When I got home, still bubbling from Zach's The Drowsy Chaperone, I was ready to write, "Run, don't walk, to the Zach box office to get your first set of tickets for this sparkling evening of music, comedy and light-hearted fooling, a clever reincarnation of Broadway at its wonderful beginnings."
That's hyperbole, of course. Because you don't need to run anywhere. You just tap zachtheatre.org into your browser, click a couple of times and give them your payment details.
I must have been hearing Walter Winchell or Hedda Hopper in my head, even though I'm far too young ever to have listened to the Broadway gossip on a crystal radio set or on a cabinet-sized Philco in the living room. Though I can remember, just barely, the advent of the first color television broadcasts.
The Drowsy Chaperone is a zinger because Lambert, Morrison, Martin and McKellar lovingly spoof those energetic, naive and amazing beginnings of what became American musical theatre, admired across the world, while giving us a contemporary moderator and chorus -- in the Greek sense. Martin Burke as the anonymous Man in the Chair hosts us for an evening alone in his apartment with LP recordings of that mythical 1928 musical.
presents as part of its "Whole Mind" Common Experience
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard directed by Richard Sodders February 16-20 at 7:30 p.m., February 21 at 2 p.m. $10 general admission, $7 for students Considered by many to be Tom Stoppard’s finest play, Arcadia is a mix of comedy, drama, and literary detective story as it bounces between two different time periods. The alternating scenes allow the audience to see what actually happened in the early 1800s versus the modern-day scholars' attempts to interpret the events.
SummerStock Austin's joyous production of Little Shop of Horrors gets extra class credit in recognition for its part in re-Americanizing this reviewer.
After last May's production of the same script by the Georgetown Palace Theatre, I took the liberty to grump that theirs was a "Grade A production of a Grade D musical play."
I did explain that unlike the rest of the audience, I had never been exposed to Audreys 1 or 2, either on film or in the theatre. Little Shop didn't travel to places like the Dominican Republic, my last posting abroad, where the musical theatre tastes ran to Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. So I was a blank slate at that time both for Alan Menken's music and Howard Ashman's book and lyrics.
Last Sunday evening we were sitting in the middle of the front row, exhibiting the naive courage of theatre fanatics, so we took the full blast of SummerStock's music, singing, dancing and highly stylized camp. And, you know, seeing a Grade A production of a Grade D musical play up close and personal is a helluva lot of fun.
When I got home, still bubbling from Zach's The Drowsy Chaperone, I was ready to write, "Run, don't walk, to the Zach box office to get your first set of tickets for this sparkling evening of music, comedy and light-hearted fooling, a clever reincarnation of Broadway at its wonderful beginnings."
The Drowsy Chaperone is a zinger because Lambert, Morrison, Martin and McKellar lovingly spoof those energetic, naive and amazing beginnings of what became American musical theatre, admired across the world, while giving us a contemporary moderator and chorus -- in the Greek sense. Martin Burke as the anonymous Man in the Chair hosts us for an evening alone in his apartment with LP recordings of that mythical 1928 musical.
