Upcoming: City of Angels, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, April

Click for ALT review, April 13


UPDATE: Reviews by Rhonda and Preston Kirk for the A-Team of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, April 13

UPDATE: Review by Clare Croft for Statesman's A360 "Seeing Things" blog, April 12

Found on-line and received directly:

City of Angels

Book by Larry Gelbart, Music by Cy Coleman and David Zippel, Vocal arrangements by Cy Coleman and Yaron Gershovsky
Directed by Michael McKelvey, featuring Sarah Gay, Jamie Goodwin and David M. Long

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University
3001 South Congress Avenue Click for Campus map

April 8 - 18, Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Reserved Seating, Tickets available through the MMNT box office at 448-8484.
Advance $18 ($15 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community)
All tickets $20 at the door.

Special added show for students, Wednesday, April 14 at 7:30 PM --student tickets $7 with ID

Box office is open 1-5 p.m. Monday–Friday and 1 hour prior to curtain.

With wit, style and a sophisticated, jazz-inspired score, this Tony-award winning musical bounces between film noir and 1940s Hollywood glamour with dynamic musical flare. In the story, a frazzled novelist struggles to adapt his hard-boiled detective novel to the silver screen. As tensions mount, the parallels between his own life and that of his fictional detective spiral start to overlap. The Mary Moody Northen Theatre production features Equity guest artists Sarah Gay, Jamie Goodwin, and David M. Long. Michael McKelvey directs.

Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 12 - 21

You might get lost in the tidy space of St. Ed's Mary Moody Northern Theatre if you haven't done your homework before you get to the theatre. Peer Gynt is not your dependable old social realism from Ibsen. This story is a wild ride of fable, myth and allegory that takes you across the world and through an entire prankish life, written by a young dramatist who had escaped bleak Norway for the dazzling sunscapes of Italy.

The attractive printed program given to you has a full page on the august poet and translator Robert Bly, but no synopsis of the action, other than a list of the locales of the 34 scenes, ranging from "the farm" to Morocco to Cairo and back to the mountains of Norway. For more than that, see the ALT profile of the drama, "The Wild Striving of Peer Gynt," published here on February 8.

Peer Gynt, both the play and the character played by Jacob Trussell, moves at speed, between a canter and a gallop throughout.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 11 - 21

Received directly:

In its 37th season,
the Mary Moody Northern Theatre
at St Edward's University presents

Peer Gynt

by Henrik Ibsen
directed by Ev Lunning, Jr.
February 11 - 21
Thursday–Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Out of the gentle genius of Henrik Ibsen comes a stunning theatrical travelogue exploring one man’s journey of self-discovery from impetuous boyhood to penitent old age.

A fantastical voyage filled with puppetry, music and wonder in the tradition of the great Norwegian fairy tales, Peer Gynt races, stumbles, fights, meanders and crashes, alternately, around the world and back again in this new translation by Minnesota poet laureate Robert Bly. Featuring Equity guest artists Sheila M. Gordon and Ben Wolfe.

Mary Moody Northern Theatre
St. Edward’s University, 3001 South Congress Avenue, Austin
Click to view campus map

Tickets available through the MMNT box office at 448-8484.
Reserved Seating. Advance sales: general admission $15 ($12 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community) All tickets $18 at the door.
Box office is open 1-5 p.m. Monday–Friday and 1 hour prior to curtain.
SPECIAL STUDENT NIGHT: Friday, Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m., all student tickets $6 with ID

[image adapted from the website of the Norwegian Embassy in Hanoi]

About St. Edward's University
Founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross, St. Edward's University is named among the top five "Up-and-Coming Universities" in the Western Region by its academic peers in a 2010 U.S. News & World Report survey. For seven consecutive years St. Edward's has been recognized as one of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News & World Report and this year by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. St. Edward's is a private, Catholic, liberal arts university of nearly 5,300 students located in Austin, Texas. For more information on St. Edward’s University, visit www.stedwards.edu.

Upcoming: The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edward's University, November 12 - 22

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, November 16

Found on-line:

The Life of Galileo

by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare
Directed by Michelle Polgar
November 12-November 22, 2009
Mary Moody Northern Theatre
St Edward's University, 3001 South Congress Avenue

In 1609, in a small study in Padua, Galileo Galilei raises a telescope to the skies. What he finds there reverberates from the streets of Padua to the Vatican palace in Rome, sparking a debate that threatens his very survival. From master playwright Bertolt Brecht comes a theatrical discourse on reason, faith, power and the tension arising from scientific progress running headlong into age-old assumptions.

Featuring Equity guest artists David Stahl and David Stokey.

Tickets: Season and Flex passes go on sale August 26 through the MMNT box office. Passes start as low as $40 for four shows.
Box office hours are Monday–Friday from 1–5 p.m. Info phone: 512.448.8484

Map to St. Edward's University (theatre is at eastern end of campus)

[image is taken from the article Galileo and The Telescope, 1609 published by American Physical Society]

Wikipedia on Brecht's The Life of Galileo

Upcoming: bobrauschenbergamerica, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St Edwards University, September 17 - 27

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, September 21



UPDATE: review by Jeann Claire van Ryzin at the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, September 21

UPDATE: Hannah Kenah's pre-opening piece in the Austin Chronicle, September 17

Found on-line:

The Mary Moody Northern Theatre
at St Edwards University
presents

bobrauschenbergamerica

by Charles L. Mee
directed by David M. Long
September 17–27
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

A wild road trip through the American landscape as artist Robert Rauschenberg might have conceived it had he been a playwright: a collage of people and places, music and dancing, love stories and business schemes, chicken jokes and golfing, and the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go. Featuring Equity guest artists Babs George and Jamie Goodwin.





Info Phone: 512.448.8484
3001 South Congress Avenue Austin, TX 78704

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Pajama Game, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St Edwards University, April 16 - 26

Michael McKelvey and that talented cast at St. Ed's send us whizzing in a happy time machine back to 1954, when the American musical was in its full, ripe heyday. That was the age of Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Dilemma Is Resolved and All Live Happily Ever After. Into that sure-fire mix the producers stirred a crowd of Supporting Hoofers, an Eccentric or two and an Almost Villain; they seasoned it with a Big City Number and a slinky Spanish number, and they peppered it with wisecracks. And everybody loved it.

And you know what? It still works. Despite the predictable story line and the cardboard-cutout characters, we embrace the star power of this cast. There's plenty of toe-tapping and foolery, and the leads are bursting with talent. McKelvey sends them bouncing all over the Mary Moody Northern Theatre.

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

Upcoming: The Pajama Game, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St Edwards University, April 16 - 26

Click for April 20 review of
The Pajama Game



Found on-line:

The Pajama Game

Mary Moody Northen Theatre
April 16-April 26, 2009

By George Abbot and Richard Bissell
Music and Lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross
Directed by Michael McKelvey

The employees of the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory are demanding a 7 ½ cent raise. When management meets the union head, the sparks fly. A two-time Tony Award, this bright and brassy show features some of Adler and Ross’s most popular songs, including “Hernando’s Hideaway,” “Hey There” and the Bob Fosse-choreographed “Steam Heat.”

Cyrano De Bergerac, Mary Moody Northern Theatre at St. Edward's, February 12 -22

Director Michelle Polgar orchestrates a fine, vigorous production of the wonderfully romantic French drama Cyrano de Bergerac, playing through this coming weekend at St Ed's Mary Moody Northern Theatre. Edmond Rostand modeled the lonely, pugnacious cavalier with the big nose on the historical figure of Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a duelist and dramatist who did, in fact, fight in the Thirty Years' War between the French and the Spanish.

One of my French professors dismissed Rostand's play as clap-trap sentimentality, to my great dismay. My father, a reticent man, had given me a copy of the Modern Libary edition when I was about 15, and in my own lonely hours I had soared with the eloquence of Cyrano, mused at his contempt for death and admired his casual heroism. I suffered with him the colossal irony of his unwanted obligation to support and protect cadet Christian, that young fop who had attracted the admiration of Cyrano's secret belovéd, his own cousin Roxanne.

Anyway, those pompous profs in the French Department were wrapped up in existentialism, Camus and Sartre, those lurching intellectuals at the bleakest extremes of literature and philosophy.

Ah, to live greatly, like Cyrano! He speaks and lives so fully, steadfast to his muse and his friends, defending them selflessly with a flash of the rapier and a swift scribble of the pen. Rostand's play was a great success in Paris in 1897 and his version of Cyrano has been alive with us ever since. José Ferrer won an Oscar as best actor for his 1950 film portayal of Cyrano and the great, inevitable Gérard Depardieu was a memorable Cyrano in his 1990 film (subtitles furnished by Anthony Burgess, translator/adapter of the verse script used in St. Ed's production).

The play's four acts take us to a public theatre, to the pastry shop of the baker Rageneau, to the barracks of the cadets of Gascony, to their hungry existence in the fortress besieged by the Spanish troops, and finally, years later, to a quiet convent garden where the aged Cyrano regularly calls to bring widowed Roxanne his mocking comments about news from court.

Polgar's staging of the opening act uses the theatre's in-the-square configuration to great advantage. As spectators, we in the audience embody the public in that fictional theatre, ranged around the hollow square, awaiting the appearance of the tragedian Montfleury while observing the idle and the aristocratic who are milling about just in front of us. A narrow stage occupies one corner of the square playing space; perched high above us, diagonally across the open area, are the elegant Roxanne, her chaperone and an oily-looking pair of aristocratic suitors. At times the crowd of actors may block sightlines, especially for those spectators in the front rows, but Polgar subtly clears the space for Cyrano's first appearance, his elegantly derisive replies to the challenge of a presumptuous young nobleman, and the fast-moving, fatal duel that follows.

David M. Long is a vivid, quick-witted Cyrano. His friend Le Bret (Greg Holt) frets about Cyrano's delight in insulting the powerful, but Long is airily dismissive of poverty and pains. He quickly wins our sympathy, just as he has won the fascinated loyalty of the corps of cadets.

Roxanne (Julia Trinidad) is the focus of all sentiment in this piece. She is enchanted by the sight of the aristocratic young Christian de Neuvillette, whom she has eyed from afar at the theatre, and Christian responds with silent fascination. Cyrano is deeply enamoured of Roxanne but convinced that she could never love someone with as disfigured a nose as his own. The Count De Guiche (Marc Pouhé), self-assured nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, schemes to put Roxanne into a marriage of convenience so that he can take her as his mistress. Julia Trinidad must play this as an ingenue throughout. She begs Cyrano to protect Christian as he joins Cyrano's regiment; tongue-tied Christian begs Cyrano to lend his eloquence to woo Roxanne.

Long as Cyrano (left) and Christopher Smith as Christian (right) craft their relationship well. On his first day with the cadets, Christian tosses Cyranoesque gibes at the older man and the cadets are confounded to see that for once, Cyrano does not simply skewer an insulter. Banishing the others, Cyrano dutifully tells Christian of Roxanne's hopes. The mentor-protegé relationship between them is clever, touching and credible. They're particularly comic as doppelgänger suitors, a pair of Romeos falling all over one another in the dark of the garden below Roxanne's window.

So our hero woos and wins Roxanne, but only by proxy. He helps foil the wicked De Guiche. Marc Pouhé as De Guiche is so smooth and well-mannered that we have some trouble imagining him as really evil; he's closer in attitude to Peter Pan's Captain Hook.

The pace is snappy throughout, at times too quick -- for example, in the sequence of Cyrano's witty replies to the lame insult, "Sir, your nose is -- rather large!" Cyrano tells his adversary, "You could have done much better!" and extemporizes a dozen or more -- announcing a style of insult and then delivering a hilarious example. Each is more comic than the preceding, and when the cadence is captured, the full scene builds, to be capped off by Cyrano's extempore sonnet during the duel.

And then there's Cyrano's melancholy, which Long captures fully only in the sublime final scene. For me the divine spark of poetry lights a darkness of disappointment in this man, bravely covered by his jests and commotion. Cyrano at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre is epic and captivating, a hero never daunted. Rarely in this version does he pause to acknowledge or contemplate his disappointment. If we were to glimpse that tragic sense at moments during the play, his final face-off with Death would be even more moving for us.

Elizabeth Cobbe's enthusiastic review for the Austin Chronicle, February 19

Upcoming: Cyrano de Bergerac, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, February 12 - 22

Postcard picked up at Austin Playhouse, January 23:

St Edward's Mary Moody Northern Theatre
presents
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand
Translated by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Michelle S. Polgar

February 12 - 22

Soldier, poet and philosopher of heroic proportions, Cyrano de Bergerac is plagued with an enormous nose and believes he can never win the love of the fair Roxanne. A tale of honor, love and heroism filled with humor, intrigue, swordfights and poetry. Cyrano will warm your heart, delight your senses, and nourish your spirit.

"[A]n immortal. . . entertainment that pushes emotional buttons just as effectively today as it did. . . 110 years ago." -- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Featuring Equity guest artists Greg Holt, David Long and Marc Pouhé

The Three Sisters, Chekhov, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, November 13 - 23

St Edward’s Mary Moody Northern Theatre with its current production of The Three Sisters of Chekhov has again realized a fine synergy by adding two professional actors to an admirable cast of undergraduates.

The quality and success of university productions in the Austin area is almost depressing – so much talent and energy! This is a great boon for those of us who take the time to explore it, but it seems strange to have all that star power flaring hot out there and yet largely unrecognized.

The three Prozorov sisters and their brother Andrei reside in a distant Russian province but cherish memories of life in Moscow with their late father, a brigadier general. Their yearning for escape from the stifling provinces is much discussed, and a common interpretation of the play is that the entire movement is the effort to get to Moscow, a half-imagined magic circle of sophistication and light.

This lyric production is anchored by Marc Pouhé as a talkative middle-aged lieutenant colonel, saddled with an unbalanced termagant wife but wistfully in love with the only married sister, Masha, and by Ev Lunning, Jr., as the 60ish bibulous military doctor Chebutykin, regretful, ill-educated and gone to seed but deeply attached to the Prozorovs.

Cribbing from my own recent comments about the Nina Variations: “Chekhov’s plays always give us a large cast of characters. Family members, friends, local officials, servants and others spend much of their time in desultory talk with and about one another. The trivial mixes with the transcendent. There is a slow overall movement through his plays, but just as in real life, the present moment is the most important. And the present moment is often filled with longing, with banter, with philosophizing, with small absurdities.”

Or, better, quoting the author himself as cited by Robert Brustein, “Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal at table, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up."

Act I of The Three Sisters gives us the celebration for the youngest sister, Irina, on her saint’s day, much of which takes place about a central table. Lt. Col. Vershinin (Pouhé) makes his first call; the vulgar local girl Natasha attends as well and captures the attention of the brother, Andrei. Act II, 18 months later, shows us Natasha, now married to Andrei, inexorably extending her influence over the household, as the same group of military officers young and old gathers to socialize and to court the sisters; Natasha puts an end to the evening by prohibiting the scheduled visit of Mardi Gras musicians.

Act III, two years further along, is set late during a summer night as all are dealing with the aftermath of a catastrophic fire in the village. And Act IV, that autumn, gives us the definitive reassignment of the artillery brigade, Irina’s decision to marry, and an offstage quarrel and duel.

Throughout the play the vulgar Natasha extends her influence and expropriates the sisters; the sisters seek work, affection and pleasure that is never completed; and Dr. Chebutykin hums, grumbles, resumes his drinking, and mutters again and again, “It’s all one. . . .” Moscow and the dream of escape fade into impossibility.

In the midst of disaster, in the closing lines Olga tries to reassure her sisters: ”Oh, dear sisters, our life is not over yet. We shall live! The music is so gay, so joyous, it seems as if just a little more and we shall know why we live, why we suffer. . . If only we knew, if only we knew!”

Sounds like a downer, doesn’t it? But no, it isn’t at all – Chekhov draws each of the characters vividly and director Sheila Gordon keeps her actors bouncing off one another, taking the greatest possible advantage of the remarkable, large “theatre in a square” that is the Mary Moody Northern Theatre. At one point the dinner party at stage center goes into silent, animated slow motion as the thoughtful and sincere first lieutenant Baron Tuzenbach (Nathan Osburn) relentlessly courts Irina, who keeps backing away from him.

The pace of the first two acts is intense and in fact almost too fast – for example, as Irina, Steffanie Ngo-Hatchie is charming and expressive but moves and speaks with the accelerated metabolism of a bird trying to escape from a cage. Act II and the first half of the production conclude with an unscripted, choreographed house invasion by the Mardi Gras musicians, who swirl around Irina and sweep her away.

It would not be fair to pick favorites, since this is such an ensemble piece and each character and actor achieves at least one intensely memorable scene. Guest artists Pouhé and Lunning are sympathetic and give fully realized portraits of decent men in impossible situations. Masha (Dorothy Ann Bond), the unhappily married sister who falls for Lt. Col. Vershinin, is sharp tongued, trapped and eloquent. Her brief, intense farewell to him shows both hearts breaking.

Olga (Julia Trinidad), who gives way to the inevitability of becoming a school teacher, has to listen to her brother’s rambling confession and complaints late at night after the fire in Act III. Her silent reaction to him, sitting stock still, speaks a world of emotion and meaning, far more than his blathering.

The eccentric, snarky Captain Solyony (Nathan Brockett) is in turns generous, offensive, pitiable, and threatening. . . . Et j’en passe, as the French say – there’s too much for me to recount. This Three Sisters is a memorable evening, one with characters and actors who will stay with you.

Hannah Kenah's strongly positive review in the Austin Chronicle, November 19

Leila Bela's review on Austinist.com

Cloud 9, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, St. Edwards Unversity, September 25- October 5

You must see this production. It plays only four more times, this coming weekend.

Unless you’re uneasy with frank sexual language.

Unless you get disoriented by anachronism, gender bending and actors morphing character, sex, time and intention.

Unless you are frightened by vulnerability, farce, celebration or intimacy.

Unless you prefer to miss breath taking range and versatility in acting by students and professionals alike.

“Cloud 9,” the title, is a metaphor for sexual ecstasy. UK playwright Caryl Churchill worked with an improvisational theatre group in 1978, then reworked the ideas into this piece, which opened in 1979.

It plays today as fresh as a daisy, because the attractions and confusions of sex do not date.

That, in fact, is one premise of the play.

Act I shows us a group of pukkah sahib Brits somewhere in 1870 in colonial Africa, full of imperial certainties and sexual yearnings blooming in the dangerous dead air of foreign menace. Act II gives us the same seven actors and some of the same characters but played by different members in the cast, transposed to 1979 London. They are searching for love and sexual fulfillment in a post-imperial Britain where freedoms offer greater dangers, more confusions and new opportunities.

Raising the ante, Churchill specifies that certain key roles are to be played by actors of the opposite sex.

Undergrad theatre students at St. Edwards seize this opportunity to show an astonishing range. Guest artists Babs George and Matt Radford further strengthen the cast.

Ms. George surely should be nominated for a B. Iden Payne award for her performance in a duo and then solo scene at the finale as a fragile older woman belatedly awakening to sexuality.









Oh, for the certainties of Victorian times! Playwright Churchill does a fine job on the neuroses of those bearing the White Man’s Burden.


Jacob Trussell as explorer Harry Bagley (left) and Radford as administrator Clive (right) are blustering and adamant in their Duty beyond the reach of civilization. Behind that façade, though, they are boiling with frustration and passion (and not for one another).

The intimate, claustrophobic circle of society on the frontier includes their family members – Clive’s wife Betty (Christopher Smith,'10, right) and her mother Maud (Babs George, left). Smith is absolutely convincing in his depiction of the delicate Betty, stifled by circumstance, intimidated by the hypocritical, dogmatic Clive, and plaintively wishing for escape with explorer Harry. This is an entrancing performance.


As her mother, Babs George is sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued.

But we, the audience, are certainly not stifled. Act I is a happily wicked, fast-moving farce. Clive frantically pursues a widow brandishing a riding crop; and his wife Betty unwittingly attracts the passionate interest of the family governess (both roles by Helyn Rain Messenger, a graduating senior, played with such panache that I didn’t realize they were done in alternation by the same actress, in the same act).

Son Edward (Sarah Burkhalter, '10) prefers, instead of hunting and playing sport, playing with dolls.

African houseboy Joshua is at Churchill’s specification, played by a white (Jon Wayne Martin, ‘11). Joshua serves impassively amidst this madness, his anger growing as danger brews in the dark beyond the stage.




Act II, set in contemporaneous 1979, is equally fast moving, with the shock of recognizing those same actors in entirely different characters. Language is direct, dramatic, sometimes crude. The same uncertainties and desires are driving, but in the confusion and indulgence of contemporary society they take far different forms.



Take, for instance, the transformation of Smith from repressed colonial housewife to self-confident, cruising homosexual. And that of Martin from trusted servant to his gay lover Edward who would really prefer to be a woman, or maybe, if the opportunity arose, a lesbian.






Babs George hovers in genteel nervousness over the act, seeking to support her confused family – Edward the homosexual, daughter Victoria (Messenger) who is massively frustrated with her husband Martin (Radford) and their impossible daughter Cathy (another wondrous cross-gender performance, by Trussell, '10, formerly macho explorer Harry Bagley).

Sexes blur, sex blurs. In a dark wood there occurs an evocation of dark powers and an almost orgy, an apparition from beyond the grave, and a scandalized spouse. The comedy comes hard and fast, interspersed with scenes of a tenderness and intimacy that give you awe and make you squirm.

All of this builds into an explosion of light, color and music.





























Thanks to the administration at St. Ed’s for a lack of prudery and to the theatre staff there for taking on this play. Director David Long keeps his characters smoothly in motion so as to minimize the disadvantages of this vast theatre-in-the-square. The pace of the action is varied and finely tuned.

And this cast offers us a memorable evening, one that reminds us of the wonder and opportunity of passion.

Review in Daily Texan on-line by Aboubacar N'Diaye, October 2

Review by Avimaan Syam in Austin Chronicle, October 3

Wikipedia on Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill bio and critical evaluation, Contemporary Writers (British Council)

Wikipedia on "Cloud 9," including plot summary