Upcoming: Searching for Eden by James Still, after Mark Twain, Paradox Players, February 10 - 26

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Searching for Eden

Written by James Still, after Mark Twain
Directed by Joni McClain

February 10 - 26
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm • Sundays at 3 pm
HOWSON HALL THEATER, Unitarian Universalist Church, 4700 Grover Avenue (click for map)
Tickets -- $20 Opening Night Gala, Friday, Feb 10th (includes a special reception with refreshments)
$15 all other performances ($10 for seniors and groups of 10 or more)
Reservations by web , phone 744-1495 or Purchase via Paypal
Free childcare Feb 12 Matinee if reserved by Feb 5. Email childcare@austinuu.org or call 452-6168, ext. 313

Adam and Eve meet in paradise and embark on an epic, exuberant battle of the sexes. Several thousand years and a fall from grace later, the middle-aged couple returns to present-day Eden, now an upscale resort. Searching for Eden is a fresh, funny new look at the question of how to make the magic last, and a tender testament to enduring love.

The play is inspired by and adapted from a pair of short stories by Mark Twain. Says director Joni McClain, “Several thousand years after Adam and Eve meet in paradise, they return to a very different Eden. It’s a comic testament to enduring love; a fresh look at how to make the magic last.”

Variety Magazine called Searching for Eden “An engaging blend of wit and whimsy.” The Indianapolis Star wrote, "Eden is a paradise of a play, a captivating romantic comedy that captures the wit and warmth of Mark Twain's timeless paeans to love and marriage and updates them for today.”

Searching for Eden will be presented at the Howson Hall Theater, located in the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, 4700 Grover Road, Austin, TX 78756. Performances are February 10 – 26, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 3:00 pm.

Tickets for the Opening Night Gala are $20, and for all other performances $15 General Admission and $10 for Seniors and groups of 10 or more. Purchase tickets online at www.paradoxplayers.org or phone 512-744-1495 for reservations.

Searching for Eden features actors Matt Gauck as Adam and Marsha Sray as Eve.

Love, Sex and the IRS, Georgetown Palace Theatre, January 9 - February 1

Actor/author Billy Van Zandt and his writing partner Jane Milmore banged out this comedy in 1979, backstage on the set of the first Star Trek movie. They took the principal roles in the debut performance at a dinner theatre in upper New York state. As Van Zandt tells it on their website, they were totally unprepared for the success of the piece or for the request from drama publishers Samuel French not only to publish that script, but their (unplanned) "next two, as well." To date, Van Zandt and Milmore have written 23 plays together and have enjoyed successful careers in television production.

In the 30 years since its opening, according to Van Zandt, Love, Sex and the IRS has played at 10,000 theatres, mostly in the United States but also in Japan, Brazil, Germany, Canada, England, France and Spain.

Not because it is new or original. In fact, Love, Sex and the IRS fits as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle piece into the long tradition of the European music hall farce. Late 19th century and early 20th century French vaudevillian playwrights such as Labiche and Feydeau were even more prolific than Van Zandt and Milmore, constructing comedies featuring jack-in-the-box plots with disguises, sexy girls, blustering husbands and frantic ballets of slamming doors, comic grotesques, faints, revelations and happy endings. (Austin Playhouse will do Feydeau's classic A Flea in Her Ear in March). British pantomime ("panto") is a similar "low opera" tradition, often featuring cross-dressing and bawdy jokes; the "panto" tradition remains very strong today in popular British theatre, particularly at Christmastime.

In Love, Sex and the IRS, Leslie is desperately in love with his roommate's fiancée. Before he can deal with this dilemma, roommate Jon informs him that both roommates are in big trouble: the IRS is coming to audit them. Jon reveals that he has been filing tax returns for them as a married couple, taking advantage of the sexual ambiguity of Leslie's name. The only solution, according to Jon: Leslie must dress as a woman, long enough to convince the IRS inspector. At about this time, in comes landlord/building super Mr. Jansen, a low-class heavyweight who admonishes Leslie that absolutely no women are allowed in the apartment; then IRS inspector Floyd Spinner shows up two hours early. And on, and on, piling one farcical complication on another. Oh, and Jon's mother Mrs. Trachtman arrives unannounced, uninitiated in the deceptions, and with her own set of comic demands, misunderstandings, and vulnerabilities. You get the idea -- lots of fast talk, foolish authority figures, misdirection, hiding, comic drinking, and yearning frustrations.

The piece is pretty solidly set in New York City in the late 1970's, and the Palace production team did a good job of evoking that era with director Matt Gauck's set design. In this conventional box set, anchored by a sofa at center stage, a lava lamp bubbles hot pink at stage left, posters of Marilyn Monroe and the Three Stooges grace walls on either side, and a painted view of tenements is visible out the bay window at deep stage center. Costumes by Mary Ellen Butler include Jon's bellbottoms with American flag flares and, for the IRS guy, a pinstripe suit that is a good joke all by itself. Most of those in the audience at the Georgetown Palace are of an age to catch the nuances, including that one joke about Richard Nixon.

I enjoyed frequent chuckles at this nonsense, but overall, it just didn't work for me. I've spent some time puzzling about that, particularly since every other piece I've seen at the Palace has left me fully satisfied.

Director Matt Gauk kept his actors in swift, calculated motion, as is always necessary in this kind of mechanism -- the action must move fast, so the audience doesn't stop to question the plot. For example, one contention is that the IRS is investigating because in his earliest tax returns Leslie checked the box for "male" instead of "female." Leslie stammers a funny explanation and gets a laugh. But say, do you recall ever having to state your sex on the 1040?

The broadly comic figures in Love, Sex and the IRS are very well realized, in good vaudeville tradition. They are unabashed stereotypes. For example, Jon's mother is opinionated, emphatic, progressively more tipsy, and completely naive. In that role, Nikki Borra (right) has a fine presence and set of comic mannerisms. She is the center of attention whenever she has something to say or do, even if she is just passing out on the couch. Keith Swallow (left) as IRS agent Floyd Spinner gives us a man who is cautious, considered, and exact -- he reminded me strongly of a real IRS agent I knew while posted overseas, a man who with great precision could tell extremely funny stories of his early years in the service, including the time a farmer chased him off the property with a shotgun. Swallow never falsifies the man's basic reticence and prissiness as the IRS man loosens up, looks for friendship, reveals himself and becomes a co-conspirator.

Big Dana Barnes (right) personifies to the life a New York super, with a great moment when he comes down the stairs carrying Leslie's girlfriend Connie over his shoulder -- and as Connie, Lacey Rowe is loud, brassy, exuberant and funny.

Even Russ Jernigan, in the mostly silent walk-on role of Arnold Grunion, justice of the peace found on the subway by Mom, gave us a vividly funny portrait of an official who is completely unflappable.







On the other hand, roommates Leslie (Travis Chapman, left) and Jon (AJ Callaway, right) appeared to me too young for their roles. It was difficult to pretend they had been sharing an apartment for five years. Essential to the clowning of this piece is the incongruity of seeing a man obliged, against his better judgment, to masquerade as a woman; in order for this to work most effectively, one needs an actor older and more robust than the slim Travis Chapman, who is a senior in high school. Chapman plays the role with good will and timing, but he is disadvantaged by the fact that other comic figures are so much more broadly and emphatically portrayed.

AJ Callaway as roommate Jon also appeared young for the role, and I had a hard time imagining him out of Texas into 1970's Manhattan.

Jennifer Bryant as girlfriend Kate (center) played the obligatory Barbie role with confidence and humor.

Also puzzling was the fact that the production staff had equipped the players, or at least the principal players, with obvious, visible portable microphones of the sort used for musical comedy singers. The Palace is not a large theatre, and any of these actors could project up to the balcony and beyond. The mics flapping around faces added one additional element that disturbed the suspension of disbelief.

The Producers, Georgetown Palace Theatre, September 26- November 2

This zany musical comedy comes bursting out of the Georgetown Palace stage like fireworks on the 4th of July.

Yes, we all know the story. After all, the Mel Brooks film about fraudsters producing a Broadway musical was released in 1968, forty years ago.

Brooks and co-writer Thomas Meehan turned it into a real Broadway musical in 2001, with musical numbers by Brooks, where it won an unprecedented 12 Tony awards and ran for 2500 performances. The London production ran for three years.

And in 2005 Sony Pictures made a movie of it – a movie about a musical about producing a musical, drawn from a movie about producing a musical.

But who cares? The Georgetown Palace production is terrific fun and its big- voiced glittering cast of 24 could have filled with music and laughter a hall ten times as large as the 300-seat Palace.

It’s gaudy, vulgar, suggestive, happy and filled with as many comics and Girls Girls Girls as any Ziegfield show.

Yes, you’ll recognize almost every bit from the movie(s) or the Broadway show – the fretful, mendacious Max Bialystock, his reluctant partner the nervous young CPA Leopold Bloom, Ulla the Swedish knockout with all those names, Otto the Nazi, flaming homosexuals, and the little old ladies enamored of Max. Mel Brooks spares no one, and that’s part of the fun of it.

When Jewish comedian Mel Brooks came up with the concept for The Producers and the musical number “Springtime for Hitler” back in 1968 it was a dazzling piece of audacity. For gosh sake, World War II had ended less than twenty-five years before that, and the “Greatest Generation,” contemporaries with Brooks, were in the spring of middle age.

Brooks was God’s fool, dancing on the rawest catastrophe of the western world and daring to laugh at the guilty, long and hard, while mocking the business of show business.

