The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, April 11 - 21, 2013

by Michael Meigs


The delightful wit and frivolity of Oscar Wilde's conceit for this play and the immense seriousness his characters apply to it make The Importance of Being Earnest an enduring favorite. This is the fourth staging of the work in the region since I began writing about theatre nearly five years ago, and it never grows stale. Wilde is not Shakespeare, but his work has a similar vitality and adaptability. His razor-sharp teasing of a distinct sector of English society seems bright and new each time I see it, and the actors deliver it with refreshingly personal modulations.

Richard Robichaux casts this piece deftly and well, neatly pairing companion roles. As the devil-may-care Algernon and his slightly priggish friend Jack, Josean Rodriguez and Jon Richardson differ in aspect and attitude, but they're really alike as two peas in a pod (or perhaps as two babes in a bassinet, which is eventually more to the point). 

Josean Rodriguez

They've mastered both the vowels and the rhythms of that insufferable upper-class "U" talk and they radiate confidence and self-satisfaction, just as two promising young men-about-town should do. Faculty member Sheila Gordon is credited as dialect coach, and she's done a cracking good job with everyone on stage.

The eligible young ladies offer another finely modulated pair. Hannah Marie Fonder as Gwendolyn has the precisely controlled chill of the very best of society, and her ice-cream elegance plays well against Sophia Franzella as Cecily, the energetic young brunette on the estate who's bored with her German lessons and eminently ready to escape if only a suitor should come calling.

And though they're not paired in the play, Barbara Chisholm and Robert Faires are paired in real life, and they provide quite different comic portrayals that are informed, vivid and veresimilar. I've carried in memory for years the aged Dame Edith Evans' haughtily crushing portrayal of the no-nonsense Lady Bracknell in a filmed version, and I was intrigued to see how Chisholm would manage one of the most adamantly comic characters of the stage. The answer, in short, is that she carries it off superbly. This Lady Bracknell is no oldie and by no means is she sexless; Chisholm delivers the ferociousness, the conviction and the dame's completely unapologetic snobbishness. And she's attractive, to boot; the wonderfully towering chapeaux provided by costume designer T'Cie Mancuso are so much a part of the character that one imagines them completely inseparable from the personality.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, April 11 - 21, 2013

(St. Edward's University, 3001 South Congress Avenue)

presents

The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

directed by Richard Robichaux

April 11 - 21, 2013, 7:30 p.m. (Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.)

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, 3001 S. Congress Avenue (click for map)

Tickets: $20 Adults Advance ($15 Students, Seniors, SEU Community), $20 at the door; STUDENT DISCOUNT NIGHT: Friday, April 12: Student tickets $8 with ID. Available through the MMNT Box Office, 512.448.8484; Available online at http://www.stedwards.edu/theatre. Box Office Hours are M-F 1-5 p.m.

Mary Moody Northen Theatre, the award-winning producing arm of the St. Edward’s University professional theatre training program, continues its 40^th anniversary season with The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, directed by Richard Robichaux, running April 11 - 21, 2013.

This glorious comedy of manners was the most popular play by the quintessential bad boy of his day. Join young suitors Algernon, Jack, Cecily and Gwendolyn as they negotiate mislaid babies, mistaken identities, secret engagements, baffled suitors, one overbearing mother and some of the wittiest wordplay ever tossed over afternoon tea. This delectable morsel of a play will delight your sprit and leave you laughing long after the curtain comes down. Featuring guest artists Barbara Chisholm as Lady Bracknell, Robert Faires as Dr. Chasuble and Irene White as Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest promises to be smart, silly and wicked fun.

"The Importance of Being Earnest” is the rare work of art that achieves perfection on its own terms. – The New York Times

About Mary Moody Northen Theatre Mary Moody Northen Theatre operates on a professional model and stands at the center of the St. Edward’s University Theatre Training Program. Through the Mary Moody Northen Theatre, students work alongside professional actors, directors and designers, explore all facets of theatrical production and earn points towards membership in Actor’s Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. MMNT operates under an AEA U/RTA contract and is a member of Theatre Communications Group. For more information, contact the theatre program at 512-448-8487 or visit us online at www.stedwards.edu/theatre.


About St. Edward's University St. Edward’s is a private, liberal arts Catholic university in the Holy Cross Tradition with more than 5,300 students. Located in Austin, Texas, with a network of partner universities around the world, St. Edward’s is a diverse community that offers undergraduate and graduate programs designed to inspire students with a global perspective. St. Edward's University has been recognized for ten consecutive years as one of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks in the top 20 of Best Regional Universities in the Western Region. St. Edward’s has also been recognized by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

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DayBoyNightGirl, DA! Theatre Collective, Rollins Theatre, Long Center, June 6 - 10

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

I walked two blocks to reach the Long Center, with its blackbox Rollins Studio Theatre, where DayBoyNightGirl played. Without a doubt, the spectacular 21^st century cityscape of downtown Austin upstages every performance staged there. After all, the downtown view is the first thing one sees upon arriving at the Long Center. DayBoyNightGirl pushed back admirably against the sensory overload. The show was spectacular at every level.

If you’re tired of small plays in small theatres, I offer you my fascination with small companies that do enormous things with their talents. Da! Theatre Collective is one such company, and DayBoyNightGirl is enormous in its scope and bold execution, without ever becoming pretentious, precious or trite. The piece is a fine example of multiple-arts performance, showcased for us recently by the offerings of the Fusebox Festival. It is my hope that multiple-arts companies thrive and create a dominant trend in American theatre. They offer freshness and quite possibly true originality.

The source of Da! Theatre Collective’s creative diversity lies in the company’s founders. Heather Huggins and Lisa del Rosario have international backgrounds in theatre and dance, and their collaborations seem to balance these major branches of the fine arts. Kirk German is a gifted playwright; the stage play of DayBoyNightGirl is brilliant (adapted from a story by George MacDonald); the language never lapses into mere functional storytelling, but at times the words in the mouths of the actors seem to vault into iambic hexameter, giving an Elizabethan lilt to many of the text passages. The thing sparkles.

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

The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 16 - 26

by Michael Meigs

One measure of the power of Arthur Miller's drama about the Salem witch trials of 1692 is the startling transformation of familiar actors. Tiny Sophia Franzella, now a junior at St. Edward's, has charmed audiences with her wildly comic and mischievous personae in The Imaginary Invalid, Urinetown and A Year with Frog and Toad. Here, as the malicious and vindictive accuser Abigail Williams, Franzella is smooth faced duplicity, a murderous woman-child driven by spite and lust. Hers is a finely understated performance, one that makes her all the more hair-raising because of her almost silent conviction and the restraint of her lust for her former employer John Proctor.

David Stahl, an Equity regular at Austin Playhouse, has acquitted himself of a wide range of characters in Austin theatre but those which remain most vivid in memory, for better or worse, are clowns -- the unnamed all-purpose player in The 39 Steps, the hypochondriac in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the old actor Henry in The Fantasticks, and Sagot, the prancing rouge-cheeked art dealer in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Director Michelle Polgar recruited Stahl for the role of Deputy Governor Danforth, the chief inquisitor who entirely dominates the second half of The Crucible. Stahl is nothing less than terrifying, with his baleful stare, self certainty and the immense self regard of a small man in a position that surpasses his capacities.

Arthur Miller studied the historical records of the Salem witch trials, but he wrote this 1953 piece principally as an indictment of the obsessive Communist hunting led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (a body that three years later convicted Miller of contempt of Congress for his refusal to furnish names during a hearing). The witch hunt metaphor stuck like pitch to the investigators and did a great deal to turn public sentiment against them.

Ironically, the meaning of the play's title remains obscure for many -- so much so that the student calling from the Mary Moody Theatre box office was asking whether I wanted to make an early reservation for "the curcible." A crucible is a bowl or other recipient capable of withstanding high temperatures. Miller's title is drawn from the technology of smelting -- melting and then shaping ingots from white-hot metal. It's an inexact metaphor for the content of the play, for the hysterical and then judicial processes described in the work are not transformational but, rather, purely destructive.

A Year with Frog and Toad, musical for families, SummerStock Austin at the Rollins Theatre, weekends July 23 - August 7

by Michael Meigs

I got up and cheered for the curtain call of A Year with Frog and Toad, and I happily accepted the invitation from director Michael McKelvey for audience members to mingle with the cast onstage afterwards. This musical was so appealing and well executed that it lured me out of the comfortable semi-anonymity of the audience to let these performers know how much I appreciated them. And, incidentally, to inquire whether we would be seeing them on Austin stages anytime soon.

Michael McKelvey might well have stood up and cheered at audition time for this show, when he saw the two principals Zach Dailey and Ryan Borses do their stuff for the first time. Not only could they sing, dance and dialogue with the best of them, but they were the perfect somatypes for the two amphibian friends who since the 1970's have been entertaining us and luring youngsters into the adventure of reading. Zach as Frog is a broad-shouldered, rounded and thoughtful endomorph, and Ryan as Toad is the slim and energetic ectomorph, as lively as an animated Etch-A-Sketch character. It's a classic comic contrast. It works as well in Lobel's books and in this singing, dancing charmer as it did with Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward's University, February 3 - 13

In Sarah Ruhl's world, stones can talk, the dead can send letters to the living, and the devil connives to send a fragile bride to her death so he can court her in the afterlife. On the far side of the river of forgetting, memory fades and the ability to read disappears. Young Orpheus, bereft in this life, telephones a long-distance information operator in an effort to try to locate his dead wife.

Despite the striking mythic beauty of its concepts, Ruhl's Eurydice made me profoundly uneasy last year when Different Stages did it at the City Theatre. Perhaps because the shade of Eurydice's father clings to his memories and continues to dream of her, despite the emptiness and unchanging nature of life after death.

Ruhl has a frank and direct consciousness of the all too transitory nature of this existence. She wraps that message in the reworking of the Greek fable of the musician Orpheus who braved the underworld and came close -- just that close -- to bringing his bride Eurydice back.

Jamie Goodwin as the quietly grieving dead father has depth, dignity and stature, in contrast to the simplicity of Nathan Brockett and Cassidy Schiltz as the eternally naive lovers.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .