Video Promo: Quartet by Ronald Harwood, Black Diamond Cabaret in Wimberley, January 11-18 and San Marcos, January 24-25, 2014

(www.leecoleestudios.com)

During the month of January, 2014 producer and director Lee Colée will be showcasing some of her most elite senior talent with the poignant comedy

Quartet

by Ronald Harwood 

January 3-4 in Lockhart

January 11-12 and 17-18 at the VFW Hall in Wimberley

January 24-25 at the Price Center in San Marcos

Carla Daws, Judith Laird, Allan Eastwood and Larry Oliver take on the roles of four retired international opera performers and celebrities who now live in a retirement home for musicians and must come to terms with their lives after successful careers.

Whether you love opera or hate it, you will laugh and root for these four friends who discover that it isn't over when the fat lady sings!

Tickets are now online. Don't wait too long as this show is sure to sell out. People all around town are already talking about this award winning comedy.

Buy tickets here! 

Upcoming: Of Mice and Men, City Theatre, May 12 - June 8

Received directly:

THE CITY THEATRE

proudly presents John Steinbeck's American classic

OF MICE AND MEN

with Derek Jones as George Milton and Andy Brown as Lennie Small.

also featuring Samantha Brewer, Gabriel Diehl, Scot Friedman, Larry Oliver, Garry Peters, Daniel Sawtelle, Gabriel Smith, and Ben Woods

May 12 – June 5

Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5:30 p.m.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street (click for map)

Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed Front/2^nd Row Reserved $25.

Students $12. Thursday all seats $10. Group discounts are available.

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

www.citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre Company continues its 2011 season with the critically-acclaimed Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. This classic tale and Nobel Prize-winning novella about two migrant workers’ quest for the American dream portrays the struggle for independence, the responsibility we have to one another, and the desire for a place we all long to call our own.

“We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.” - George

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Incident at Vichy, Trinity Street Players, April 2 - 17

The black box on the fourth floor has a claustrophobic feel. The central space is stark and looks more like a basement than an attic -- a couple of benches, neutral gray walls, a narrow high window, a couple of empty beer bottles left on the sill. As you gather and settle into the ranks of seats around that central space, the theatre serenades you with recordings of French music -- Jacques Brel, an anachronism, singing his lament about the 1914 assassination of pacifist Jean Jaurès, then a better calibrated sucession of ballads by Edith Piaf.

The house lights are up when a couple of men in overcoats and fedoras bring in a man from your right and summarily deposit him on a bench. He sits, bewildered. A few moments pass, and the plainclothesmen bring another arrested man in from your left. Eventually the house lights go down, the collect continues, and the spectators face an unwilling, withdrawn and involuntary group of about a dozen males.

This is Vichy, some 400 kilometers south of Paris. It's the administrative capital of the "free" zone administered during early years of World War II by a government headed by Marshal Pétain. Expressionless French police do not respond to the uneasy questions of the detainees. We gradually learn that they've been picked up off the streets by cruising patrols. None appears to have broken the law, except perhaps for the sullen gypsy presumed to be a thief by vocation.

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

Upcoming: Defiant by George Brant, Debutantes and Vagabonds at Larry L. King Theatre, Austin Playhouse, February 24 - March 13

Found on-line:

Debutantes and Vagabonds present

Defiant

by George Brant

directed by Amanda Garfield

February 25 - March 13, 2011

Thursdays-Saturdays at 8PM, Sundays at 5PM

Larry L. King Theatre at Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 South Congress (click for map)

Reserve tickets on-line --

Starring: Dawn Erin, Craig Nigh, Emily Everidge, Jorge Sermini, Bobbie Oliver, Larry Oliver, and Brittany Flurry.

Music composed and performed by Ashleigh Stone.

Design by Jennifer Singletary, Eric Gazzillo, and Brigette Hutchison.

The Flu Season, Austin Community College, February 27 - March 8

It took a while, but I finally found the word that describes Will Eno's The Flu Season, produced February 27- March 8 by Austin Community College.

That word is "aggravating."

Maybe y'all don't use it here in Texas, but I heard it regularly from my mother, who came from a small town in Georgia. "Aggravating" describes behavior that is egotistical, rudely mischievous and intentionally provocative. Since she raised six sons, my Mom had occasion to use that word fairly often.

