Images: A Raisin in the Sun, City Theatre, February 25 - March 21

Andy Berkovsky's images of cast of A Raisin in the Sun, received directly:

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” - Langston Hughes

A recent widow, Lena Younger wants to use her husband's insurance money to buy a home for her family, freeing them from the cramped tenement in which they live. Her son, Walter Lee is determined to invest the money in a business - an opportunity for him to be his own man. Lena refuses; in her eyes a house is a sturdy thing to build a dream on. But when a white representative of the neighborhood "welcoming committee" presents them with an offer to buy them out of their home, the dream quickly becomes a nightmare. The Younger family attempts to find his or her place amidst a number of difficult situations and Walter Lee for the first time begins to value what money can’t buy, and in the process achieves a new level of self respect and pride.

[MacArthur Moore as Walter Lee Younger, Michelle Alexander as his mother Lean]

See more images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 - November 15

Director Jeff Hinkle and the City Theatre cast led by Aaron Black as Hamlet give us a gripping up-tempo version of the famous events in Elsinore. Elapsed playing time from the first challenge on the battlements to Hamlet's dying gasp, "The rest -- is silence" is just a little more than two and a half hours.

That fits the play well within the max bounds for today's young movie-going public and gives them the bonus of a break in the middle for snacks and bathroom. The nearly full house for opening night offered the encouraging prospect of a well attended four-week run to open City's fourth season.

It's a good ride, with some surprises along the way.

Aaron Black paints a two-speed Hamlet. From the first, alone or speaking to us directly in his monologues, Black establishes the prince's intelligence. His deft timing and effectively calibrated pauses show Hamlet's mind at work and establish a bond with the audience.

In company with any but Horatio or the player king, however, Black speeds up, provokes and antagonizes. His diction is precise but as his lines move toward rant, he seems to be less the master of his own thoughts. They burst forth in hectoring images.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images: Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 - November 15

Images received directly from City Theatre Austin,
for

Hamlet

October 22 – November 15
Thursday – Saturday 8:00 p.m. Sunday 5:30 p.m.

The cast includes Aaron Black (Hamlet), Tim Brown (Claudius), Christy Smith (Gertrude), Shannon Davis (Ophelia), Jeannie Harris (Polonius), Collin Bjork (Laertes), Bryan Headrick (Horatio), McArthur Moore (Fortinbras, Ghost, Gravedigger), Clay Avery (Rosencrantz), Alexander Hall (Guildenstern/Marcellus), John McNeill (Player King), Leslie Robinson (Player Queen/Barnardo/Osric), and Colter Creech (Captain/Voltemand/Cornelius).

The City Theatre Company production of Hamlet will have a run time of two hours and thirty minutes including intermission. The director and cast invite audiences to the talkbacks after shows on Sunday, October 25 and Sunday, November 8.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street.

View more images at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Hamlet, City Theatre, October 22 -

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 26

UPDATE: Article by Sara Pressley in the Daily Texan, October 21: Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' Gets Modern Twist at Local Venue

Received directly:


Hamlet

City Theatre, October 22 - November 15
After show talk-backs October 25 and November 8.

A murdered king. A usurped kingdom. A promise of revenge. Returning to court to find his father murdered and his mother remarried, the young and melancholy Dane faces his most terrible dilemma between duty and doubt, madness and mistrust, and “murder most foul.”

[photo by Jordy Wagoner, Daily Texan]
An undisputed masterpiece of world theatre, William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy of passion, corruption and revenge has captivated audiences for more than four hundred years and remains as relevant and urgent as ever.

With Aaron Black, Collin Bjork, McArthur Moore, Christy Smith, and Tim Brown and featuring the live music ensemble orchestra of Mother Falcon.

Tickets $15 - $20. Guaranteed reserve $25. Thursdays pay what you can. Group and student discounts. www.citytheatreaustin.org

For reservations, call 512-524-2870 or e-mail info@citytheatreaustin.org.

The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D. – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38½ Street.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Tartuffe, City Theatre, July 23 - August 16

Molière was appalled and distressed when he learned that although Louis XIV had enjoyed the court performance of Tartuffe on May 12, 1664 the "Sun King" had listened to pious advisers and had forbidden any further presentations of the play.

This great comic tale of religious hypocrisy was in trouble from the start. The dramatist had produced a farce in elegant verse featuring a "holy man" intent on seduction, theft and exploitation, an adroit manipulator of religious concepts and of religious language. The court advisers were probably scandalized at the playwright's witty undermining of religiosity and some of them may have felt directly targeted.

Molière's eloquent protests went unheeded and the revised version he presented publicly three years later was immediately shut down. Not until 1669, after a delay of five years, was Tartuffe performed, apparently with the King's permission. It became the most successful and most profitable of Molière's plays.

Charles P. Stites serves as something of a Molière for the City Theatre's production of Tartuffe. He drafted this text, directed it and stars as Tartuffe.

And what better setting for religious hypocrisy (via tele-evangelism) than modern Central Texas?

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

Upcoming: Tartuffe, City Theatre, July 23 - August 16

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, July 27



PDATE: Sean Fuentes interviews director Charles P. Stites at Austin Theatre Review.com

Received directly:

Hypocrisy. Seduction. Greed. Betrayal.

The best of Moliere’s comedy with

Tartuffe

at City Theatre this summer July 23 – August 16


If it's hypocrisy, greed, and seduction you’re looking for this summer, look no further than Molière’s most famous farce, Tartuffe.

Under the cloak of religious piety, the lecherous, menacing, arch-hypocrite title character schemes to marry his benefactor’s daughter, seduce his wife, then defraud him of all he possesses. Does the scoundrel succeed? Take your seat and find out in this new and exciting adaptation of one of the world’s greatest comedies.

The production runs July 23 – August 16 at The City Theatre. It is directed by Charles P. Stites and features City Theatre company members Wray Crawford, Fiona Rene, D. Heath Thompson, and MacArthur Moore.

Molière’s masterpiece was written over three hundred years ago, but the classic has found a fresh reinvention at City Theatre with a modern staging that is even more immediate, identifiable, and hilarious. Rather than a classic that can be translated to a modern setting, Molière's play seems more of a contemporary play that just happens to have been written a few centuries ago.

Tartuffe and Texas were made for each other.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Incantations of August Wilson and "Fences" (City Theatre, February 26 - March 22)

You can find individual plays by August Wilson just about anywhere that dramatic literature is on offer. Half Price Books or Bookpeople, of course; and this combined edition is available at the Austin Public Library (Faulk Central Library). I spent a good deal of time with it over the past few weeks, preparing to review the City Theatre production of Wilson's Fences, which opens tomorrow, February 26, for a four week run (February 26 - March 22).

I didn't know Wilson, in large part because I'd spent a lot of the last three decades outside the United States. The press, the Kennedy Center, Wikipedia, and other sources call him one of the greatest American playwrights.

One account says that as he faced his imminent death from liver cancer at the age of 60, in 2005, Wilson teased his drama colleagues, asking them to make sure that his plays got produced "not just in February. I want them to be produced all year round." February, of course, is Black History Month.

Director Lisa Jordan and the Fences cast just about complied with Wilson's wishes. The scheduling hardly matters, though. Prince Camp, cast as one of two sons of the stolid former pro baseball player Troy Maxson, told me, "I read this play when I was just eighteen. I've always wanted to do it. I'm too young to play Troy and too old to play Cory [the other son]. But that doesn't matter. I would have swept the floor to be involved in this production."

The cast was running a full dress rehearsal this past Tuesday, happy to be at last in possession of the theatre and the set. They had been working since January in one temporary venue after another while North by Northwest Theatre Company had been doing The Shadow Box in the small but well appointed City Theatre. The theatre is tucked in a modest office building behind the Shell Station at Airport Road and 38 1/2 street. I met the cast in the semi-dark of backstage as they readied themselves for the opening scene, and some had the time to talk outside in the parking lot before they went onstage.

McArthur Moore plays Maxson's brother Gabriel, an invalided veteran of World War II, affable but slightly loony as a result of shrapnel wounds. A drama graduate from San Angelo State, Moore grinned when I compared Fences to Miller's Death of A Salesman. "In school I had to write an essay about that. Yes, they are a lot alike -- but there are lots of differences." Both plays center on a deep conflict between a father and a son; in each, the father's infidelity has a devastating effect on the marriage and the family.

In his preface to Three Plays, Wilson says that he was inspired to attempt play writing at the age of twenty when he first heard Bessie Smith sing the blues. Moore commented, "There's a lot of the blues in his plays -- in this one Troy sings about his 'Old Dog Blue.' But what I hear is jazz -- rhythms and changes, like Miles Davis or John Coltrane. And poetry. This is special language. Especially when you listen to the monologues -- some of them are structured like iambic pentameter."

Richard Romeo, who plays Cory, the younger son, agreed. "It's full of surprises, and sudden turns, both in the language and in the plot. And a lot of us can see ourselves in the relationship between Troy and Cory." Troy Maxson, retired baseball player from the Negro League, works on a garbage truck; he fiercely opposes son Corey's opportunity to earn a football scholarship, insisting instead that the boy should learn a trade -- something nobody can take away. "Cory is only 18," said Romeo, who is 21, an alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studying drama at Texas State. "He wants to be like his father -- over and over, you see him swinging a bat. But Troy rejects that and finally throws Cory out of the house."

"It's tough love," said Camp (shown here, left, with Robert Pellette, Jr., playing Troy Maxson). "My father was just like that when I was offered a scholarship to study drama. He and my mother had six other kids, and they couldn't understand why I would do that -- even with a full ride." Camp, now 39, works for an Austin high tech company. He has appeared in film and in his own one-man show, presented at the Dougherty Arts Center. He's enrolled in the Dallas Theological Seminary, working on a master's degree in media arts and communications. "Another thing that's exciting is the amount of acting talent that's here in Austin," he said. "We didn't need to bring in anyone from the outside to play these roles. You could have had five times as many actors, and all of them qualified."

As the action continued, they returned to their places backstage. I sat for a while on an old sofa in the dimness, a silent observer. Backstage, one hears the play rather than sees it. Wilson's language is hypnotic, and I listened to Pellette as the dogged, self-confident Maxson teasing his wife Rose (Gina Houston), badgering Corey, and bantering with his brother Gabriel and his friend Jim Bono (Rod Crain).

Chicago actor/producer Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who worked with Wilson, commented for an AP piece on Wilson, ''August's language is the natural rhythm and language of Southern black folk - what I call 'Northern colored people' - people who came from the South to the North but brought all their colored ways and colored style in the beauty, the nuance and the integrity that they always had down South. It's very warm, very vivid, very passionate.'' And Derrick Sanders, who has also directed Wilson's works, was succinct but direct: "Wilson is a lot like Shakespeare."

August Wilson was prolific. He wrote a cycle of ten plays, setting one in each decade of the 20th century, locating them mostly in his own hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He won a long list of awards. Fences, for example, received a Pulitzer prize, the New York Drama Critics Award and the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2005 the Virginia Theatre on Broadway was renamed the August Wilson Theatre. Last year the Kennedy Center sponsored staged readings of the full ten-cycle series. This year, a revival of Fences will open on Broadway, taking Wilson's work back to where he had his great successes.

NPR interview with August Wilson, with links to extensive additional audio material

"August Wilson" on Wikipedia