Images by Bret Brookshire: Too Many Husbands by W. Somerset Maugham, Different Stages at the Vortex Repertory, June 24 - July 16

Images by Bret Brookshire for

presentation of

W. Somerset Maugham’s

Too Many Husbands

June 24 – July 16
The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd (click for map)
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.
“Pick your Price: $15, $20, $25, $30
Call 478-5282

Different Stages closes its 2010–2011 season with W. Somerset Maugham’s comedy Too Many Husbands. A fast, frivolous, comedy the plot focuses on Victoria, a delectably pretty but ruthlessly self-centered young woman whose husband; William was reported killed three years earlier in World War I. But William is not dead; he is on his way to London for a reunion with his wife, unaware that she is now married to his best friend, Freddie.

The situation is complicated further by the discovery that the avaricious Victoria already has a third husband in view, a rich entrepreneur, for who she plans to dump both Freddie and William, feeling she has made sacrifice enough for the war effort. Through their ingenuity the two friends finally win their freedom and Victoria her wealthy third husband.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Night of the Iguana), Too Many Husbands features Martina Ohlhauser (Hay Fever) as Victoria, Joe Hartman (MilkMilkLeomnade) as Freddie and Brian Villalobos (The Crucible) as William. Tony Salinas (The Night of the Iguana) plays the rich entrepreneur. Paula Gilbert (An Inspector Calls) plays the cook and Phoebe Greene plays the parlor maid and Ashley McNerney plays the nanny. Phil Cole (The Skin of Our Teeth) and Julie Winston-Thomas (Spider’s Web) play the divorce lawyer and his assistant.

Click to view additional images by Bret Brookshire at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Hay Fever by Noël Coward, North by Northwest Theatre Company at the City Theatre, May 22 - June 7

Bernadette Nason sparkles like pink champagne in this amusing, silly piece written by "the master" Noël Coward when he was a mere boy of 25.

Hay Fever lightly chronicles the start of a weekend at a country house near London, property of the Bliss family -- David is a novelist, Judith is an actress who recently said her adieux to the London stage and their children Simon and Sorel have no identifiable professions or preoccupations.

They all have artistic temperaments and a cheerful disregard for social niceties. As Sorel says to her brother in the first scene, "You're right about us being slapdash, Simon. I wish we weren't." His reply: "It's not our fault -- it's the way we've been brought up."

That impulsiveness and disregard applies to relations within the family, as well.

Click to read more on AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hay Fever by Noel Coward, North by Northwest Theatre, May 22 - June 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review




From the NxNW Theatre Company website:


Hay Fever
by Noel Coward

When each eccentric member of the self absorbed, artsy, pithy and dramatic member of the Bliss family invites an admiring guest to their country house for a quiet weekend, no one winds up with who they invited and theatrical antics ensue, in this classic drawing room comedy by Noel Coward.

Hay Fever is directed by Karen Sneed and features Austin’s award winning, “terribly British” Bernadette Nason as Judith Bliss, the matriarch of this brash and impetuous family. The Hay Fever cast includes Martina Ohlhauser, Tyler Jones, Eric Porter, Joe Hartman, Julianna Wright, Johnny Stewart, Marsha Sray, and Joni McClain.

Location: The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd.
Admission: General: $20, Seniors/Students/Military: $18, Groups: $15
Dates: Friday, May 22 through Sunday June 7, 2009.
Please Note: We are unable accept credit cards at the door. Cash & checks only please.

Make reservations at NxNW website

The Heidi Chronicles, City Theatre, March 26 - April 19

Wendy Wasserstein, playwright of The Heidi Chronicles, died in 2005, cut down in full artistic activity by lymphoma. Her play Third, which premiered that year, was performed in Austin last September by the Paradox Players. The City Theatre has just opened The Heidi Chronicles for a four-week run, featuring a talented young cast, clever staging and some still unanswered big questions.

One of five children of a wealthy Jewish family in Brooklyn, Wasserstein graduated from Mount Holyoke, then obtained master's degrees from City College of New York in 1971 and from the Yale School of Drama in 1976. Her graduate thesis project at Yale was produced off-Broadway in 1977, featuring Glenn Close, and then on PBS with Meryl Streep. Wasserstein wrote three more plays and then in 1989 The Heidi Chronicles won the Drama Desk award, the New York Critics' award for best new play, a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The juries for those awards must have recognized this play for its comic, yet earnest take on the emotional plight of highly educated American women. Female thirty-somethings faced contradictions and were assailed by cognitive dissonance when choosing between aspirations for careers and the allure of the safe, mostly suburban world of motherhood. If intelligent women were -- or should be -- the equals of men, why did so many of them decline to compete? And how could capable, successful female professionals establish the comfort, intimacy and family ties that seemed to accrue naturally to mothers and housewives in their warm and fuzzy little worlds?

In her portrayal of Heidi Holland from high school through her young middle age as a respected university professor, Wasserstein deliberately does not answer that question.

Read More . . . .