Wayne Alan Brenner's Favorites in 2013, Austin Chronicle

Brenner's portmanteau of 13 items includes 6 from locally produced Austin theatre:

 

Top 10 Creative Things I Lucked Into in 2013

Remembering the year thick with superlative works of art onstage and in galleries

By Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., Jan. 3, 2014

Katherine Catmull (photo: Capital T Theatre)

1) Joked with my editor that the first nine slots of this list would repeat 'THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS' (Capital T Theatre). That brilliant Mickle Maher comedy, about the consequences of two William Blake-enamored professors engaging in glorious copulation on the campus lawn in view of their students, was by far the best thing I experienced in a year thick with superlative works of art. Directed by Mark Pickell, the script was embodied by three actors – Jason Phelps, Katherine Catmull, and Ken Webster, already among the best in town – working at the height of their knock-you-over abilities.

. . . .

4) FRONTERAFEST is another multipartite perennial that keeps on giving, and one of the best Short Fringe things it gave was Kyle John Schmidt's "The Blissful Orphans," featuring Curtis Luciani, Bob Jones, and friends in a fractured fairy tale that surpassed anything Rocky & Bullwinkle ever attempted.

. . .

6) Using Jason Liebrecht as a hinge to open a door between two theatre productions: Martin McDonagh's 'THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE' (Capital T Theatre), brought to Grand Guignol life with Liebrecht chewing the scenery as an Irish terrorist who's out to slaughter whoever killed his beloved pet cat Wee Thomas; and 'FIXING KING JOHN' (Rude Mechanicals), Kirk Lynn's Deadwood-esque upgrade of Shakespeare, in which that same Liebrecht played the brave, hotheaded, sometimes near-colicky, and relentlessly besieged monarch contending with a cast of (mostly doomed) characters equal to his fierce talents.

7) Speaking of stagework, can somebody raid a sports paradigm and confer MVP status on actor MOLLY KARRASCH? I mean, Jesus, Slowgirl, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Tragedy: a tragedy, Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall – the woman's got range and a half.

8) Steve Moore and 'ADAM SULTAN' (Physical Plant) gave the Austin theatre scene an intimate view of itself with this heartfelt hall of mirrors, casting community stalwart Adam Sultan in the title role as a man who spends the increasingly lonely decades of his life commemorating all his creative friends who die as the years go by.

9) 'THE HEAD' (Trouble Puppet Theatre) was the semi-autobiographical apotheosis of everything that Connor Hopkins' strange and splendid company has done before, with so many disparate parts effectively orchestrated to show how ineffectively orchestrated a human can be when desire confounds sense and recreational drugs complicate the situation we call being alive.

Read full article at the Austin Chronicle on-line. . . .

There Is A Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher, Capital Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, October 24 - November 23, 2013

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

This production of Mickle Maher’s There is a Happiness That Morning Is generated considerable marketing material on its fictional premise: two teachers of William Blake’s poetry at a crumbling east coast liberal arts college became so overwhelmed by it all that they had throwdown carnal knowledge of each other on the leafy day-lit campus. Their students witnessed their intimacy, as did the president of the college, and everyone else. The president and trustees want them to apologize and resign.

Well, playwright Maher knows well that the past is prologue, and as the play starts, one of the participants, Bernard (Jason Phelps), explains that that was all yesterday, and this is the happiness of the next morning. Thus the play is essentially aftermath. 

Yes, Bernard is clearly demented from teaching Blake for fifteen years (the only class the college ever allowed him to teach), and all he wants is to apologize, resign, and go on living his life of joy with his beloved and gorgeous Ellen (Katherine Catmull), who has been his mate for about twenty years. 

Ellen is made of sterner stuff. She refers to the college president in gutter language, and does the same with all others who humiliated her in the very triumph of her love. These two characters speak in verse, delivering Maher’s poetry about Blake’s poetry and their issues with the college. The contrasts in their affective states create the comedy in the play and heighten the consequences of their deeds.

Plays written almost entirely in verse glamorize almost any subject and thematic material. When that material is love, loss, and hope, the play takes on a rare, sustaining beauty uncommon in modern plays. This play has that beauty in abundance, and the exquisite abilities of Jason Phelps and Catherine Catmull in speaking and acting in verse ensure its success. It is true that casting in modern plays is the single strongest variable in a play’s success, and it is true for There is a Happiness That Morning Is.

Jason Phelps, Katherine Catmull (photo: Bret Brookshire)

The design fields hold up their end of the bargain. The set design by Mark Pickell, who also directed, uses the unusual shape and size of the Hyde Park audience space to realize the concept of a lecture hall in a down-at-heel liberal arts college. Simple and good; the audience becomes the students in the classes of the two shamed professors.

Nothing is perfect, and There is a Happiness That Morning Is has a major lulu. The third character in the play is entirely uncredited. This is a deliberate omission to create a thoroughly unnecessary surprise (there are other surprises and plot twists in abundance in this play). The device of the surprise character is acceptable for cameo roles or walk-on actions, but not for substantial work, significant time on stage, and contributions to the story, as in this case. A union state probably would not allow the practice.

The above is not particularly a spoiler, nor is it intended to be. The Capitol T Theatre production of There Is a Happiness That Morning Is comes highly recommended for all adult audiences. The play treats the themes of love, desperation, and uncertainty so poetically well that when the modestly attired professors first cross the stage to each other and quietly embrace, one senses how something enormous this play is.

Others have sensed this enormity and the Hyde Park Theatre in central Austin has held the play over until November 23rd. Reservations are strongly recommended.

by Michael Meigs, November 12

Review by Cate Blouke, Statesman, Oct 28

Review by Jeff Davis, Broadway World, Nov 3

Review by Elizabeth Cobbe, Austin Chronicle, Nov 7

Review by Spike Gillespie, Nov 9

EXTRA

Click to view the program for Capital T's There Is A Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher

There Is A Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher, Capital Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, October 24 - November 16, 2013

by Michael Meigs

There is a space that theatre is,

unknown except to the hip and cognoscenti --

where verse and blood, ironic plenty,

dearth, death, desire and wit

conjured forth from air, direct

our eyes to great and lesser things

unseen, unknown, unspoken in our media.

Hyde Park, Cap T, Mick' Maher, Blake,

knife-sharp, wit-full, astounding, take

our souls in dance and squeeze our hearts,

unglaze our eyes. Innocence? Experience?

Groves of academe, Pierian springs, our lives, our parts,

our desperate loves, impending ends and dreams:

theatre, pure, unbounded, sings in Hyde Park's

flickering space as Ellen and Bernard

Resist the rush of time. Deliverance!

Verse, and to a lesser extent poetry, have distinctly faded from our Western culture since the valiant days. Now they're studied mostly by the diminishing number of undergraduate English majors and scribbled mostly by the constant supply of self-absorbed teenagers. This is a long-term cultural fading out, accelerating since the late twentieth century because of technologies, the shortening of attention spans, passivity and the increasing dominance of the visual and the sound bite.

Several decades back in the last century the enthusiastic professor who lectured on Don Quijote to us undergraduates commented that our modern eyes tend to skip past the verse with which that particular epic is so lovingly filled. We've lost the delight -- that lovin' feeling -- for the music of language unadorned with instruments. The modern mind wants prose, wants narrative, wants closure, and is impatient with the lift and rhythm of meter.

Case in point: before beginning to read the narrative, did you listen with your mind's ear to the italicized opening lines above?

Katherine Catmull (photo: Capital T Theatre)

Katherine Catmull, who plays Prof. Ellen in Maher's tasty script, is a natural here, a snug fit in a character who's so devoted to the verse of William Blake that she has taught in an obscure little college for decades, just to be near her loves: Blake and Bernard, her fellow enthusiast.

As a writer, actor, publicist and Austin personality, Catmull is one essential element of the Hyde Park Theatre, the cramped former post office at 43rd Street and Guadalupe where this magic takes place. In fact, it turns out that Mickle Maher's innovation of returning to dramatic verse may be due at least in part to the HPT. It's said that Maher was in the audience in this same space for an evening of the FronteraFest Short Fringe some years ago, and for one of the evening's five 25-minute performances an Austin group performed its own original piece in rhyming verse.

Chicago-based Maher liked the approach. He wrote There Is A Happiness That Morning Is for his home company, Theatre Oobleck, and they premiered it at the City of Chicago's DCA Theatre space (think of Austin's Dougherty Arts Center, but in the Loop). Catastrophic Theatre in Houston presented it in September of this year. Capital T's artistic director Mark Pickell, who'd already nabbed Maher's Spirits to Enforce in 2011, had also signed up for the Blake play.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Robert Faires Profiles Mark Pickell and Capital T Theatre's 'There Is A Happiness That Morning Is' by Mickle Maher, October 31, 2013

Excerpt from Robert Faires' feature:

He Happy Is

For Mark Pickell, Capital T Theatre is a source of joy

 

By Robert Faires, October 31, 2013

Mark Pickell (photo:  Bret Brookshire)

[ . . . . ] "This is going to sound weird," offers [Katherine] Catmull, [lead in Capital T Theatre's current production There Is A Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher,] "but I think what characterizes Cap T shows is an odd but sort of luscious combination of 1) humor, often quite black humor; 2) sex!; and 3) a real interest in and thoughtfulness about big ideas – ideas about life, death, love, families, society, etc."

Pickell himself breaks it down even more simply: "One constant throughout all the plays that I produce is that they're smart, that they challenge the audience to use their brains a little bit. And they're entertaining. If you had to nail me down for the two things that I really enjoy, it's being smart and entertaining at the same time." That's led him most often to works that can't be labeled with either a frowning or a smiling mask, "plays that don't say, 'I'm just a comedy,' or 'I'm just a drama.' That in-between ground of dark comedies is one I really appreciate. And so far, I think our audiences have appreciated that mix."

Webster, who's helped Pickell's company create its artistic home at Hyde Park Theatre, will testify to that, as he's had to squeeze more and more patrons – including many of his regulars – into Cap T's shows. "Capital T has been a good fit at HPT for several reasons," he writes. "Number one is probably that Mark's taste in plays and my taste in plays are very similar. Similar but not identical. The shows he produces appeal to HPT audiences, and the number of our regular audience members who have become Capital T regulars has grown steadily over the past six years. Capital T and Mark have also been great for HPT. HPT audiences have come to expect smart scripts, excellent direction, and strong performances from Mark and Capital T. And HPT productions have gotten new audience members from Mark's regular patrons."

Pickell recognizes that his company's success likely wouldn't have come as quickly or steadily as it did without Webster's support and the symbiosis between Cap T and HPT. "I owe tons of gratitude and mentorship to Ken," he says. "Hyde Park, which is, in all actuality, this terrible little space, is amazing and great, and people love to see theatre there. They associate it with quality work and newer plays, newer playwrights, newer thoughts and ideas. Ken comes across as this gruff guy, but he's been a very loving mentor to my company and me."

Read full feature at the Austin Chronicle on-line

Video Promo: THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS, Mickle Maher, Capital T at Hyde Park Theatre, October 24 - November 16, 2013

Promo video for the










production of

There is a Happiness that Morning Is

by Mickle Maher

directed by Mark Pickell

October 24th – November 16th, 2013

Thursdays-Saturday sat 8 p.m.

Hyde Park Theatre 511 W 43rd St at Guadalupe - click for map

Two college professors, overcome by the poetry of William Blake, have sex on the lawn of their campus in front of their students. Now they owe everyone an apology. 




Capital T Theatre is proud to present Mickle Maher’s (Spirits to Enforce) outrageously funny and thought povoking ode to love, sex, and the poetry of William Blake. Two-time Austin Critics Table Award winning director Mark Pickell (Lieutenant of Inishmore, Killer Joe) directs Austin favorites Katherine Catmull (Boom, Happy Days) and Jason Phelps (Intergalactic Nemesis)




Running Time: 1 hours15 minutes with no intermission

THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS by Mickle Maher, Capital T Theatre at Hyde Park Theatre, October 24 - November 16, 2013

 

presents

There is a Happiness that Morning is 

by Mickle Maher

Directed by Mark Pickell

October 24th – November 16th

Thursday-Saturday at 8pm

Hyde Park Theatre 511 W 43rd St at Guadalupe - click for map

Two college professors, overcome by the poetry of William Blake, have sex on the lawn of their campus in front of their students. Now they owe everyone an apology. 


Capital T Theatre is proud to present Mickle Maher’s (Spirits to Enforce) outrageously funny and thought provoking ode to love, sex, and the poetry of William Blake.

Two-time Austin Critics Table Award winning director Mark Pickell (Lieutenant of Inishmore, Killer Joe) directs Austin favorites Katherine Catmull (Boom, Happy Days) and Jason Phelps (Intergalactic Nemesis)


Running Time: 1 hours15 minutes with no intermission

Cast     Bernard - Jason Phelps  

            Ellen - Katherine Catmull

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)