MURDER BALLAD MURDER MYSTERY by Elizabeth Doss, Paper Chairs at Longbranch Inn, May 21 & 22, 2013

[click logo above to visit paper chairs on Facebook; click HERE for website -- www.paperchairs.com]


presents

Written by Elizabeth Doss
Directed by Keri Boyd
Designed by Lisa Laratta

May 21 & 22
8 pm start
Longbranch Inn
1133 E 11th St. Austin, TX 78702 - click for map
Pay What You Can ($5 suggested)
Tickets at the Door! Cash Only!

For two nights only, paper chairs will haunt our neighborhood bar, the Longbranch Inn, with a workshop resurrection of Murder Ballad Murder Mystery. Saddle up to the bar, sip yer whisky and watch a host of legendary killers commit crimes riddled with ghoulish slapstick, frantic line dances, and tear-jerking ballads. This romp-through-the-swamp musical takes a stab at gutting the inner animal and spills its contents at close range.


Cast:
Tom - Mark Stewart
Tom’s Wife- Cami Alys
Felicity - April Perez-Moore
Sadie- Emily Tindall Burke
Bea- Elizabeth Doss
Jay- Nigel O’Hearn
Stagger Lee- Noel Gaulin
The Sheriff- Kelli Bland


This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

by Michael Meigs


Nigel, this is stupid stuff. There, now I've said it.


You and your friends of Palindrome have made arresting, sometimes astounding art in the three years that you promised yourselves for the experiment after your graduation from the theatre program at St. Ed's. 


You have shown yourself to be an impressive actor and promoter of our dear, beloved and commercially moribund art of live theatre, gathering award nominations and recognition along the way.


You made contacts with some Austin's best in the field, many of them teachers -- Ev Lunning, with whom you worked in the Ar Rude Actors's Equity project of McNeil's A Long Day's Journey into Night directed by Lucien Douglas, and Babs George in that fine Cherry Orchard by Breaking String where appropriately enough you portrayed the eternally yearning and optimistic student Trofimov. 


You were a memorable drifter challenging a stolidly bourgeois Jude Hickey in Albee's At Home at the Zoo, with Robin Grace Thompson as his wife. You crafted a pungent Hedda Gabler last year by reworking someone's literalist pony translation from the original, staged it with Robin successfully here and at the Edinburgh Fringe, and caught the eye of the flattered Norwegians.


Before approaching its three-year expiration date, Palindrome's artists and sometime provocateurs have furnished Austin with fine stagings of classics. I wish I could have seen them all. I missed Babs with Harvey Guion in Arthur Miller's All My Sons last summer, Dario Fo's Accidental Death of An Anarchist, and Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play. I did see, and will long remember, Beckett's End Days with Jarrett King, Gabriel Luna and Helyn Rain Messenger.


You've been gracious and forthcoming throughout all of this. I still have a twinge of bad conscience about not recognizing you immediately two years ago when you greeted me in the lobby at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre at the opening night for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where Babs was Martha and Ev was George. I was glad to get a close-up rehearsal view of the revised Hedda before the departure for Edinburgh last year, and I was flattered to be invited along with other theatre scriveners to last weekend's advance staging for the press of your work The Attic Space, with Babs and Ev. It was a remarkable and unexpected opportunity to mingle briefly before the show with Elizabeth Cobbe of the Austin Chronicle, Jillian Owens and Cate Blouke of the Statesman and newcomer Jeff Davis of www.austin.broadwayworld.com.


The Attic Space seems grossly derivative to me. You've brought your two characters Harold and Harriet together in George Marsolek's claustrophobic and dimly lit attic space that contains the stored detritus of their lives. The dialogue is a similar in style to that of Beckett, full of ellipses and references to shared but unrevealed events and relationships. Harriet is high strung but disconnected; Harold is restrained, patient and long-suffering. She insists on staying in the attic amongst the boxes, trunks and discarded furniture. She's searching for something but doesn't know what that is. Harold urges her to come back downstairs. The dialogue suggests that they feel the suppressed terror of advanced age even though these two actors are plainly in their flourishing middle age.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Attic Space by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, December 14 - 22

Palindrome’s Final Production: 7 performances only of

the Premiere of  

The Attic Space

Starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. 

December 14 - December 22 at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m.,
Donate-what-you-can show Wed 19th
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. 78722 (click for map)

Ticket Price: $10 subsidized ticket price*
Length: 80 min.

Reservation Website: www.palindrometheatre.com ; Reservation Line: 512-736-5191

Three years ago, when opening their inaugural season with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Palindrome Theatre promised it would expire in December 2012. Seven productions, one international festival, and a heap of critical praise (mostly) later, Palindrome is set to do just that after their premiere production of The Attic Space, by Resident Playwright, Artistic Director, and native Austinite Nigel O’Hearn.

Known for their intimate, often provocative, traditionally-influenced aesthetic, Palindrome is building on the classical foundation and intricate theatricality of their past work to present a new play that is at once in keeping with the literary influence of Beckett and Miller while striving for bold, experimental presentation (including meta-puppetry realized by Caroline Reck, Artistic Director of Glass Half Full Theatre, and designed by Tara Cooper).

Directed by O’Hearn, starring Babs George and Ev Lunning Jr. (both courtesy of Actors Equity), and featuring early Palindrome collaborator Helyn Rain Messenger, The Attic Space is an exploration of the capriciousness of memory, the complexity of companionship and the fear of uncertainty that accompanies the recurring life-long search for definite self-evidence; set in the place in our home which we visit the least, yet store all the things we can’t bear to go on without.

*In effort to help educate the Austin public on the cost and cultural impact of professional theatre, and though it costs much more than $10 a ticket to produce a professional play, Palindrome operates under the principle that while the theatre is not free, it should be experienced as a freedom- we do everything in our power to bring our productions to the Austin public at no cost or small cost without devaluing the theatrical event.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Funding Appeal and an Invitation from Norway to Palindrome Theatre

We are very excited to be moving closer toward All My Sons by Arthur Miller (July 13 - August 4), and while this is our flagship production this year (and so our most expensive), we are honored to have already received financial support from the likes of The City of Austin's Cultural Arts Division- and

*SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL TO HELP!!*: 

A collection of Palindrome supporters have come together to give a challenge grant- they will match dollar for dollar every contribution to Palindrome up to $10,000! Basically, that means they're sponsoring half of the production if we and our patrons can come together to fund the other $10,000!

We know this is not a small price tag, but as I said before, they match dollar for dollar- you give $1, Palindrome gets $2; you give $50, Palindrome gets $100- so please, any amount is foundational in helping us bring this world-class work to our Austin Community! You can donate on our Website, Palindrometheatre.com, where you can also reserve tickets for All My Sons!

...speaking of world-class work, Palindrome is also very proud to announce, that after months of consideration, our Artistic Director and resident playwright Nigel O'Hearn as been officially invited by the National Theatre of Norway to be a special guest of the 2012 International Ibsen Festival in Oslo where Palindrome's Hedda Gabler was a finalist for inclusion in the festival!

If you can, please consider helping us produce this work, and if you are moved to, forward this message along to help spread word of the play and the work Palindrome is doing for the Austin community. See you at the Theater,

-Palindrome Theatre staff (Nigel O'Hearn, Austin Sheffield, Kate Eminger, Ashely Moore, Jarrett King, Shannon Bishop, Kel Sanders, George Marsolek)

Upcoming: Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Palindrome Theatre at various locations, May 12 - June 3

presents

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

by Dario Fo

edited and updated political commentary by Nigel O'Hearn
 
May 12-June

'Home' performances at @ Up Collective Gallery, 2326 East Cesar Chavez Street, 8 p.m. (click for map) 

Friday, May 25 at 8 p.m. 

Saturdays May 12, 19, 26 and June 2 at 8 p.m.

Sundays May 20 & 27 and July 3  at 8 p.m.  

Other dates and Itinerant locations: 

May 13 June 3 @ HOPE Farmer’s Market Gallery, 414 Waller Street, 1:30 p.m.(click for map)

Friday June 1 @ Huston-Tillotson University, Agard-Lovinggood Hall, 900 Chicon Street at E. 7th, 8 p.m.

Length: about 1 hour, 15 minutesFree and open to the public; donations accepted 

www.palindrometheatre.com

To kick off our third season, and first as Austin’s donation-based public theatre, Palindrome is taking Nobel Laureate Dario Fo’s incendiary political black comedy to the streets. Featuring a new edit and updated political commentary by Palindrome’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn, this 20th century classic redefined contemporary Italian theatre when it appeared in 1970s Milan, taking aim at the real-life incident of a man killed during police interrogation.

Banned from many theaters during its initial run but seen by nearly half a million people in its first year alone in soccer stadiums, bars, and street alleys, Accidental Death of an Anarchist explores the fear mongering prevalent in a capitalist system that encourages mistrust and exacerbates fear between certain segments of the civilian population and the police force that serves it. Palindrome is using the commentary at work in the comedy for public discussion of Austin’s own recent rash of lethal force slayings against our police force and by our police force in the name of public safety.

Click to view cast photo at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Suitor by Nigel O'Hearn, staged reading, St Edward's University, November 15

Found online:

The Suitor

or The Madness Inside Me Growing

by Nigel O’Hearn

November 15 at 6 p.m.

St Edward’s University – Ragsdale Center – Kreske Dining Hall
3001 South Congress Avenue

Tickets: FREE to the public

In collaboration with Palindrome Theatre, Transit Theatre Troupe will be presenting a staged reading of The Suitor –or- The Madness Inside Me Growing. This reading brings revisions to Palindrome’s resident playwright Nigel O’Hearn’s original production of the same name, produced in 2008, and will be staged at St. Edward’s University campus in Fleck Hall 314 on November 15 at 6 p.m. This performance is free to the public and early arrival is recommended due to limited seating.

Join two families, united by their children’s courtship but separated by bold personalities, as they attend a dinner party that results in the revelation of news that could dramatically impact the lives of everyone involved.

The Suitor will feature the performances of Actor’s Equity Association guest artists including Jill Blackwood, Amy Downing, Jarrett King, Helyn Rain Messenger, Nigel O’ Hearn, Haley Smith, David Stokey and Jose Villareal.


About Transit Theatre Transit Theatre Troupe works to allow the students of St. Edward's University an opportunity to create theatre on their own terms to enrich the artistic community of St. Edward's University. Transit was founded on the principles of innovation of theatrical convention, inclusion of the willing, and the introduction of untried or rarely produced theatre to the St. Edward's community. Transit also works to pay special attention to revitalizing the theatre of prior theatrical eras, as well as recognizing every individual's responsibility to strive for a more just world through work in the arts. For more information, visit our website at http://www.twitter.com/TransitTheatre

Hedda Gabler (for export), Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, July 28-30,

by Michael Meigs

Austin's youngish Palindrome Theatre is on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to perform their new, 90-minute non-stop Hedda Gabler every afternoon from August 5 to 29, except for Wednesdays. Outside those office hours the six-member cast and associates will be free to immerse themselves in the largest international arts event around, now in its 74th year. Last year, for example, Edinburgh offered 2,453 different shows staging 40,254 performances by 21,148 performers in 259 venues.

That's a theatre artist's dream, but it doesn't come cheap. Artistic directors Nigel O'Hearn and Kate Eminger have raised all but about $3000 of the costs, including travel, staging costs and artists' compensation. The company is making a last push this weekend in Austin, staging the export version at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre Thursday - Saturday, July 28 - 30. You can purchase your $25 fundraiser ticket on-line at their website.

Palindrome staged O'Hearn's first reworking of Ibsen's piece in February and March at the Blue Theatre and received positive reviews from ALTcom and others. The ALT review provides links to pieces by Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle and by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com. Preparing to write this article, I discovered that Palindrome had put together a two-minute video promo featuring a key scene and several "pull quotes," including my own comment, "Robin Grace Thompson gives us a Hedda who is burning with psychic energy. She is deliberate and wicked." (Click to view the video at Vimeo.com.)

Attending a rehearsal of the export version of Hedda Gabler last week, I found a piece recrafted both by O'Hearn and by the ensemble, retaining the strong central core of Thompson as Hedda and Chase Crossno as Thea, the runaway wife who follows Hedda's former lover. Jacqueline Harper plays the servant Berthe, a role considerably strengthened. Nathan Osborn, who played the dissolute, desperate Einar Lövberg, has now assumed the role of George Tesman, Hedda's husband of six months.

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

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at the Salvage Vanguard, July 28 - 30

Click to read ALT review of July 25

Received directly:

PALINDROME THEATRE GOES INTERNATIONAL: HEDDA GABLER

Austin Preview at the Salvage Vanguard

July 28 - 30

of the piece to be presented at Theatre at the Fringe, Edinburgh, Scotland

Ticket Price: $25+ fundraising price

Box office Phone: 512-939-6829

Website: www.palindrometheatre.com

Co-Produced with Remarkable Arts of Edinburgh, Scotland, Palindrome has been selected to bring its new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn to the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe for a full run this August.

Palindrome will be presenting a reimagined, revised 90min version of their critically acclaimed production, with new, original overture, for 3 farewell performances only, to be followed by a reception each evening.

Featuring Robin Grace Thompson, Nathan Osburn, Chase Crossno, Jude Hickey, Nigel O’Hearn and Jackie Harper.

Hedda Gabler will be running in Edinburgh at The Hill Street Theater August 5-29, every day at 2 p.m.

Hedda Gabler, adapted by Nigel O'Hearn, Palindrome Theatre Company at the Blue Theatre, February 18 - March 13

Hedda Gabler puzzled and annoyed audiences across Europe when it was first staged in 1890 and 1891 -- pretty much the same reaction Ibsen had elicited with most of his later plays. He was 61 when he wrote this one, exasperated with the bourgeois public that went to the theatre and purchased copies of his plays.

The last lines of the play are spoken by Judge Brack, that worldly sybarite who took Hedda's husband George and her would-be lover off to an all-night stag party, then comfortably assured Hedda he was looking forward to a cozy triangle, with her at the apex. In the crashing finale after Hedda kills herself with a pistol shot to the head, Brack expostulates, "But good God! People don't do such things!"

If that's a spoiler for you, accept my apologies. The secret has been out for a long time, however, and the real question of this play is not whether Hedda is going to use that pistol, but why she's going to do it. The first audiences for the work, in Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Cristiana, the capital of Norway, had stronger reactions than Judge Brack.

Attitudes changed gradually, however. Hedda, along with Nora from A Doll's House, were eventually viewed with more sympathy, particularly as women strove against the paternalism prevalent throughout Western society.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre, February 18 - March 13

Received directly:

HENRIK IBSEN’S

HEDDA GABLER

New adaptation by Palindrome Theatre’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn

Feb. 18^th-Mar. 13^th, Thursday-Saturday 8 pm, Sundays 5 pm

The Blue Theater, 916 Springdale (click for map)

Ticket Price: $20 general admission, $12 -25/65+

512-939-6829 - www.palindrometheatre.com

To open our second season, Palindrome offers the internationally acclaimed Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in a new adaptation by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn. Directed by Kate Eminger and featuring Robin Grace Thompson, Chase Crossno, Aaron Alexander, Nathan Osburn, Rommel Sulit, Rachel McGinnis, and Jackie Harper, this world premiere will run for four weeks only.

Upcoming: Reading of New Text for Hedda Gabler, Palindrome Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, December 6

Received directly from

ONE NIGHT ONLY- PUBLIC READING of

HENRIK IBSEN’S HEDDA GABLER

New adaptation by Palindrome Theatre’s Resident Playwright Nigel O’Hearn

Monday Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Hyde Park Theatr, Guadalupe & 43rd St.

Free. Donations accepted

www.palindrometheatre.com

Please join us for a preview of the first play of our second season- Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler with a new adaptation by Palindrome's resident playwright, Nigel O'Hearn- world premiere opening February 2011 at The Blue Theater.

The reading will be of the first two acts of the new material which has never before been seen in public.

Reading features Robin Grace Thompson, Chase Crossno, Bernadette Nason, Nathan Osburn, Gabe Luna, Kim Adams, and Harvey Guion (with playwright reading stage directions and scowling).

Drinks to be served, discussion to be had. Approx 2 hrs.

[image adapted from image at www.wfu.edu]

At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Edward Albee once commented, "If you can sum a play in one sentence, that's how long the play should be." That's a fine bon mot and a cutting challenge to all who try to work in the odd art form of the theatre review.

Albee has challenged and puzzled the public, the theatre community and academics since The Zoo Story, the second half of this theatre evening, first took the stage in Berlin 51 years ago. I have on my desk the Austin Public Library's copy of the Prentice-Hall collection of essays on Albee, published in 1975, where writers try to deal with The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and other pieces written in the opening decades of the playwright's career.

I remember vividly reading The Zoo Story, probably for a university class back in the late 1960's -- when it was new, so to speak, and path-breaking, a glimpse beyond the comfortable categories of American drama. It's interesting that a couple of the writers in the 1975 compendium -- which I've glanced at but not read attentively -- seek to interpret the piece through the lens of the Theatre of the Absurd. Martin Esslin, inventor of the term, in fact faults Albee for not pushing the situation to absurdity, for not taking the rant and ultimately the threats of a deranged New Yorker far enough.

But that was the fascination of the piece: that its poetic intensity of horror was completely plausible. Certainly to those us in the hinterlands, and probably even more so to New Yorkers, even in the comfortable late 1950's. Hasn't the poetry of threat and violence been played out over and over again in the past 50 years, distilled and dealt out by the media in doses that make The Zoo Story seem simple and sensible by comparison?

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: At Home at the Zoo, Edward Albee, Palindrome Theatre at the Off Center, November 5 - 21

Received directly:

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT:

AUSTIN PREMIERE OF EDWARD ALBEE’S

AT HOME AT THE ZOO

Palindrome Theatre’s Final Production of Their Inaugural Season

Directed by Austin Sheffield and featuring Jude Hickey, Robin Grace Thompson, and Nigel O’Hearn, the production will run for 13 performances only!

Nov. 5 – Nov. 21 Thur.–Sat. 8pm, Sun. 5pm*.

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo. Just south of E. 7^th, off Robert T. Martinez

Ticket Price: $15-$30 sliding-scale general admission, $10 25-and-under, 60-and-over.

Box Office phone and website: 512-939-6829, www.palindrometheatre.com

for mature audiences

Capping their first season, Palindrome Theatre is bringing to Austin for the first time Edward Albee’s At Home At The Zoo, a completion of America’s greatest living playwright’s very first play, 1958’s The Zoo Story.

Expanded earlier this decade from the original 1958 version, At Home At The Zoo is a delicately startling look at strangers at home and at the zoo, the relationship of people and animals, people as animals, and the longing for connection in a frighteningly solitary life.

Very funny stuff!

*Community Days - in an effort to fulfill our mission of working to make theatre a more accessible social and spiritual necessity, Mon. and Tue. Nov. 15 and 16 will be community days, with hearing and visually impaired performances, and $7 tickets for all!

Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Palindrome Theatre at the Larry L. King Stage of Austin Playhouse, January 15 - 31

Palindrome Theatre takes you right out to the edge of the abyss with Samuel Beckett's Endgame: ninety minutes at the end of the world with four arresting characters who wrap up existence and the fitful light of human life.

Endgame is grim, yes, but it's blazingly comic at times, as well. In the shadows of this basement room the ancient Nell shares a memory with her foolish senescent husband Nagg. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But . . . . Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more."

Those who believe in theatre, theatre as a gateway to meaning and theatre as a means of capturing the human dilemma, will need to see this piece. The subtlety and complexity of the text and the delivery will move them deeply.

Read more and see images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Ongoing: Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Palindrome Theatre at Austin Playhouse's Larry L. King Theatre, January 15 - 31

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, January 21

Received directly:

Limited Engagement

Samuel Beckett's
ENDGAME

Palindrome Theatre’s Inaugural Production
Directed by Kate Eminger
Featuring Gabriel Luna, Jarrett King, Maarouf Naboulsi, and Helyn Messenger

Palindrome Theatre will produce Endgame by Irish Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett for 13 performances only. Join in a celebration of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and his hilariously heartbreaking one-act regarding family, servitude, love, and inevitable decay.

January 15 -3 1, Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
at the Larry L. King Theatre at Austin Playhouse, Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress.
General admission, $20 -- students, $15. Call: 512-786-1939 for reservations.

[ALT notes: The text of Endgame is available online at www. samuel-beckett.net; the image above, from the Irish Repertory Theatre, is taken from www.samuel-beckett.net.]

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Breaking String Theatre at the Blue Theatre, October 5 - 21

What is this quiet exhilaration I feel in the presence of Chekhov? Especially when the piece is as well played as this one?

For opening night at the Blue Theatre many of the seats were taken by young persons who might well have been undergraduates. Directly opposite me, across the three-quarter thrust of the playing space, one or two had spiral notebooks and pencils in hand.

I cannot recall if the vision of this end-of-the-19th-century Russian physician and author moved me so much at their age. Perhaps I was impressed principally by the exotic setting; the great but impoverished families of the Russian countryside were certainly alien to me. I probably liked the foolishness of some of the characters and admired Chekhov's women, who are simultaneously fragile and enduring.

But at university age I probably had a good deal of the unselfconscious arrogance that Mme Ranyevskaya so simply reproaches of Peter Trofimov, the eternal student who six years earlier was tutor to her son Grisha, before the boy drowned in the river:

"What truth? You can see what's true or untrue, but I seem to have lost my sight, I see nothing. You solve the most serious problems so confidently, but tell me, dear boy, isn't that because you're young -- not old enough for any of your problems to have caused you real suffering? You face the future so bravely, but then you can't imagine anything terrible happening, can you? And isn't that because you're still too young to see what life's really like?"

Now, several decades later, I am amused, perhaps a bit dismayed, to find myself resembling more closely Mme Ranyevskaya's brother Leonid Gaev, played by Ev Lunning, Jr. He's an idle but well-meaning billiards enthusiast easily tempted to pontificate over the trivial, including, for example, the hundred-year anniversary of the cabinet in the nursery. At least Leonid Gaev has the good sense to feel abashed when his nieces beg him, "Oh, do please, stop, Uncle!"

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Ar Rude at the Off Center, May 27 - June 7

Eugene O'Neill did not want you to see this astonishing, bleak and deeply moving drama. When he died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, he had left it locked up in the vaults of his publisher Random House with instructions that it was not to be opened for 25 years after his death, and that it was never to be performed.

Instead, his third wife Carlotta Monterrey, who had fought with him and protected him and nursed him since 1928, inherited the rights. She deeded it to Yale University with the stipulation that proceeds be used to build a drama library and to award scholarships for drama.

Long Day's Journey Into Night was first produced at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre in February, 1956. The venue was apt. O'Neill's realistic, sometimes naturalistic drama shared much with the theatrical traditions of Strindberg and Ibsen. In 1936 the Nobel Committee had awarded O'Neill the Nobel Prize for literature, the only Nobel given to an American dramatist. The Broadway premiere at the Helen Hayes Theatre in November, 1956, received Tony awards for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, as well as the New York Drama Critics' Circle awards for Best Play.

O'Neill wrote 19 one-act plays between 1914 and 1919, drawing extensively on his experiences as a seafarer, and over his career, a total of 32 full-length plays. His work was instrumental in converting the carefree, largely brainless American stage into a medium for serious literature. These were powerful stories, usually on dark subjects. Many drew on Greek mythology. Only one, Ah, Wilderness!, was a comedy, a fantasy version of the years of his youth in New London, Connecticut, as the bookish son of a successful actor.

Long Day's Journey into Night takes exactly that setting. The characters are his parents, his brother, himself and an indolent maid. Their last name is changed to Tyrone, but not to protect any innocents. The action of this one long day in the summer of 1911 includes the moment of confirmation that the younger brother Edmund, the surrogate for O'Neill, has tuberculosis ("consumption") and shows us his mother Mary, lonely and desperate as she gives in to her addiction to morphine.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Long Day's Journey Into Night, Ar Rud at the Off Center, May 28 - June 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review of May 31




Received by e-mail:




Eugene O'Neil's
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Directed by Dr. Lucien Douglas
May 28 - June 7

Tickets: FREE.....(donations Greatly Appreciated)

“A play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood,” Long Day’s Journey into Night is the masterpiece of Nobel laureate Eugene O’Neill, the playwright who revolutionized American theater in the first half of the 20th century.

Love and jealousy, recrimination and forgiveness, the agony of the artist in capitalist America—illuminated in the Tyrone family as they come to terms with a son’s debilitating illness and a mother’s tragic addiction.

The Ar Rud production of Long Day’s Journey into Night is a labor of love offered to the Austin community in honor of Eugene O’Neill and in celebration of theater’s healing power.

Thursday - Saturday 7:30 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Opening: Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 7:30pm
Final performance: Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 3:00pm
The Off Center, 2211 Hildalgo St., Austin, TX

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .