofimov. 


You were a memorable drifter challenging a stolidly bourgeois Jude Hickey in Albee's At Home at the Zoo, with Robin Grace Thompson as his wife. You crafted a pungent Hedda Gabler last year by reworking someone's literalist pony translation from the original, staged it with Robin successfully here and at the Edinburgh Fringe, and caught the eye of the flattered Norwegians.


Before approaching its three-year expiration date, Palindrome's artists and sometime provocateurs have furnished Austin with fine stagings of classics. I wish I could have seen them all. I missed Babs with Harvey Guion in Arthur Miller's All My Sons last summer, Dario Fo's Accidental Death of An Anarchist, and Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play. I did see, and will long remember, Beckett's End Days with Jarrett King, Gabriel Luna and Helyn Rain Messenger.


You've been gracious and forthcoming throughout all of this. I still have a twinge of bad conscience about not recognizing you immediately two years ago when you greeted me in the lobby at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre at the opening night for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where Babs was Martha and Ev was George. I was glad to get a close-up rehearsal view of the revised Hedda before the departure for Edinburgh last year, and I was flattered to be invited along with other theatre scriveners to last weekend's advance staging for the press of your work The Attic Space, with Babs and Ev. It was a remarkable and unexpected opportunity to mingle briefly before the show with Elizabeth Cobbe of the Austin Chronicle, Jillian Owens and Cate Blouke of the Statesman and newcomer Jeff Davis of www.austin.broadwayworld.com.


The Attic Space seems grossly derivative to me. You've brought your two characters Harold and Harriet together in George Marsolek's claustrophobic and dimly lit attic space that contains the stored detritus of their lives. The dialogue is a similar in style to that of Beckett, full of ellipses and references to shared but unrevealed events and relationships. Harriet is high strung but disconnected; Harold is restrained, patient and long-suffering. She insists on staying in the attic amongst the boxes, trunks and discarded furniture. She's searching for something but doesn't know what that is. Harold urges her to come back downstairs. The dialogue suggests that they feel the suppressed terror of advanced age even though these two actors are plainly in their flourishing middle age.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

Palindrome’s Final Production: 7 performances only of

the Premiere of  

The Attic Space

Starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. 

December 14 - December 22 at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m.,
Donate-what-you-can show Wed 19th
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. 78722 (click for map)

Ticket Price: $10 subsidized ticket price*
Length: 80 min.

Reservation Website: www.palindrometheatre.com ; Reservation Line: 512-736-5191

Three years ago, when opening their inaugural season with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Palindrome Theatre promised it would expire in December 2012. Seven productions, one international festival, and a heap of critical praise (mostly) later, Palindrome is set to do just that after their premiere production of The Attic Space, by Resident Playwright, Artistic Director, and native Austinite Nigel O’Hearn.

Known for their intimate, often provocative, traditionally-influenced aesthetic, Palindrome is building on the classical foundation and intricate theatricality of their past work to present a new play that is at once in keeping with the literary influence of Beckett and Miller while striving for bold, experimental presentation (including meta-puppetry realized by Caroline Reck, Artistic Director of Glass Half Full Theatre, and designed by Tara Cooper).

Directed by O’Hearn, starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. (both courtesy of Actors Equity), and featuring early Palindrome collaborator Helyn Rain Messenger, The Attic Space is an exploration of the capriciousness of memory, the complexity of companionship and the fear of uncertainty that accompanies the recurring life-long search for definite self-evidence; set in the place in our home which we visit the least, yet store all the things we can’t bear to go on without.

*In effort to help educate the Austin public on the cost and cultural impact of professional theatre, and though it costs much more than $10 a ticket to produce a professional play, Palindrome operates under the principle that while the theatre is not free, it should be experienced as a freedom- we do everything in our power to bring our productions to the Austin public at no cost or small cost without devaluing the theatrical event.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Bash, three plays by Neil LaBute, Vestige Group at Creative Alliance Studio, May 6 - 22

The Vestige Group is a small band of purists in an unpure world. They believe that theatre, up close and personal, has something to teach about the human condition. Something that you won't get from video or even from books. They like extremes. Celebration, as in the goofily outrageous Gorilla Man or in Lonestar, A Popcorn Throwing Musical or examinations of the lost and extreme, as in Marisol, in Touch and in this grim trio of plays by Neil LaBute.

