Upcoming: Stop The World, I Want to Get Off, Austin Playhouse, April 22 - May 22

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presents

Stop the World – I Want to Get Off!

by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley

directed by Don Toner

April 22 – May 22; Thursday–Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m.

Austin Playhouse, Penn Field (behind the water tower), 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C (click for map)

Tickets $26 Thursday and Friday, $28 Saturday and Sunday, $35 Opening Night

Available at the box office 512.476.0084 or online at: www.austinplayhouse.com

www.austinplayhouse.com and on Facebook and Twitter

Closing out the 2010-2011 Season, Austin Playhouse presents a Bricusse/Newley classic and multiple Tony Award nominated production, a thought-provoking tale about the fleeting nature of worldly success. This beloved musical celebrates its 50^th year in 2011.

Stop the World – I Want to Get Off! is set in a circus and tells the timeless tale of a Littlechap, a clown who conquers the world but loses himself. The story will be told through song, dance, drama, and the artistry of the Austin Playhouse acting company over a one-month run. The show is a boundless, shameless, and humorously entertaining production. Stop the World is about the responsibility we have for our own lives, and how it sometimes feels like the world is spinning out of control and you just want to get off.

Directed by Don Toner, musical direction by Oliver Worthington, and choreography by Danny Herman and Rocker Verastique. The Austin production stars Rick Roemer as Littlechap and Angela Davis as Evie, with an ensemble cast that includes Kimberly Barrow, Rachel Dendy, Hildreth England, Kasey Erin Eggleston, Eedann McCord, Stephanie Ngo-Hatchie, Ann Pittman, Hannah Rose, and Jennifer Blakeney Young.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

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

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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!

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 . . . .

Images by Christopher Loveless: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Austin Playhouse, March 26 - May 2

Click for ALT review, April 22

Images of Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Christopher Loveless, courtesy of Austin Playhouse:

This production plays March 26 - May 2 at
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

[photo: Robert Matney as Einstein, with Kimberly Barrow]

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.

View additional images 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).

Age of Arousal, Austin Playhouse Larry L. King Theatre, April 10 - May 10

Age of Arousal is a strange, febrile comedy. It's like Dickens on drugs, if Dickens were to write about a closed circle of odd women.

These women are "odd" both in the numerical meaning of "not in a pair" and in the metaphorical meaning of "singular" or "remarkable." They are not "unique," because playwright Linda Griffiths intends them to represent for us the plight of women in late 19th century England, where by demographic quirk women outnumbered men by 25%. The sentimental Victorian ideal of cozy, obedient matrimony was an impossibility for many women.

Canadian playwright Linda Griffiths took as her point of departure the 1893 novel The Odd Women by British author George Gissing.
Gissing was ranked by some contemporary British critics alongside Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. A brilliant student from working-class origins, Gissing was expelled from university for stealing from better-off classmates and briefly imprisoned. He spent a year in Chicago and then went back to England in 1877. He churned out a total of 23 novels before his death from emphysema in 1903.

Gissing's social themes were well ahead of his time. He wrote about exploitation of the poor, hypocrisy in religion, the injustices for women in conventional matrimony, and unscrupulous commercial practices.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .