I have puzzled and puzzled about this production. Meghan Kennedy and Kimber Lee preserve the approximate shape of Euripides' great tragedy. Their text rarely echoes his lines directly, but it includes scenes of sharp, cadenced prose or blank verse that evoke the terror and hopelessness of brutally widowed women left in tattered clothing, dirt and desperation.
In particular, Kate DeBuys as Hecuba is magnificent. She projects a stunned concentration in which only the steel of her aristocratic upbringing keeps her functioning.
Almost as good is Lesley Gurule as Andromache, widow to Paris and mother of the doomed infant Astyanax, even though the adapters have turned her into a stumbling drunk with bottle in hand, so blinded that she pays no attention to the child in the perambulator she is pushing. Was it a stage glitch that during her entering maneuver up and across a low platform she managed to dump the kid entirely? Little matter, because Kennedy and Lee have imagined a woman so insensible to motherhood that she and all the women in the huddled group don't hold the child but leave him bundled in the pram.
When you adapt a piece of this power, authority and antiquity, you are presumed to have a concept. What's going on here? Is the company trying to make The Trojan Women more relevant to today? To challenge the traditional relation by altering characters or relationships? Do those burned-out television sets hint at some psychological apocalypse? We really don't know.
The Trojan Women A New Adaptation by Meghan Kennedy & Kimber Lee Directed by Halena Kays University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance, Oscar G. Brockett Theatre October 30, 31 & November 3, 4, 5, 6 at 8:00 PM October 31 & November 1, 8 at 2:00 PM The war is over. A great city has fallen.
Among the rubble, women wait to hear their fate at the hands of the victorious army, struggling to survive, refusing to give in, and somehow finding hope in the most unexpected places.
Tickets: $20 adults, $17 UT faculty & staff, $15 students. Available online at www.utpac.org or by phone at 477-6060.Opening night reception immediately following the October 30 performance.
Rooms was an unexpected opportunity to inhabit Chekhov's The Three Sisters for a short time on Sunday evenings in June. The announcement -- more of an invitation, really -- was to visit the Prozorov family at their estate, between Acts II and III of The Three Sisters. This piece may have originated as exercises for the MFA program at the University of Texas. We have seen each of these six vibrant actors elsewhere in town, both in UT productions and elsewhere, including at the Zach Scott and Hyde Park theatres.
You may have had the advantage of seeing St. Ed's production last fall at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre or you may know the play directly. The three sisters of the title are stranded at their provincial estate, yearning to return to Moscow, where they were raised. That hope is diminishing, for their father the General died a year earlier. Their only entertainment is socializing with the gallant men of the artillery regiment stationed for some indefinite time in the town.
Much happens in Chekhov's play, but Rooms takes only the first half as a given.
Rooms A Reimagining of Chekhov's The Three Sisters
Brought to life by the Secondhand Theatre, a company of six MFA actors from the University of Texas, are the previously unwritten moments between Acts II and III of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters.
This site-specific piece invites the audience into the Prozorov's house and casts them as guests of the family. Taken from room to room amidst a home marked for sale, they bear witness to the most private scenes of sexual tension, blood, and tears from a family torn by duty and repression.
The cast of Rooms includes Marlane Barnes, Smaranda Ciceu, Kate deBuys, Lesley Gurule, Melissa Recalde, and Tom Truss. For a limited engagement, previewing June 7th at 8:00 p.m. with additional peformances on the 14th and 21st.
Located at Uptown Modern, 5453 Burnet Road, Austin, in the Courtyard Shops. Call 512-452-1200 for reservations, as capacity is limited. Code word: "Olga." Suggested ticket price on a sliding scale: $5, $10 and $20.
Email secondhandtheatre@gmail.com with additional inquiries.