When presented off-Broadway in 2000, LaBute's Bash carried the title Bash, Latter-Day Plays, a transparent reference to the Mormon world of Utah and Brigham Young University, where he had studied and taught theatre for years. That was a cheap shot, I think, perhaps even a New York marketing ploy, for LaBute has drawn characters whose twisted lives could play out anywhere. He stresses his intent of universaility that with two of the titles: "Iphigenia in Orem" (Utah) and "Medea Redux." The middle piece, "A Gaggle of Saints," describes a high spirited overnight trip to New York, and none of the happenings have much to do with saints, sainthood or the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS).

He sets these events pretty solidly in the early 1980's, with passing references to flashbulbs, to the BeeGees and to daily viewing of Hogan's Heroes. That is, indeed, the period when he attended BYU as an undergraduate and accepted the Mormon faith. Bash put paid to that, however, for after the show played in New York, the LDS Church formally excluded him from fellowship, presumably because the play's portrait of dark, murderous individuals offended the elders of the church.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Post-Oedipus, The Getalong Gang at the Blue Theatre, March 25 - April 11

UPDATE: Review by Cleve Wiese for Austinist.com, April 15

UPDATE: Review by Barry Pineo for the Austin Chronicle, April 8

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com/austin, April 2

UPDATE: Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin Statesman "Seeing Things" blog, March 29

UPDATE: Austin Creative Alliance interviews Jenny Gravenstein, Nicole Portwood and Stephen Cruz about Post-Oedipus, March 29 (audio, 11 min 20 sec)

UPDATE: Bastion Carboni interview Spencer Driggers for Austinist.com, March 26

Received directly:

The Blue Theatre and the Getalong Gang Performance Group
present

POST-OEDIPUS
a play by Steven Gridley

March 25 – April 11
Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
The Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road
Tickets: $15 at www.post-oedipus.eventbrite.com

The BLUE Theatre and Getalong Gang Performance Group present the Austin premiere of Post-Oedipus, a radical re-working of Euripides' play The Phoenician Women. Post-Oedipus chronicles the tumultuous events of Oedipus' family after his fall, using warped time, musical interjections, chaotic revelries, and intolerable silences to unravel the mental state of a family after disaster. At once a stunning family drama and a jaunt into the absurd, Post-Oedipus will delight and challenge audiences.

Coming off their most recent project, the Austin Critics’ Table-nominated Arthuriosis: A Metal Opera, the Getalong Gang’s Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor join forces to direct and choreograph this memorable production. Designed by Stephen Pruitt and featuring Jenny Gravenstein (Critics’ Table winner and B. Iden Payne nominee), Nicole Portwood, Seth Thomas, Steve Cruz, Michelle Turner, Helyn Rain Messenger, and James Brownlee.

About the BLUE Theatre The BLUE Theatre is a versatile artist-operated performance space on Austin's east side. Post-Oedipus marks the first collaboratively-produced performance by the BLUE and the Getalong Gang.

About the Getalong Gang Performance Group Named one of “10 companies that are charging up Austin theatre" by the Austin Chronicle, the Getalong Gang Performance Group strives to challenge the hearts and minds of its audience and show them a great night out, as well. Husband and wife team Spencer Driggers and Zenobia Taylor have been melding their respective disciplines (theatre, dance) since 2006 to form an unique, genre-defying brand of performance that's been recognized multiple times by the Austin Critics’ Table, B. Iden Payne awards, and Chronicle best-of lists in 2008 and 2009. Critically acclaimed and award-winning productions like Arthuriosis, Dolly Would and Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera have helped to cement the Getalong Gang’s reputation for bringing the unexpected to Austin stages.

No Exit, Poison Apple Initiative at DOMY Books, June 19 - July 3

With a sort of purposeful negligence, I have long avoided some of the leading French writers of the twentieth century. Existentialism enjoyed a vogue both in literature and in philosophy when I was at university, but I didn't care for its dour aspects. Mine was a deliberately uninformed prejudice, the sort that is likely to perpetuate itself comfortably for a lifetime.

Less than a decade after that, we lived for two difficult years in Oran, Algeria, the scene of Camus' novel La Peste (The Plague). Abandoned by the French at Algeria's 1960 independence, Oran was a hollow, dirty ghost of its former snug glory, increasingly well suited to Camus' nihilistic 1947 novel and no inspiration to visit the grim literature of 1940s France.

So I was not familiar with Sartre's No Exit, other than for its famous tag line, "L'enfer, c'est les autres" -- usually translated without grace as "Hell is other people." Given Sartre's ideas and the context of the play, a better version might be something along the lines of "Hell's greatest torture is that of dealing with other individuals."

Bastion Carboni and his Poison Apple Initiative staged the play at DOMY books on east César Chávez Street. I was unexpectedly able to slip into one of the back rows for their final performance on July 3.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Cloud 9, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edwards Unversity, September 25- October 5

You must see this production. It plays only four more times, this coming weekend.

