The Fantasticks by Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt directed by Barbara Schuler musical direction by David Blackburn March 26 - April 11, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Matinee on Sunday, April 11 at 3 p.m. Click Here to make Reservations Crystal Falls Playhouse, 10960 E. Crystal Falls Parkway, Leander "Try To Remember" a time when this romantic charmer wasn't enchanting audiences around , the world. The Fantasticks is the longest-running production of any kind in the world, and with good reason: at the heart of its breathtaking poetry and subtle theatrical sophistication is a purity and simplicity that transcends cultural barriers. Its moving tale of young lovers who become disillusioned, only to discover a more mature, meaningful love is punctuated by a bountiful series of catchy, memorable songs, many of which have become standards.
Featuring Derek Smootz, Eve G. Alonzo, Matt Boehm, Kirk Kelso, Rebecca Stokinger, Michelle Stuckey, Fred Bothwell, and Mark Butler
View video of scene with the two actors, Henry and Mortimer (6min. 20 sec.) at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Leading Ladies by Ken Ludwig has all the big-footed clowning of a British pantomime, that venerable, wheezy holiday art form in which the British public hoots and chortles at manly men dressing up as women. Dame Edna is the royalty of that genre, but every middle- and lower-class family wants to attend the local "panto" in December, and British TV comedy sketches will inevitably get around to putting a male comedian into something frilly, and preferably topping him with a hat.
The show is set in 1958. I was surprised when a little research turned up the fact that Ludwig's piece premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston only five years ago. It has fallen into the warm embrace of community theatres since then. I missed the recent staging in Leander by the Way Off Broadway Community Players, but made up for it this past weekend with the Wimberley Players, at their handsome, intimate playhouse on Old Kyle Road.
Leading Ladies is a goofy masquerade. Two down-on-their-luck British actors of mediocre talent, on a whistle-stop tour of small town Moose Lodges and Elks Clubs, discover in a newspaper left on a train that a $3 million inheritance will soon be available to a young lady and two long-lost cousins, absent for many years in England. Aha! What better scheme for our wayward Brit showmen than to imitate those inheritors? Problem: a closer reading reveals that the lost are women, not men!
UPDATE: Lisa Schepps of KOOP-FM interviews Musical Director David Blackburn and some of the cast: Derek Smootz (El Gallo), Eve Alonzo (The Girl), Matt Boehm (the Boy), Rebecca Stokinger (Bellemy) and Kirk Kelso (Huckleby) and they sing numbers from the show. "Off Stage and On the AIr," April 5