The Palace scrupulously advises its patrons, Rated PG-13 for sexual humor and references and is intended for mature audiences.

The shock value is mostly gone today, although I wonder what conversations parents had after opening night with the various ten- to twelve-year-olds dressed in their best and seated in the front rows. In fact, those youngsters were probably unshockable - - but maybe apprehensive about discussing sex jokes and flowering queens with their parents.

Stars Matt Gauck as Max Bialystock and Larry Frier as the worried young Leo Bloom are a great pair of song-and-dance comedians.


Gauck must have been stifling under the stage lights with that padded belly and an elaborate bald wig with comb-over; the ageing effect of his makeup was a bit too sharp in the opening scenes but the fast pace and relentless clowning got it properly blended in.

Bialystock is the epitome of an unscrupulous egotist, and the ongoing gag of his instruction of the naïve Bloom on Broadway ethics and morals was comic and cautionary.

A quick summary, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 40 years: Bialystock is on his way down, reduced to seducing a stable of little old ladies for funds. Visiting him, the grandma type nicknamed “Hold Me,Touch Me” suggests coyly, ”Let’s play the virgin milkmaid and the well hung stable boy!”



Bloom, the quiet, worried accountant, comments to Bialystock in passing that if backers lost money in a show, it would be easy to conceal contributions and keep excess financing. Bialystock leaps on the idea and pushes Bloom to become his partner in crime.





Bloom declines, but back at the Dickensean accounting office, he succumbs to visions of glamor, success and showgirls.


So B&B set out to find the worst possible script, the worst possible director, and the worst possible actors. And they succeed!

The script is “Springtime for Hitler” by unrepentent Nazi Franz Liebkind (Bill Lindstrom, also a fine hoofer, with accent, helmet and mad-eyed devotion). [German: "Liebkind" = English "Love Child."]


The director is Roger DeBris (Matt Connely), as wildly, extravagantly queer as one could imagine, shown here being coiffed by his sidekick Carmen Ghia (played with wicked, pouting, hip-swiveling delight by Palace regular Matthew Burnett). ["Bris" is the Jewish ritual of circumcision, carried out on a Jewish male child the 8th day after birth; the "Carmen Ghia" was a nifty sport car from the 1950s.]


And for the actors, Nazi Liebkind and the luscious Swedish cupcake Ulla Inga Hansen Bensen Yonsen Tallen-Hallen Svaden-Svanson. Bialystock explains to Bloom, “There’s always a part for the producer’s girlfriend!”

Nicole Pritchard as Ulla can act, sing, and dance, and she’s as tasty a bit of eye-candy as you’re likely to see. Pritchard has just gotten to Austin after playing Disney characters at Orlando for three years. Texans are clear winners by the change.



The show goes on, complete with that signature number, “Springtime for Hitler.”



Ulla plays a sort of Miss Rhinegold walk-on (a concept straight out of Ziegfield).




The show is a disaster. But only for Bialystock and Bloom. At the last minute they must substitute director DeBris for Nazi Liebkind in the role of Hitler, and a campy, crowd-loving Adolf makes the show a smash hit.

Max Bialystock gets arrested while Bloom and Ulla abscond to Brazil. Max waxes indignant in jail, recounting in fragmentary fashion the whole plot to that point, getting one of the biggest laughs in the show.

Bloom returns. Both go to prison, where they put on a wildly successful prison revue and get pardons. They celebrate with a fine bit of hoofing at the end.



Before the show, director Mary Ellen Butler greeted the opening night audience and invited them to the on-stage post-production party. She warned us that because technical director Ron Watson had just sprained an ankle, his substitute working the twelve sets of flies (hoistable scenery) might be shaky from time to time. And by the way, Austin’s Paramount theatre is equipped with only ten sets of flies.

So what’s not to like, already? This show has energy, glitter, comedy and class; it’s an insouciant salute to the big kid in all of us. It makes us say, like Leopold Bloom, I wanna be a producer, too.

Congratulations to cast, director, and crew. This was a huge, complicated piece to produce. Mary Ellen says that 2000 hours of volunteer labor went into construction of the sets. Ensemble members had up to 9 costume changes and pitched in to keep those scene changes running smoothly. They all appeared to be having the time of their lives. They certainly deserved that enthusiastic applause at the curtain call.


And congratulations once again to the Georgetown Palace Theatre for its vaulting ambition and the high quality of its entertainment!

Warren & Derrick's on-line favorable comments about this production, October 20

Ronnisrants comments, October 25

New York Times rave review of the Broadway production, April 20, 2001 - - “A Scam That’ll Knock ‘em Dead”

Wikipedia on The Producers (Musical)

The 1968 movie at Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com), with a 42-image slide show

IMDB memorable quotes (lots of them!) from The Producers, 2005 movie version