Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Last Act Theatre Company, October 12 - 28

by Michael Meigs

Faustus, why do you torment me so? This production of the work of the mercurial Christopher Marlowe, an exact contemporary of Shakespeare, stabbed to death in a tavern at the age of 29, held me at an uneasy distance despite its robust verse and stark dilemma.


Austin's Last Act Theatre Company, just over a year old, demonstrates its art and vaunting ambition in daring to take on this text. Their productions for love of the art have been low-budget stagings in a succession of found locales around town. Doctor Faustus is presented, appropriately enough, behind a tavern -- the Pour House on Burnett Road -- in an edifice in stone that must have been used as a garage, judging from the stout girders, chains and decommissioned hoist overhead. Lengths of black curtain mask the corners. The audience is seated in the depth of the room and the principal entrances are through the same wide doorway that gave spectators access to the space. Props are few and simple; director Kevin Gates relies on his cast of 13 to create this work in the style that it would have been done in a tavern courtyard or a church portico.

Karen Alvarado, Ben McLemore (image: Jim McKay)

In theme and presentation Doctor Faustus is directly in the tradition of the medieval mystery plays. Few texts of them are extant. Those works may have been largely improvised, but both the French and English manuscripts that remain confirm the traditions of staging Bible pageants to communicate to the people the stories mostly sealed up in the impenetrable Latin of Jerome's Vulgate. The struggle to translate the Bible into vernacular languages didn't really begin until the mid-1500's. 


Marlowe wrote this text, his second drama, in about 1588 (before Shakespeare had produced anything he could put his name to). It was probably based upon a German text of about that date, registered in English translation only in 1592. To complicate matters further, Marlowe's work exists in two variants, the first printed in 1604 and the second printed in 1616. Theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe recorded in his account book for 1602 that he had paid two dramatists for additional scenes to be added to Doctor Faustus. The drama continued to be produced up until 1642, shortly before Cromwell and the Puritans closed the theatres.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
 

The Tempest, EmilyAnn Theatre, September 9 - October 1

In this hottest Texas summer on record you could be pardoned for suffering a touch of cognitive dissonance when you decide to drive through the beginnings of the Hill Country, 45 minutes southwest of Austin, to attend Shakespeare's last work, set upon a magical island surrounded by the Mediterranean. Wimberley, Texas, is ranch country, and these days the rolling landscape is starkly dry. Even the EmilyAnn's illustration reveals the situation: Laura Ray, portraying magician's daughter Miranda, stands in the low waters of the Blanco River. These days the water is Prospero's refuge and the ocean is the countless miles of sun-toasted ranchland.

The EmilyAnn is a special place, however, something of a magic refuge all to itself. The play begins at dusk, so my wife K. and I had plenty of time to chat with the friendly folk at the ticket window and the concession stand. One strolls through a carefully tended garden on the way to the outdoor amphitheatre. My wife stopped and listened -- one could hear the distinct cheerful trickle of water slipping from pool to pool. With that prelude it became that much easier to enter the agreed meeting place of Prospero's imaginary island.

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

Upcoming: A Monster Carol by Dwight Markus, Texas State University, December 3 - 5

Received directly:

Texas State University Department of Theatre and Dance

in association with A Monster Trust presents

A Monster Carol

Written & Directed by Dwight Markus

December 3^rd at 7:00 p.m., December 4^th and 5^th at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Mainstage University Theatre, Texas State Theatre Center, 430 Moon St., San Marcos

Tickets: $5 General Admission, available at the Texas State box office on the day of the show.

For additional information please contact (512) 245-2147.

The Monsters are back! A family comedy for the holidays, ages 4 and up.

Pictured: Top row: Bridget Farias (Veronica the Vampire)

Middle row: D. Heath Thompson (Wolfgang the Werewolf), Audience Member & Dwight Markus (Franklin the Monster)

Bottom row: Molly McKee (Louise, the Museum Curator), Audience Member & Oscar Cabrera (Jake the Ghost)

At Vincent’s House of Wax, home of the scary monsters, a ghostly visitor comes calling on Christmas Eve. Now, Vincent’s is no ordinary museum of wax figures for when the doors are locked, the wax statues come to life. Tonight Jake, the ghost of Jacob Marley comes calling to pull a “Scrooge” on one of the Monsters. Jake has lost the 3 spirits of Christmas and enlists the aid of Veronica the Vampire, Franklin the Monster and Louise, the Curator of the Museum to help him reenact the past of Wolfgang the Werewolf. Jake puts them under a “Mystical Veil” to show him his life. At that point everything goes haywire as Jake’s true intentions are revealed and Wolfgang’s past brings some unexpected revelations. Come find out what funny things happen when you mix Christmas with Halloween and enjoy some good family fun.

Stay after the show for the Monster Picture Party and have your picture taken with our cast onstage. We will send the photos to you via your email address.

Ongoing: A Monster Carol, Texas State University, December 12 - 15

Found on-line:

Texas State, San Marcos:

A Monster Carol

Written & Directed by Dwight Markus
The Monsters are back! A family comedy for the holiday's, ages 4 and up.

December 12-13 at 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm
December 14-15 at 7:00 pm

Mainstage Production

$6 general admission, $5 with Monster coupon or Texas State ID

Tickets may be purchased at the Texas State Box Office on the day of the show. For additional information contact (512) 245-2147

At Vincent’s House of Wax, home of the scary monsters, a ghostly visitor comes calling on Christmas Eve. Now, Vincent’s is no ordinary museum of wax figures for when the doors are locked, the wax statues come to life. Tonight Jake, the ghost of Jacob Marley comes calling to pull a “Scrooge” on one of the Monsters. Jake has lost the 3 spirits of Christmas and enlists the aid of Veronica the Vampire, Franklin the Monster and Louise, the Curator of the Museum to help him reenact the past of Wolfgang the Werewolf. Jake puts them under a “Mystical Veil” to show him his life. At that point everything goes haywire as Jake’s true intentions are revealed and Wolfgang’s past brings some unexpected revelations. Come find out what funny things happen when you mix Christmas with Halloween and enjoy some good family fun.

Stay after the show for the Monster Picture Party and have your picture taken with our cast onstage. We will send the photos to you via your email address.

[photo by Jordan Smith: Molly McKee, Ernesto Rosas, Bridget Farias, Dwight Markus and Alex Meyer star in the Texas State production of A Monster Carol.]

Orestes, Cambiare Productions at the Off Center, July 31 - August 15

Hidden Treasures from Afghanistan's National Museum are now on exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the last of several stops in a 15-month tour of the United States. I caught the exhibit in Washington DC last year, but you may have seen it this spring in Houston.

A haunting diorama of a barren Afghan plain shows how the unimaginable golden treasures were preserved in hidden subterranean vaults for thousands of years, even as the fabulous palaces of antiquity above them were torn down for re-use as construction material.

I had hoped that Will Hollis Snider's Orestes would offer us reworked antique treasures, but he provides instead an empty, echoing structure constructed from the pulled-down palaces of Greek myth.

The structure is not entirely barren. One clever touch is to convert the ravaging Erinyes or Furies from avenging spirits to fantasms of Orestes' mind, embodying the murdered -- his sister Iphigenia, sacrificed at Aulis by their father Agamemnon; Agamemnon himself, murdered by his wife, their mother Clytemnestra, upon his return from Troy; and Clytemnestra, whom Orestes has just killed, on instructions from the god Apollo.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .