Ragtime, Zach Theatre, October 17 - November 18

by Michael Meigs

The Zach's Ragtime is a huge -- I mean HUGE -- and lavish production, inaugurating its state-of-the-art 425-seat Topfer theatre. The flair, finish and finesse of this production are simply breath-taking.


Ragtime is a fable of a faraway America, one that existed at the very opening of the twentieth century. In his 1975 novel E.L. Doctorow imagined a tangled story involving a prosperous bourgeois family in New Rochelle, an unmarried African-American couple and their child, and an impoverished Jewish immigrant peddler and his young daughter in the New York slums.


The story is told in an amusing faux-historical narrative with cameos by real figures notable and notorious, ranging from escape artist Harry Houdini to Henry Ford to polar explorer Robert Peary to Evelyn Nesbit, infamous in the love triangle that led to the murder of architect Stanford White.


Miloš Forman turned Ragtime into a 1981 film featuring Randy Newman's clever and gently nostalgic score. Although the story is set principally in a small town upstate and in New York City, somewhat ironically the 1996 musical was underwritten by Canadian empresario Garth Drabinsky and first produced in Toronto. The music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens sweep the audience away.


Ragtime is a dream epic, a late twentieth-century imagining of how it should have been possible to overcome the differences between races and ethnic groups. It's imbued with an optimism of America's possibilities, even as it depicts setbacks.


While the wealthy owner of a fireworks factory is away on a polar expedition, his wife discovers an abandoned black newborn child in the garden. She takes it in along with Sarah, its despondent mother; professional musician Coalhouse Walker, Jr., drives up from Harlem every week, trying to speak to Sarah, and the family accepts him. The courteous and well-dressed outsider even becomes a music tutor to Edgar, the son. In an unfortunate encounter, white thugs beat Coalhouse and trash his automobile. Police and courts deny him justice; police brutality causes a death; Coalhouse and his armed followers occupy the J.P. Morgan library in New York City. Conflicts are sharp; dilemmas are insoluble. The New Rochelle family becomes involved and members learn different, difficult lessons.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Next to Normal, Zach Theatre, January 25 - March 4

Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word. The intensity of the emotion, the huge volume of sound, the zig-zag of florescent lighting on the back walls of the set and above all the pitiless focus upon the mental illness of a suburban wife and mother -- all of these foster a numbness of mind that leaves you feeling as if you had swallowed a 200 mg capsule of Thorazine at the opening of the show.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. It shows that the Zach succeeds in setting the opera's message deep into the brain,down there where the limbic system controls emotion, memory and cognition. For a musical work about grief, disorientation and pharmacology, that's exactly the intention.

The Pulitzer committee that awarded the New York production of Next to Normal the drama prize for 2010 called it "a powerful rock musical . . . . that expands the scope of subject matter for musicals." My experience of the Zach production -- my trip along with housewife Diana and her family into her hell -- left me feeling that "rock musical" was an inadequate term for the evening. It isn't "rock" in the Elvis Presley sense or even the Pink Floyd sense, and although it was told almost entirely in sound and song, one couldn't really classify it as corresponding to most of the conventions of most American musical theatre. The score and story are complex and contemporary, all too relevant to our American experience. Let's be frank: let's call it a contemporary opera, even though that designation might be a drag at the box office.

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

Upcoming: Next to Normal, musical, Zach Theatre, January 28 - March 4

Found on-line:

presents

Next to Normal

the 2010 Pulitzer Prize musical

Music by TOM KITT | Lyrics by BRIAN YORKEY

Directed by DAVE STEAKLEY | Music Direction by ALLEN ROBERTSON

Starring MEREDITH MCCALL, JAMIE GOODWIN (The Drowsy Chaperone), ANDREW CANNATA (Rent), JOSHUA DENNING (Hairspray), JOHNNY NEWCOMB (Spring Awakening) and KELLI SCHULTZ.

January 25 - March 4, Tuesdays - Wednesdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
Kleberg Stage, Zach Theatre, 1421 Riverside Drive at South Lamar (click for map)
Tickets $25 to $55 -- click to reserve and purchase on-line

Student Tickets: $18 One Hour Before Showtime (with Valid ID)
Bar opens 1 hour before showtime. Drinks welcome inside the theatre.Please come early for parking

GLBT Wilde Party is Thursday, Feb. 9

Next to Normal is an inventive, emotional powerhouse production about one family who is about to face the music. This multiple Tony Award-winning, groundbreaking work features a thrilling contemporary score. ZACH’s Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley says, “I am so thrilled that we’ll produce the Central Texas premiere of what I think is the best piece of theatre in the past five years. Next to Normal is one of only three musicals to ever win the Pulitzer Prize – It knocks me out!”

Production Sponsors: Maria and Eric Groten - Farmer’s Insurance

For real-time updates on ZACH Theatre news, events and happenings, visit http://www.zachtheatre.org/blog, be a fan of ZACH Theatre on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/zachtheatre, and follow ZACH on Twitter @zachtheatre http://www.twitter.com/zachtheatre.

About ZACH Theatre ZACH Theatre is Austin’s leading professional producing theatre. Founded in 1933, ZACH is the longest running theatre company in Texas, serving more than 170,000 adults and youth annually. ZACH creates its own nationally recognized dramatic, musical and comedic productions that elevate, motivate and stimulate the human spirit under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley and Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. Now in its 78th season, ZACH continues to expand and engage with Austin, adding a third theatre to its Central Austin performance campus. The 420-seat, 26,000-square-foot Topfer Theatre will nearly double ZACH’s capacity while retaining its hallmark intimate theatre-going experience upon its completion in the fall of 2012 following a $22 million campaign. Visit www.zachtheatre.org for more information.

ZACH Theatre is sponsored, in part, by Applied Materials, Austin American-Statesman, Time Warner Cable, Austin News TV 36, The Dell Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Strong Events, OnRamp, The Mitchell Group Consulting, Kirk Tuck Photography and Holiday Inn, Lady Bird Lake. Also, by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, which believes an investment in the arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

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.

City of Angels, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, April 8 - 18

You have to be alert in this town to catch St. Edward's stagings at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre, off South Congress. They're of professional quality, well directed, well designed and well received. They even feature two or three Equity guest artists per production, whose participation spurs the already gifted St. Ed's students to even higher levels of accomplishment.

Their productions flash across the horizon like meteors, though. Two weekends and that's it.

City of Angels director Michael McKelvey in his white jacket and carnival barker style promised us before this show that next year the University will add another production, to make a season of five. He was hawking season tickets, available at impressively modest prices ($60 for general admission level). He forgot to mention one of the most agreeable aspects: the fact that the box office will call you well in advance to ask for your preferences for date and for location in the stadium seating of the MMNT theatre-in-a-square.

I had asked for my usual obsessive preference, first row, as close to the action as I could get. Not the best choice, I discovered, for this show, in this theatre.

Yes, the action opens right in front of you on the wide floor of the stage, and I jumped with anticipation when a striking quartet strode on with an up-tempo late 1940s stalking scat number. Michelle Brandt, Nathan Brockett, Andrew Butler and Elizabeth Newchurch glowered, postured, whirled and flirted across the floor with glinting, cynical sophistication. Then David Long as the private detective, Stone, arrived before me in his bare office. His gal Friday, Oolie, reluctantly let in a strange woman with brass blonde hair and black lipstick. The wise cracking began, a standoff of suspicion, while we got to hear Stone's thoughts, phrased in gaudy similes. Blonde Alaura Kingsley wanted Stone to locate her missing stepdaughter.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Images by Bret Brookshire: City of Angels, St. Edward's University, April 8 - 18

Click for ALT review, April 13


Received directly: Bret Brookshire's images for St. Edward's University's 'film noir' musical:

City of Angels runs April 8 - 18, 2010 at Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University. Performances Thursday - Saturday evenings at 7:30 PM and Sundays at 2 PM. Added show Wednesday, April 14 at 7:30 PM is student night with 1/2 price student tickets.

Directed by Michael McKelvey and featuring Equity guest artists Sarah Gay, Jamie Goodwin and David Long. Tickets through the MMNT Box Office at 448-8484.

Image: David Long as Stone (by Brett Brookshire)

Click to view additional image and larger versions at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: City of Angels, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, April

Click for ALT review, April 13


UPDATE: Reviews by Rhonda and Preston Kirk for the A-Team of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, April 13

UPDATE: Review by Clare Croft for Statesman's A360 "Seeing Things" blog, April 12

Found on-line and received directly:

City of Angels

Book by Larry Gelbart, Music by Cy Coleman and David Zippel, Vocal arrangements by Cy Coleman and Yaron Gershovsky
Directed by Michael McKelvey, featuring Sarah Gay, Jamie Goodwin and David M. Long

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University
3001 South Congress Avenue Click for Campus map

April 8 - 18, Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Reserved Seating, Tickets available through the MMNT box office at 448-8484.
Advance $18 ($15 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community)
All tickets $20 at the door.

Special added show for students, Wednesday, April 14 at 7:30 PM --student tickets $7 with ID

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

With wit, style and a sophisticated, jazz-inspired score, this Tony-award winning musical bounces between film noir and 1940s Hollywood glamour with dynamic musical flare. In the story, a frazzled novelist struggles to adapt his hard-boiled detective novel to the silver screen. As tensions mount, the parallels between his own life and that of his fictional detective spiral start to overlap. The Mary Moody Northen Theatre production features Equity guest artists Sarah Gay, Jamie Goodwin, and David M. Long. Michael McKelvey directs.

bobrauschenbergamerica, Mary Moody Northern Theatre at St Edward's University, September 17 - 27

Don't go looking for Robert Rauschenberg the 20th century modern artist in this grab bag. This is homage purely by reference.

Playwright/facilitator Charles Mee is frank in his admission that the piece is a collage of ideas and random bits that had as their starting points some of the images that appear in Rauschenberg's work.

Mee and others free associated about those images. They collected texts and images and other random bits to share in theatre workshops. Mee says that he told his collaborators, "Anyone can steal anything I brought in to make whatever piece they might want to make, and I could steal whatever they brought in."

He sifted through the material, workshopped it again, threw half of the results away and worked the rest up with the SITI Theatre in New York in 2001. We Austinites can think of that ensemble theatre company as the Rude Mechs of New York City.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: bobrauschenbergamerica, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St Edwards University, September 17 - 27

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, September 21



UPDATE: review by Jeann Claire van Ryzin at the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, September 21

UPDATE: Hannah Kenah's pre-opening piece in the Austin Chronicle, September 17

Found on-line:

The Mary Moody Northern Theatre
at St Edwards University
presents

bobrauschenbergamerica

by Charles L. Mee
directed by David M. Long
September 17–27
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

A wild road trip through the American landscape as artist Robert Rauschenberg might have conceived it had he been a playwright: a collage of people and places, music and dancing, love stories and business schemes, chicken jokes and golfing, and the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go. Featuring Equity guest artists Babs George and Jamie Goodwin.





Info Phone: 512.448.8484
3001 South Congress Avenue Austin, TX 78704

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Shooting Star by Steven Dietz, Zach Scott Theatre, February 12 - April 5

Steven Dietz's latest world premiere is a wistful two-character piece aimed directly at the soft heart of the baby boomer generation.

These two were lovers in their early twenties in Madison, Wisconsin, sometime in the 1970s but they've long been out of touch, getting on with their lives. By chance they find themselves -- and one another -- in a snowed-in airport somewhere in the Midwest (think, maybe, Midway in Chicago).

It's a situation ripe for dramatic exploitation. A wave of the playwright's magic wand and lo! we have characters with a deep knowledge of one another and a sense of their ideals and mutual potential -- thirty years out of date. They have decades of change and adventure to explore, as well as the delicate business of defining just who they are for each other right now, in ignorance of their subsequent histories.

Shooting Star trades on a fascination similar to that mined by www.classmates.com. What ever happened to. . . .? Do you really, really want to know? Do you want that person to know what has happened to you and how you have changed?

Dietz is upfront about it. His note in the program, also posted in the lobby, reads, in part,

Someone has your secret. Someone from your past. They have your secret because they once had your heart. . . .

We wed the past to humor with good reason. Oh, how we used to dress! -- and our hair! the music we listened to! -- man, what were we thinking? and with any luck, we can usually bundle up our great regrets in this same nostalgic laughter.

Until we see that face from our past. That person who has the goods on us: who knows exactly how close we came to making our life match our plans.

Master craftsman that he is, Dietz sets up the slightly painful comic contrasts. He gives us business traveler Reed McAllister (Jamie Goodwin), something of a wage slave in a suit, a reader of the Wall Street Journal, grown into someone far different from his idealistic twenty-something self, and pairs him with earth momma Elena Carson (Barbara Chisholm), Austinite, veteran groupie and lonely free spirit.



They see one another from afar and apostrophize to the audience their surprise; after some time avoiding an encounter, they meet. Reed is headed from his home in Boston to Austin for a sales pitch he knows will be unsuccessful; Elena is going to Boston to see a friend. Heavy snow delays flights; the airlines cancel departures. We sit in on their careful process of mutual discovery, with the remembered emotional closeness bringing to the surface regrets, memories shared and unshared, and an unexpected wading into the current complexities of their lives.

The minimalist setting in the Whisenhut theatre is a clever recreation of the waiting area at an airport gate, at which spectators become just that many more stranded travelers. Of course, the airport speaks to us and to the characters (in the lovely neutral precision of Lauren Lane's voice). Dietz gets several appreciative chuckles with business reminding us of the new realities of air travel and the newly familiar rules for travelers. In addition, Barbara's banter about Austin and its special character tickles us.

Separate monologues to the audience set up later revelations. Reed confesses to us that he was deeply jealous and hurt by Elena's promiscuity. With the last flight canceled, they retire to the airport bar. Recollection, new revelation, the intrusion of telephone calls from home, desire, laughter, spontaneous counsel and unexpected gifts -- to quote Dietz's note, Reunions are typically built on laughter, banter, remembrance and alcohol. This one is no different.

Neither Reed nor Elena found anyone better. There is no knowing whether, back then, different mutual rules or more truth in the relationship might have kept them together for a completely different experience in life. Plot pieces click neatly into place, we feel the warmth, and Dietz brings them home to the feeling that despite memories and beyond this tiny bubble of time, the most important issue is this generation's love and care for the next.

Jamie Goodwin and Barbara Chisholm are comfortable and convincing in these characters, and Dietz as playwright and director keeps the action continually interesting and surprising. The Wednesday night audience was smack dab in the target demographic. They gave the piece a standing ovation.

Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin on the Statesman's Austin360 blog, February 16

Interview of Steven Dietz, Barbara Chisholm and Jamie Goodwin by John Aielli on KUT's "Aielli Unleashed," published March 6 (20 minutes)

Review by Barry Pineo in the Austin Chronicle, March 19

Upcoming: Shooting Star by Stehen Dietz, Zach Theatre, February 12 - April 5

UPDATE: Austin Live Theatre review of Shooting Star


from the Zach website:

Shooting Star



World Premiere!

Written and Directed by Steven Dietz
Starring Barbara Chisholm & Jamie Goodwin Photo by Kirk R. Tuck



February 12 - April 5, 2009
Whisenhunt Stage
Wed, Thur, Fri & Sat at 8:00pm, Sun at 2:30pm

“Seen a shooting star tonight slip away, Tomorrow will be another day, Guess it's too late to say the things to you that you needed to hear me say…” – Bob Dylan

In the world premiere of Steven Dietz’s new romantic-comedy, two ex-lovers – one from Austin and one from Boston – unexpectedly reunite after 20 years while snowed in at a Midwestern airport. In time for Valentine’s Day, this delicious, bittersweet comedy has great heart with an appeal to the romantic in all of us.

"Dietz’s writing supplies what’s missing from most modern comedy: character, setting, worship of language, respect for the audience, and distinctive authorial intelligence!" – Seattle Weekly

"We're fortunate that a major American playwright who is changing the theatre with his own work -- and through training the next generation of playwrights at UT -- calls Austin home. When I read Steven Dietz's newest play while he was directing Doubt at ZACH, I knew we had to produce the premiere of his "Austin play". -- Dave Steakley, ZACH's Artistic Director, on Shooting Star

ARTICLE: The Austin Chronicle takes an in-depth look at Steven Dietz.

About Steven Dietz
Steven Dietz is the recipient of the PEN U.S.A. Award for Lonely Planet, perhaps his most widely-performed work; the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for Fiction and Still Life With Iris; and the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery for Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. Recent work includes the Pulitzer-nominated Last of the Boys, the widely-produced baseball adaptation, Honus and Me and several commissions for the McCarter Theatre (Princeton), Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago) and the Denver Center Theatre Company. Mr. Dietz and his family divide their time between Seattle and Austin, where he is a professor of playwriting and screenwriting at UT.