The Flu Season is set in an unidentified psychiatric institute somewhere with cold weather. We witness the initial interviews of two new patients, who appear to be involuntarily committed inmates. A white-coated doctor receives a bewildered young man; then on the opposite side of the stage a nurse brings on board a quiet young woman.

We don't know or really learn the histories of the young people. We quickly see that each of the members of the helping profession is perfunctory in filling out the forms. Each is far more interested in talking about his or her own feelings. For no good reason, the doctor relates impressions of a visit to Amsterdam. The nurse babbles along cheerfully about a girlhood experience in the countryside, centering around the sight of a horse.

Playwright Eno brings on "Prologue," a dapper fairy of a man who confidently and optimistically comments upon the action but does not successfully elucidate it. Shortly thereafter we meet "Epilogue," a discontented, cynical commentator consistently countering the chirpy "Prologue." Grumpy "Epilogue" demonstrates that "Prologue" is unable to see him, and one is pushed to assume that the sour, nearly angry words of "Epilogue" are in fact those of the author. He appears to despise what he has written, the effort of writing, and the attempt to explain any human reality in words.

Yes, there is a story of sorts, as the young woman and the young man become aware of one another in group therapy and in the television lounge. Inevitably, woman needs man and man must have his mate, but intimacy does not thrive or last in the madhouse. In parallel, the doctor and the nurse gradually develop a cordial mutual accommodation that appears less fatal. And throughout this, chipper "Prologue" gradually loses his cool and "Epilogue" as the author's voice makes it clear that he wishes he had never been involved in any of this garbage.

There's much of the Theatre of the Absurd in this concoction -- for example, one puzzles to understand the terms prologue and epilogue -- which, in customary parlance, would indicate, respectively, a speaker at the opening of the piece and a speaker following the conclusion of the action. Perhaps Eno used his prologue in an early draft of the opening scenes and just couldn't get shut of him? The notional author's mouthpiece might be dubbed epilogue because the character was grafted onto a nearly finished script that the author found appalling?

These quibbles and this bare description of the plot do not do justice to the theatrical experience. There's a strong and important message here: that each individual struggles to find meaning in existence through words, describing and defining feelings and experience, an effort that seldom succeeds. Eno further implies that for the most part we are sealed up in our individuality, fated either to isolation or to facile social accommodation that is trivial or essentially meaningless.

But he wraps that bleakness in language that flashes like diamonds in the darkness. These characters are dolts or disturbed or wrapped up in themselves, but they use images and describe experiences that are profound.

Only we, the audience, are listening to them, however, and for this play to succeed, each of the actors must convey that language and those underlying emotions with great clarity.

Bobbie Oliver as the nurse is a small marvel, connecting all those dots and turning them into a tightrope stretched across the void. Every word counts. She builds a subtext and a life view for her appealing-but-not-so-smart character. Larry Oliver as the doctor comes across as a bit wooden at first, but as he opens his random thoughts and his history to us, we can accept that as a valid portrayal of this man: not a great doctor, not even certain of his capabilities, but fundamentally decent in a distracted sort of way. David Yeakle as Prologue is ingratiating in his cluelessness and he aptly, slowly falls apart as his role in the play loses meaning. Curiously, there are two actors named in the program as Epilogue, the voice of the author, even though only one appeared on stage at the Saturday performance -- a tall, squared-off young man in glasses, with an appropriately abrupt manner and impatience both with characters and with the audience.

Avery Ferguson as the young woman and James Leach as the young man fit their roles. She blooms from stolid frustration to happy warmth as their relationship develops; he is staccatto, wild-haired and blinking in phobic desperation throughout. Neither entirely masters the language with which Eno has gifted them. Although they appear to hit every syllable of the text, meaning and emotion usually fly past them. One might see that as a valid interpretation, since they have, after all, been committed to this institute because they're psychologically incompetent. But Eno's greater message about language as our last refuge for meaning is diminished thereby.

Thanks to the ACC Drama Department and director Jodi Jinks for challenging the audience with this intense and -- yes -- aggravating play. Jinks takes on the Big Question, after all, which is The Meaning of Life. That's a task a lot bigger than providing casual amusement for the college students. It was too much of a stretch for some. The blond poppet seated next to me in the front row disappeared at the intermission.

And special appreciation, again, to Peter Sukovaty for superb set design and lighting. His use of glass brick and stark white wall sections was modern and attractive while still retaining the icy institutional feel of a psychiatric institution.