Unless you’re uneasy with frank sexual language.

Unless you get disoriented by anachronism, gender bending and actors morphing character, sex, time and intention.

Unless you are frightened by vulnerability, farce, celebration or intimacy.

Unless you prefer to miss breath taking range and versatility in acting by students and professionals alike.

“Cloud 9,” the title, is a metaphor for sexual ecstasy. UK playwright Caryl Churchill worked with an improvisational theatre group in 1978, then reworked the ideas into this piece, which opened in 1979.

It plays today as fresh as a daisy, because the attractions and confusions of sex do not date.

That, in fact, is one premise of the play.

Act I shows us a group of pukkah sahib Brits somewhere in 1870 in colonial Africa, full of imperial certainties and sexual yearnings blooming in the dangerous dead air of foreign menace. Act II gives us the same seven actors and some of the same characters but played by different members in the cast, transposed to 1979 London. They are searching for love and sexual fulfillment in a post-imperial Britain where freedoms offer greater dangers, more confusions and new opportunities.

Raising the ante, Churchill specifies that certain key roles are to be played by actors of the opposite sex.

Undergrad theatre students at St. Edwards seize this opportunity to show an astonishing range. Guest artists Babs George and Matt Radford further strengthen the cast.

Ms. George surely should be nominated for a B. Iden Payne award for her performance in a duo and then solo scene at the finale as a fragile older woman belatedly awakening to sexuality.









Oh, for the certainties of Victorian times! Playwright Churchill does a fine job on the neuroses of those bearing the White Man’s Burden.


Jacob Trussell as explorer Harry Bagley (left) and Radford as administrator Clive (right) are blustering and adamant in their Duty beyond the reach of civilization. Behind that façade, though, they are boiling with frustration and passion (and not for one another).

The intimate, claustrophobic circle of society on the frontier includes their family members – Clive’s wife Betty (Christopher Smith,'10, right) and her mother Maud (Babs George, left). Smith is absolutely convincing in his depiction of the delicate Betty, stifled by circumstance, intimidated by the hypocritical, dogmatic Clive, and plaintively wishing for escape with explorer Harry. This is an entrancing performance.


As her mother, Babs George is sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued.

But we, the audience, are certainly not stifled. Act I is a happily wicked, fast-moving farce. Clive frantically pursues a widow brandishing a riding crop; and his wife Betty unwittingly attracts the passionate interest of the family governess (both roles by Helyn Rain Messenger, a graduating senior, played with such panache that I didn’t realize they were done in alternation by the same actress, in the same act).

Son Edward (Sarah Burkhalter, '10) prefers, instead of hunting and playing sport, playing with dolls.

African houseboy Joshua is at Churchill’s specification, played by a white (Jon Wayne Martin, ‘11). Joshua serves impassively amidst this madness, his anger growing as danger brews in the dark beyond the stage.




Act II, set in contemporaneous 1979, is equally fast moving, with the shock of recognizing those same actors in entirely different characters. Language is direct, dramatic, sometimes crude. The same uncertainties and desires are driving, but in the confusion and indulgence of contemporary society they take far different forms.



Take, for instance, the transformation of Smith from repressed colonial housewife to self-confident, cruising homosexual. And that of Martin from trusted servant to his gay lover Edward who would really prefer to be a woman, or maybe, if the opportunity arose, a lesbian.






Babs George hovers in genteel nervousness over the act, seeking to support her confused family – Edward the homosexual, daughter Victoria (Messenger) who is massively frustrated with her husband Martin (Radford) and their impossible daughter Cathy (another wondrous cross-gender performance, by Trussell, '10, formerly macho explorer Harry Bagley).

Sexes blur, sex blurs. In a dark wood there occurs an evocation of dark powers and an almost orgy, an apparition from beyond the grave, and a scandalized spouse. The comedy comes hard and fast, interspersed with scenes of a tenderness and intimacy that give you awe and make you squirm.

All of this builds into an explosion of light, color and music.





























Thanks to the administration at St. Ed’s for a lack of prudery and to the theatre staff there for taking on this play. Director David Long keeps his characters smoothly in motion so as to minimize the disadvantages of this vast theatre-in-the-square. The pace of the action is varied and finely tuned.

And this cast offers us a memorable evening, one that reminds us of the wonder and opportunity of passion.

Review in Daily Texan on-line by Aboubacar N'Diaye, October 2

Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle, October 3

Wikipedia on Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill bio and critical evaluation, Contemporary Writers (British Council)

Wikipedia on "Cloud 9," including plot summary