by Jeffrey Hatcher Directed by Chester Eitze Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. October 16 - November 7, 2009 (no show October 31) A dark and dreadful night. A woman in white lost within a wood. And the only shelter is a house full of murderers.
Mixing funhouse tricks, Grand Guignol and a deadly game of cat and mouse, Murder By Poe is a theatrical reimagining of some of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous tales of terror--"The Black Cat," "The Tell-tale Heart," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "William Wilson," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Fall of the House of Usher."
As each haunted figure tells a story of crime and mayhem, the woman must solve the puzzle of the house and the riddle of the man who ushers her into its mysteries."
Performed without intermission; approximately 90 minutes in length. Not recommended for very young children. Concessions are available, but no dinner service.
Show tickets: Adults $10, Seniors sixty and over, $8, Students $7, Children fourteen and younger, $5 [illustration by Joanna Boyle, Art Institute of Philadelphia, from National Park Service site commemorating the 2009 bicentennial of Edgar Allen Poe] Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
Under the artistic direction of Norman Blumensaadt, Different Stages and its predecessor the Small Potatoes Theatre Company have furnished Austin Theatre with a considerable library of stage work. The back page of the program for An Inspector Calls lists 109 productions the company has brought to the boards since 1981.
Different Stages has given the city a good dose of the classics and a wide array of works from the British and European stages. The company has often reached back decades in the English-speaking repertoire to present twentieth century works unlikely to be offered by other enterprises in town. For example, their production last year of Shaw's Getting Married was a fine example of Blumensaadt's taste, dedication and success as a curator.
J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945. It recounts a story set in 1912 urban Britain. It's a moral fable with an intrigue that inexorably and progressively reveals the hypocrisy of each member and associate of a wealthy capitalist family. Priestly gives the story a twist of the supernatural, but it' essentially a piece preaching to the British middle class about the wickedness of earlier capitalist generations' exploitation of the poor.
The first two productions of An Inspector Calls were in Moscow. The 1946 London production featured Ralph Richardson as the ominous Inspector Goole, Margaret Leighton as ingenue Sheila Birling, and Alec Guiness as her brother Eric. Goole's berating of the non-aristocratic capitalists touched sensibilities in post-war Britain.
Different Stages closes its 2008–2009 season with J.B. Priestley's haunting thriller
An Inspector Calls
Set in 1912 in Edwardian England, the story begins when a mysterious police Inspector calls unexpectedly on a prosperous family. Their peaceful dinner party is shattered by his investigation into the death of a young woman. Under the Inspector's relentless interrogation, secret after secret is revealed, leading to an unexpected and eerie conclusion.
Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (Getting Married), An Inspector Calls features Garry Peters (Molly Sweeney), as the inspector.
Sam Z. Damon (The Tempest) and Paula Gilbert (Suddenly Last Summer) play the industrialist and his wife. Nicole Swahn (Amadeus) and Andy Smith (Red Cans) play their daughter and son. Trey Deason (Faster than the Speed of Light) plays the daughter's fiancé.
Join us on July 4 for an ice and fire special – ice cream and sparklers!
EXTRA
Click here or on image below to view photos by Bret Brookshire
The energy and the innovative staging of The Tempest by the Baron's Men go a long way toward overcoming the considerable disadvantages of their "green world" theatre.
"Castleton" lies in a narrow meadow along the lake, just west of the 360 bridge, and owner Richard Garriott has furnished it with quaint cabins, fancifully decorated. It reminded me very much of the "cabin camping" practiced in Scandinavia, where a family leases a tiny dwelling instead of pitching a tent.
The major and inescapable disadvantage to the locale is the boat traffic along the lake. Trees and reeds hide the playing space from inquisitive view, but the thump and roar of overpowered boat engines vies with very loud, very crappy music. And sound travels a long, long way along the surface of the water. So from your 7:30 start time until about Act III, it's easier to suspend belief than to suspend indignation.
Garriott's fantasies include a pretty impressive landbound pirate ship on the meadow's south side and a fortress/stockade slightly elevated to the north. Director Athena Peters offers seating on some wooden benches to the west, but also provides an array of mats in the center. Some of us took the mats, while others came with their own folding lawn chairs and placed them in front of the benches.
This is theatre in the round, but not in the usual sense. Instead of the spectators settling on all sides of the acting space, the Baron's Men move all around and through the spectator space. One never knows where the next scene will begin -- and consequently, for those of us on the mats, whether we will have to twist around, crane our necks to see past another groundling, or find ourselves pleasantly surprised by a player popping up close by from some unwatched quarter. Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
