Video: Announcing 2014 Productions of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin

G&S Austin President Libby Weed congratulates theatre award nominees and B. Iden Payne winner Michelle Haché (Princess Ida) and announces the annual general meeting on January 5, a fully staged chamber presentation of the one-act Trial by Jury on February 23, and the annual grand summer production: H.M.S. Pinafore, June 12 - 22, 2014.

Video: ATX Classical Interviews Michelle Haché, Princess Ida for Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin, June 13 - 23, 2013

(www.gilbertsullivan.org)

Marc van Bree's interview (7:45) of the B.-Iden-Payne-award-winner Michelle Haché about playing Princess Ida; published by

June 10 by Marc

Video Interview with Michelle Haché

In our second ATXclassical video interview, we sat down with local soprano Michelle Haché who will be performing the title role in Princess Ida with The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin the next two weeks. We talk about the upcoming performances and explore the opera’s satirization of feminism, and even discover what Princess Ida and Princess Turandot have in common.

You can find more information about The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin’s nine performances from June 13-23 in our calendar section or at gilbertsullivan.org.

Click to go to interview with artistic director Rafe MacPhail, Jr.

Video: Ralph MacPhail Speaks about Princess Ida, Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Austin, June 13 - 23, 2013

A video introduction by Ralph MacPhail, Jr. to the

production of

 
Princess Ida
by Sir W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan
directed by Ralph MacPhail, Jr.
musical direction by Dr. Jeffrey Jones-Ragona
featuring Michelle Haché in the title role with a cast of 36

June 13 - 23, 2013

at Worley-Barrton Theatre, Brentwood Christian School, 11908 N. Lamar Blvd.

Tickets available via the Long Center

Adults $25-30, special pricing for students with ID and for y oung persons

Special pricing available for groups of 10 or more (contact michael@gilbertsullivan.org)

Click to purchase on-line or telephone 512 474-5664 for greater flexibility in specifying desired seats

South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Georgetown Palace, February 22 - March 24, 2013

by Michael Meigs

The Georgetown Palace Theatre has done it again. The production of South Pacific playing weekends through March, 2013, is energetic, polished and entertaining, a celebration of the classic 1949 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s a reminder that at mid-century American musical theatre pioneered new directions in entertainment for a public newly aware of the world beyond Main Street, USA.


With their first collaboration Oklahoma in 1943 Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II drew a symbolic picture of the home that Americans were then fighting a war for, including the banding together that excluded misfits such as poor Judd Fry. The post-World-War-II South Pacific, in contrast, is situated retrospectively at a low point in that conflict, showing sailors and Navy nurses sidelined in paradise, amusing themselves with shenanigans and camp entertainment while waiting to engage a distant and faceless enemy.

(photo: Andy Sharp)

It touches, although every so lightly, upon heartland Americans’ instinctive distrust of foreigners. The work conveys a message about bigotry and prejudice: “You've got to be taught/ Before it's too late/ Before you are six or seven or eight/ To hate all the people/your relatives hate;/ You've got to be carefully taught.” That thought is even more relevant seventy-plus years after it was first staged.


The musical numbers are stirring and delightful by turns. Many of them are still instantly recognizable from the opening chords of the live orchestra on an elevated platform hidden behind the backdrops: Some Enchanted Evening; I’m Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair; Bali Hai; A Cockeyed Optimist; This Nearly Was Mine; and Younger than Springtime. The comic ensemble numbers are the carefree There Is Nothing Like A Dame and Honey Bun. Taken as a whole, the music of South Pacific constitutes in itself an extended chapter in the American songbook of popular music.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .