Talking With by Jane Martin, North by Northwest Theatre Company at the City Theatre, October 9 - 18

The solo monologue is one of the purest demonstrations of the art. These six women come individually to you in the intimacy and immediacy of the City Theatre's small house. In each scene the actress takes that text with your complicity and, before your eyes, becomes the character.

"Jane Martin" is probably a pseudonym for Jon Jory, who has directed all of her ten plays. The mysterious Jane has never been seen. She twice won the American Theatre Critics' award for a new play and was nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Jory simply declines to discuss the matter -- perhaps a ploy, perhaps an artist's staking out the liberty to explore his feminine side.

Because each of these characters is vividly, irrevocably female. Michelle Cheney as the actress finishing her makeup as "fifteen minutes!" to curtain time is called; Renee Brown as the housewife who escapes daily reality; Wendy Zavaleta as a daughter grieving the death of her otherwise indomitable mother; Jennifer Coy as a brash auditioner perfectly willing to use blackmail; B.J. Machalicek as a dreamer at McDonald's; and Marsha Sray as a girl explaining the meaning of baton twirling.

That's just the first act.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Talking With, North by Northwest Theatre Company at City Theatre, October 9 - 18

Click for ALT review, October 13

From NxNW Theatre Company:

Talking With

by Jane Martin
directed by Joni McClain
October 9 - 18

A young woman tests her faith by handling poisonous snakes. A destitute woman longs to live in McDonald’s where the sick are cured by Big Macs. A housewife makes a daily escape to the magical land of Oz. Pulitzer nominated playwright Jane Martin gives us the provocative and heartfelt stories of these and other women who are ostracized by the American dream. Talking With is a powerful show, both funny and sad, that examines courage, awaking from complacency and the value of eccentricity. Starring Renee Brown, Michelle Cheney, Jennifer Coy, BJ Machalicek, Marsha Sray and Wendy Zavaleta.

October 9 - 18
Eight Performances Only!
Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat at 8:00, Sun at 2:00
Tickets $20, $18 students/seniors
The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd

Upcoming: The Vagina Monologues plus local musicians, McCallum auditorium, August 19 - 23

Received directly and found on-line:






The Vagina Monologues

presented by Blue Phoenix Theatre
in association with North by Northwest Theatre, The Sessions Austin & The McCallum Fine Arts Academy

Featuring: Karen Jambon, Jennifer Underwood, Julianna Elizabeth Wright, Andreá Smith and Joani Livingston
accompanied by Austin musicians Andreá Smith
100% of proceeds go to benefit Operation OF

AUGUST 19-23
The McCallum Fine Arts Academy - 5600 Sunshine Ave, Austin

Musician info Actor info Beneficiaries







Schedule of Participating Musicians:

Aug 19
Betty Soo
Tickets

Aug 20
CJ Vinson
Tickets

Aug 21
Joanna Barbera
Tickets

Aug 22
Kari K
Tickets

Aug 23 - 2pm
peoplefood
Tickets

Aug 23 - 8pm
Kacy Crowley
Tickets

Upcoming: Hay Fever by Noel Coward, North by Northwest Theatre, May 22 - June 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review




From the NxNW Theatre Company website:


Hay Fever
by Noel Coward

When each eccentric member of the self absorbed, artsy, pithy and dramatic member of the Bliss family invites an admiring guest to their country house for a quiet weekend, no one winds up with who they invited and theatrical antics ensue, in this classic drawing room comedy by Noel Coward.

Hay Fever is directed by Karen Sneed and features Austin’s award winning, “terribly British” Bernadette Nason as Judith Bliss, the matriarch of this brash and impetuous family. The Hay Fever cast includes Martina Ohlhauser, Tyler Jones, Eric Porter, Joe Hartman, Julianna Wright, Johnny Stewart, Marsha Sray, and Joni McClain.

Location: The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd.
Admission: General: $20, Seniors/Students/Military: $18, Groups: $15
Dates: Friday, May 22 through Sunday June 7, 2009.
Please Note: We are unable accept credit cards at the door. Cash & checks only please.

Make reservations at NxNW website

The Shadow Box, North by Northwest Theatre Company at City Theatre, February 6 - 22

Now, here is a very frightening place -- a hospice somewhere in California, in which a disembodied therapist with a warm but neutral voice projects himself into your cottage once a day. "How are you feeling? Would you like to tell me about it?" That voice is kind, as calmly reflective and enigmatic as a mirror, and it offers not the slightest shred of hope or counsel.

You look good, you might have a few physical twinges but you're not bed-ridden, everything is provided for your comfort. And you're left to get on with your dying. Reconciling yourself with the end of the road and with anger, consternation, or despair.

Michael Christofer's 1977 play is three in one, cutting together stories of Joe the middle class family man (David Dunlap), Brian the wordy, distracted professor (Robert Salas) and Felicity, an ancient woman who refuses to die because she imagines that a dead daughter will be returning soon (Anne Putnam). This choice of characters by Christofer might seem formulaic, a sort of diversity in a platoon on its way to an encounter with Death the enemy, but the impressive quality of the acting by this cast gives life and substance to them.

Director Kyle Evans and the North by Northwest cast move the action smoothly through an abstract set. We accept the eerie situation of small but well-furnished cottages wired up for surveillance, the inexplicable absence of concern about the justification, administration or finances of it all, and the inhabitants' complete blindness to one another. This is death by stare-down in a bare arena, with each inhabitant and companions face to face with the void.

For Christofer it is indeed the void, or at least the unknown. None of these characters has the help or crutch of faith or philosophy. Middle class Joe is fretful about the failure of wife Maggie (Aleta Garcia) to inform son Steve (Kenton Miscoe) of the unnamed disease, and he obsessively relives lost family life. Professor Brian churns out poetry and novels that he cheerfully acknowledges as completely without merit, and he embraces both his visiting wanton ex-wife (Michelle Cheney) and his attendant friend Mark, a male hustler whom he befriended in San Francisco (David Butts). Ancient Felicity is sour and angry when coherent but asleep or in a dream world most of the time, accompanied by her despairing daughter Agnes (Miriam Rubin).

The women companions of this piece are even more striking than the dying principals. Aleta Garcia as Joe's wife Maggie vibrates with anxiety and naked concern for him. Michelle Cheney is raucously self-dismissive, an unapologetic, bejewelled and bespangled devotee of impulse.








As Agnes, the dutiful daughter, Miriam Rubin (right) delivers a devastating performance, one of range and subtle intensity. Though she is largely silent in the early scenes, Agnes is the pivot of the play. She is the only family member to dialogue with the ghostly administration of this padded hell. For the first and only time the Interviewer (Philip Cole) appears, seated with her, courteous and attentive. He pulls out of Agnes a confession: in response to her mother's dementia, Agnes has for almost two years been trying to make Felicity happy by fabricating letters from Clare, the dead daughter.

The Interviewer suggests that this charade has kept Felicity clinging to life when she might be expected to let death take its course. Rubin shows Agnes's struggle to understand. Her indecision and her pained emotion in this confrontation and subsequently with her distracted, strong willed mother are elements of a performance to tear your heart out.

The piece rises to an enigmatic finale, as characters situated across the stage transcend their identities, very like a Greek chorus, to speak of losses and of the pains of facing death.

The program says that this piece was "representative of a breakthrough in both matter and subject form" (sic), a comment substantiated to some extent by the Tony and Pulitzer prizes awarded to it. It is not an easy evening and it provides no reassuring answers. It's poignant, disturbing, and ultimately poetic.

Barry Pineo's review in the Austin Chronicle of February 12: "Rubin quietly and believably makes Agnes' agony palpable. Rubin made me feel her pain, and you can't ask for more from an actor than that."

Upcoming: The Shadow Box, NxNW Theatre Company at City Theatre, February 6 - 22

Notice received, January 13; info found on-line:

The Shadow Box by Michael Christofer

The Shadow Box is an honest and frank play that won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for its groundbreaking examination of the experience of death and making sense of it.

The Shadow Box paved the way on the subject for other powerful pieces that fill the landscape of theatre such as Angels In America and Marvin’s Room. Representative of a breakthrough in both subject matter and form, The Shadow Box is the story of three different families and their journeys with the touching and real experience of closing the inevitable final chapter in their lives.

Location: The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd.
Admission: General: $20, Seniors/Students/Military: $18, Groups: $15
Dates: Friday, Feb 6th, 2008 through Sunday Feb 22nd, 2008, excluding Feb 14th.
Please Note: NxNW is unable to accept credit cards at the door. Cash & checks only please.

I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, NxNW at the Hideout Theatre, September 19 - October 12

This cheery cabaret production is a strawberry parfait, a delicious concocoction highly appealing to the eye with lots of sugar and self-confident sophistication. The North by Northwest Theatre Company has enlisted four attractive and highly talented actor/singers to create in Austin the first presentation of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, a piece that played for 12 years off Broadway. Its 5000+ performances put the run of this simple musical second only to the Fantastiks.

ILYYPNC is playing for only four weekends here in Austin, Friday through Saturday through October 12 at the Hideout Theatre at 617 South Congress.

For non-initiates such as us, from the street the Hideout looks like an ordinary coffee shop & bar, conveniently located for a subsequent crawl of the bars and pubs along 6th street. But they deal in entertainment as well as coffee, beer, wine and snacks. On Saturday ILYYPNC was playing in the downstairs 100-seat “black box” while upstairs at the same time, the announcement read, “a crew of Austin's finest improvisers take the stage in full Federation uniform and, based on audience suggestions, create a wholly original ‘episode’ set in the Star Trek Universe.”

The ladies in the ticket office took one look at us and commented, “Nah – they’re not here for the Trekkies.”

We hated being so obvious, but then, we had in fact made an on-line reservation for ILYYPNC.

Our four actor/singers are accompanied by a keyboardist and violinist for a zippy evening of black-out sketches and songs, themed loosely on the lines of courtship, marriage, parenting and the pleasant puzzles of romance at middle age and later. Onstage for almost two hours with a 15-minute break halfway, Michelle Cheney, Joe Penrod, David Sray and Wendy Zavaleta deliver along with their rapid fire of very funny skits not fewer than 21 musical numbers, ranging from solos to a finale (“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”) that starts with an a capello worthy of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

The show has the bright, derisive flash of New York – it is fun poked by sophisticate singles and the New York artist community at the dilemmas of the love life of bourgeois middle America. Most of the skits are silly, mugging cartoon send-ups of all too familiar life dilemmas, and the audience responds with hilarity at the send-ups.

In the first half the show has a merry time making fun of the insecurities of dating, sexual posturing, the lack of eligible beddable bachelors, guy behavior as opposed to girl behavior, well-intended parental interventions in romance, and the panic of proposals and weddings. The downtown audience howled and sometimes shouted out recognition and encouragement – most of those attending were of college age or in late 20s and early 30s, and they were clearly getting happy shocks of recognition.

So imagine this scene: superb actors, clowning and singing their hearts out with midtown Manhattan sophistication, and a youngish audience that was drinking beer as if it were going out of style. Again and again, spectators descended the center stairs and crossed in front of half the stage on their way out and back to the bar and the bathroom. Early on, they usually waited for the blackouts, but as the evening wore on and the alcohol level rose, occasionally someone would cross in front of an actor/singer hard at work.

Too bad there wasn’t a rear stair for those folks. Or a trap door.

But with everyone so well launched, the second half was equally successful.

Leaving aside that growsing, what talented and attractive actors these are!

Chameleons all, they appeared in constantly changing relationships to one another.


Above, David plays the oblivious self-centered engineer blathering on as Wendy wonders whether all available single men are all such losers. Below left, Joe delivers a quiet, wondering paean to the wonder of staying in love with the same woman for more than thirty years. Below right, Michelle is captivated by a “chic flic” (while the guy at her side struggles unsuccessfully to remain manfully indifferent).

The music is mostly up tempo, the lyrics witty and the melodies engaging but ultimately forgettable. The magic is in the actors themselves. For example they take four swivel chairs and turn them into a family car, complete with obnoxious kids in the back seat:



That one is an anthem marking the lasting love affair between Joe, father of the family -- and his vehicle.

Examples of other transformations, quickly:

Michelle, singing of the miseries of serving always as a bridesmaid, never as a bride – and assembling a collection of never-reusable bridesmaid’s outfits.










David on the superhero fantasies of geeks and nerds.







The whole company, when Michelle and Joe as the parents learn at Thanksgiving that after two years of living together son David and fiancée Wendy have decided to break up:


After trouncing Joe yet again on a fourth date, Wendy maneuvers him out of his gentlemanly distance and persuades him to come over for lasagna (“and you’ll bring the wine and the condoms, right?”) She closes that scene with an inspired little jump of glee.

And my personal favorite is a solo turn by Wendy, with not a note of music. She plays a woman recently divorced, still hurt and angry, who is reluctantly recording a video for a dating service -- and impulsively lays it all out, not giving a damn about masquerading as younger, more accessible or invulnerable.

So open your browser or pick up your telephone, and make your reservations now. If we are lucky, North by Northwest might get this show extended or repeated. But for now, you have your choice of only three remaining weekends, Friday to Sunday, to schedule this delightful dessert.


Producer's comments on opening night, including a reviewer in the front row (not me!)

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross doing "Swingin' the Blues"