Grotesque and Arabesque: Poe Retold, Weird City Theatre at the Blue Theatre, October 18 - November 3

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

I keep hearing the BLUE Theatre is closed or closing, but I keep going there to shows, despite the construction and demolition all around it. Now Weird City Theatre has installed in it Grotesque and Arabesque: Poe Retold, a bold collection of five one-acts abstracted from five of Poe’s horror stories. The story treatments were written by Weird City Theatre company members or associates, and they arrive on stage as one-act plays just in time for weird Austin’s favorite holiday.

Full disclosure: Poe is my favorite author, and I admit as much in my Facebook profile. So my expectations were sky-high when I entered the theatre. The adaptations are of well-known horror stories that I have read many times. I knew Weird City Theatre had the guns to deal with their self-appointed tasks; they specialize in plays dealing in pop culture genres, such as goth, vampire and zombie themes. They offered two particularly memorable stage versions of Night of the Living Dead in 2008 and in 2011 and also William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes in 2009.

Chris Romani (image: Weird City Theatre)

Carl G. Jung's definition of archetypes assists in enjoying good art. He talked about archetypes as forms, probably arising from the unconscious, that continue through time and offer unbounded opportunity for creative play. Multiple times and diverse cultures rediscover them as their own and play with them in different modes, making them the vehicles for their perpetuation. Edgar Allan Poe clearly and intuitively tapped into archetypes; that’s why he can give us the ever-famous frisson of horror when we read his stories. Does the same hair-raising, shivering, why-did-I-come-here reaction take place when the story medium transmutes to the medium of the stage? That might be the standard of evaluation for Weird City Theatre’s production.

And, oh my! The experiment succeeded, the subject survived—now it lives among us. Thee short pieces ranged from clever to brilliant in their imagining and writing, while the staging and realizations varied a little more widely in their successes. One of the cleverest concepts in the show was a series of vignettes and considerations of the true-life story of the Poe Toaster, the mysterious figure, never identified, who from the 1930s to the late 1990s placed roses and a bottle of cognac at Poe’s grave monument in Baltimore. He or she was said by observers to visit the cemetery every year on Poe’s birthdate in the wee hours and perform small personal rituals and raise a toast in cognac to the gravestone. He or she then departed from the cemetery, leaving behind the cognac and roses. Weird City uses this story as a connecting thread between the pieces, showing us four different treatments of it, with dialogue considerations of the Poe and his Toaster all the while. I especially appreciated the last piece in this miniseries, featuring Kevin Gouldthorpe’s soliloquy on Poe as “beautiful but never pretty” and a man holding up a mirror to us in our most private moments. The stage artists showed profound respect for the literary artist, expressed in the best way they knew how to express it—on stage. At that moment I knew I could trust Weird City with my Poe.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Internet Casanova, the Reboot, Weird City Theatre Company at FronteraFest, January 25 - February 4

Received directly:

presents as part of FronteraFest Long Fringe 2012

by Bill Bauer

Wed 1/25 at 9:15PM, Sat. 1/28 at 3PM, Fri 2/3 at 9:15PM and Sun 2/5 at 6:30PM

at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road, behind the Goodwill warehouse (click for map)

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased on-line.

What if, instead of blocking an online scammer, you tried to see how far you could string them along? Weird City Theatre presents this expansion for FronteraFest 2012 Long Fringeof Bill Bauer's 2011 Short Fringe comedy based on hilarious chat transcripts. Javier Smith, Carrie H. Stephens, and Minerva Villa return from the original show, joined by Callie Barrons, Tammy Cox, Renei Brown Sims, and Kathryn Tait.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

Auditions for The Internet Casanova, Weird City Theatre Company for FronteraFest, November 21

Caught as a Tweet and followed up at the website:

Weird City Theatre is announcing open auditions for "The Internet Casanova," an original show written by Bill Bauer and directed by Jenni Bauer for FronteraFest Short Fringe. They will be held Monday, November 21, at Geniune Joe Coffee, 2100 W. Anderson Lane (click for map)


The premise: a man bombarded by IMs from scammers looking for love and money decides one day to play along and screw with their heads. This show is a staging of some of those transcripts. These roles have no requirements for age/ethnicity/looks, or even traditional on-stage experience (we'll consider improv, sketch, etc.). We're simply seeking three women and one man who can bring the funny. E-mail jenni@io.com or jenni@prismnet.com for an appointment.

We encourage all levels and ages to audition for us. While we are not able to cast everyone in every show, we do encourage you to keep returning. Just because you may not be the right fit for one show, you may be perfect for the next! *If you do not have a current headshot and resume, please do not let this discourage you. You may set up an audition anyway. Headshots and resumes are just a tool to get to know you a little better before you walk in the door.


We do ask that if you make an audition appointment, that you please keep it. If you must cancel, please notify us of this fact at least 24 hours before the audition. It is very important that you review the performance dates of the show. Keep in mind rehearsals last four to six weeks in addition to the show dates. All conflicts must be submitted in writing at the audition. Cast and crew members are compensated for their work. Compensation is given on a per-show basis, and all cast and crew positions are paid upon completion of contract.

Night of the Living Dead, Weird City Theatre Company at Doughety Arts Center, October 13 - 29

by Hannah Bisewski

A note to the nervous: Weird City Theatre’s Night of the Living Dead will have you clenching the edge of your seats, squinting into the darkness to see if a zombie is lumbering in your direction. Director John Carroll’s arrangement of the performance space at the Dougherty Arts Center manipulates spectators to facilitate that sense of terror. A runway extends from the traditional proscenium, separating the audience down the middle and leading to a smaller stage behind them. More than once an actor rose from the dark and terrified someone in the back row with unexpected contact.

George Romero’s 1968 black-and-white zombie film provides the story. Almost all of the dialogue in the Weird City’s staging comes directly from the film, so fans will appreciate familiar lines with expressions idiosyncratic of the era.

From the first moment the atmosphere is that of a bone-chilling, midnight graveyard, swirling in fog, glowing under black lights and alive with heart-stoppingly eerie ambient sounds. An obviously human form sits in a downstage chair, covered by a blood-stained blanket. This ransacked interior will soon become the hideout of the surviving characters.

The action is as fast-paced as the film, and before long zombies are clawing at the Laffy Taffy innards of characters we meet only briefly.

The chills go down a bit after the intermission, as the focus shifts to the stressful entanglements of the refugees and the conflicting messages of ill-fated newscasters. Missed cues and dropped lines lowered the energy of the Saturday night performance, but gradually the tension rose once again. Zombies ambled comically in the background of the living room, staring down the remaining survivors. The nervous, creepy atmosphere of the opening builds to violent, overwhelming horror as zombies overwhelm the final few survivors.

Weird City Theatre Company will keep you transfixed to the very end of this Night of the Living Dead, even if you’re familiar with the classic film. This dedicated cast brings live dramatic irony to celluloid fantasies. You’ll feel tremendous relief to see the last of that hoard of zombies mosey out of the theatre.

EXTRA

Click to read ALT review of WCTC's first production of Night of the Living Dead, November, 2008

Upcoming: A Teenager's Guide to Love, musical by Weird City Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center, May 54 - 21

Received directly:

announces the world premiere of

A Teenagers Guide to Love

A 50's Musical Parody

May 5 - 21, 2011 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road (click for map)

Performances are Thursday through Saturday nights at 8 p.m.

Thursday Nights are “Pay What You Wish” at the door. For all other performances, tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Advanced tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com.

Weird City Theatre Company announces the world premiere of A Teenagers Guide to Love, written & directed by WCT Managing Director, Patti Neff-Tiven. A Teenagers Guide is a musical parody of 50's – 60's educational films- How Do You Choose a Date? How Much Affection? Who Wrote the Book of Love?

These questions and more will be explored in an evening of kitschy, song-filled fun Our trusty narrator John F. Carroll guides us through the romantic pitfalls of our teen couple played by Sarah Griffin-Covey and Justin Hampton. With WCT company members Kevin Gouldthorpe, Jenni Bauer, Bethany Harbaugh & Robert Berry. The band includes Seth Tiven (guitarist- Dumptruck, Promise Breakers), Justin Bankston (bassist- Promise Breakers, The Paper South) and Donnie Poston (drummer- Dumptruck, Dunebuggy)

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

Alvida and the Airship Pirates, Weird City Theatre Company

I was on the last airship with Alvida out of Weird City on March 12 and as sometimeshappens with scribes errant, I got too busy and distracted to send her, author John Carroll and their band of adventures a proper bread-and-butter note.

Your mother may have admonished you about good manners, as does the mother of my children. It’s never too late, although sometimes it’s too late to do much good. I prefer the warm glow of virtue associated with writing the first review to hit the electronic doorstep, for there’s the cyberghost of a chance that it’ll attract another spectator. Or, to use the Britishism entirely appropriate to this steampunk adventure, it’ll put an additional bum on the seat.

The Weird citizens like to play with their plays. With this script John gave colleague Patti Teff-Niven as the eponymous Alvida a hand into chick adventure with the warm and vivacious Bridget Farias as her best buddy. The Alvida stage at the familiar imagination station of the Dougherty Arts Center featured a fine crew of female troopers on both sides as well as Weird regulars Kevin Gouldthorpe and Robert Berry.

I confess that I don’t know much about steampunk, a curious genre that seems half Victorian and half sci-fi, but I’ve noticed that it’s capturing a lot of imagination these days. Earlier this week, while I was checking background for the steampunk Tempest that Frank Benge is putting together for the Sam Bass Community Theatre in Round Rock, I found that there’s even a steampunk Shakespeare website encouraging submissions of bard-derived steampunk adventures. That invitational tournament is open until the end of May.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Alvida and the Airship Pirates by John Carroll, Weird City Theatre at Dougherty Arts Center, February 24 - March 12

Found on-line:

presents

Alvida and the Airship Pirates

A Steam Punk Adventure

Music by

February 24 - March 12

Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Rd (click for map)

February 24 - March 12, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Rd (click for map)

Weird City Theatre Company announces the world premiere of Alvida & The Airship Pirates: A Steampunk Adventure! written & directed by WCT Artistic Director, John F. Carroll.

When Alvida runs away from an arranged marriage, she joins forces with her notorious pirate uncle and comes to lead an airship of vicious swashbuckling steampunk pirates. Featuring the music of Seattle-based band, Abney Park, the cast includes WCT familiar faces Patti Neff-Tiven, Kevin Gouldthorpe, Robert Berry, Bethany Harbaugh, Emily Hampton, Chris Romani, Javier Smith and in her first performance with Weird City, Bridget Farias.

Performances run February 24 – March 12, 2011 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX. Performances are Thursday through Saturday nights at 8:00PM.

Thursday Nights are “Pay What You Wish” at the door. For all other performances, tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512.745.2636.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

The Servant Girl Annihilator, Weird City Theatre Company, October 28 - November 6

For Halloween and for the following weekend your friends at the Weird City Theatre Company take you on a ghost tour. In the program they express special thanks to Monica Ballard and the Austin Ghost Tours for help with research on the late night attacks and rapes of 1884-1885 recalled in the piece.

The title is taken from a comment in a letter written by the 23-year-old William Sydney Porter -- O. Henry -- who had recently relocated from the Northeast to Texas for health reasons: "Town is fearfully dull, except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively during the dead hours of the night."

Weird City shows you a murky movie to set the atmosphere and then shepherds your limited group through a series of experiences. Not a tour of the sites of the attacks, but, rather, a series of encounters with the ghosts of the victims and of the spectre of one very worried marshal. Your guide is the very contained Sarah Griffin-Covey, who conducts you to the western entrance to backstage and moves your group from one to another of the stations established on the stage itself. White lines on the floor mark the "no-go" areas, so participants shift about in a sort of Brownian motion in order to find their vantage points. Lighting is minimal but carefully coordinated and directed, both for atmosphere and for visibility.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Fan-Produced webseries 'Dark Shadows,' beginning in January 2011

Received directly:

Members of Austin's Weird City Theatre Company are producing

a weekly web series tribute to ABC's camp classic daytime serial "Dark Shadows" (1967-1971). Episodes will be available from January, 2011.

SCTC artistic director John Carroll will be appearing as vampire Barnabas Collins (image, above, by Russell Minton). The cast is drawn largely from actors who have appeared in previous WCTC productions in Austin, including Russell Minton, Patti Neff-Tiven, Kevin Gouldthorpe, and John W. Smith.

Full information about their non-commercial fan tribute series is available at their website Dark Shadows: The Web Series. Participants invite financial contributions via the indigogo website.

Upcoming: Servant Girl Annihilator, A True Tale, Weird City Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center, October 28-26

Received directly:

Weird City Theatre Company

Announces the World Premiere of

The Servant Girl Annihilator

The true tale of the Austin Ripper

by John Carroll

October 28—November 6 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX.

Performances Oct. 28 – Oct. 30 are Thursday through Saturday night at 8 PM and 10PM.

Performances Nov. 4 – Nov. 6 are Thursday through Saturday night at 8PM.

Thursday Nights are “Pay What You Wish” at the door. For all other performances, tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512.745.2636.

Weird City Theatre Company opens their 2010-2011 season with a production of true haunted history with THE SERVANT GIRL ANNIHILATOR- the true tale of the Austin Ripper. This twist on a haunted house experience takes the audience on a journey into the lives of the victims of Austin's first serial killer. The ghosts of the past tell their tales to the living, and an eerie chapter of Austin's history comes to life as the audience walks from room to room exploring this decades old mystery. The cast includes WCT Managing Director Patti Neff-Tiven, Company Members Michael and Sarah Covey and LeRoy Beck and Terri Lynne Hudson, both seen last in WCT's Giants in Those Days.

This production is not handicapped accessible.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, a nonprofit performing arts service organization. This projected is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.

Upcoming: Curse of the House of Usher, Weird City Theatre Company at the Dougherty Arts Center, February 18 - 28

Click for ALT review, February 25




Received directly:



Weird City Theatre Company
announces the world premiere of


Curse of the House of Usher

directed by Amelia Turner and inspired by the life and stories of Edgar Allan Poe
February 18 - February 28, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road

When the last heir of a great family calls upon a childhood friend to bring comfort to him, a web of family secrets and conspiracy unravels during the final days of the House of Usher! The cast includes WCT Artistic Director John F. Carroll, Helen Allen, Senait Fessahaye and Kevin Gouldthorpe.

Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students with ID, Group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at the WCT website or by calling (512) 745-2636.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

[photo: Patti Neff-Tivin]

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

Upcoming: Nosferatu, Weird City Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center, October 22 - November 1

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 27

Received directly:









Weird City Theatre Company
announces the World Premiere
of their adaptation of F.W. Murnau's

Nosferatu

Co-directed by Patti Neff-Tiven and John F. Carroll
October 22 - November 1
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road
View Map

Weird City Theatre Company kicks off its 2009-2010 season with a world premiere stage production of Nosferatu, adapted from F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. This chilling production, adapted by John F. Carroll and John W. Smith, combines elements of Murnau's film and Bram Stoker's original vampire story Dracula and features an original score by Robert L. Berry.

Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets available at www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512.745.2636.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

Click to view video trailer (1 min.)

The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Weird City Theatre Company, July 16 - 26

Here's what I like about John Carroll and the Weird City Theatre Company: they have a sense of fun that's irreverent and modern, but they take their drama seriously.

Necessarily low-rent but not sloppy, the company performs with energy, confidence, and an appreciation for the text, whatever it might be. They have a taste for pop -- we've seen an adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, a faithful production of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, and around Halloween we'll get their take on Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau's 1921 unathorized film version of Dracula.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals from 1775 is pop of a different sort. Sheridan, born into a theatrical family and married for love. The success at Covent Garden of this, his first play, spurred him to buy out Garrick's Drury Lane and subsequently to run successfully for Parliament. It's a comedy of manners in which Jack, an artistocratic military officer, disguises his well born origins in order to court Miss Lydia Languish, a dizzy heiress beguiled by popular novels and intent on forfeiting her ample trust fund by marrying poor, for love.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Rivals, Weird City Theatre Company, July 16-26

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, July 31

UPDATE: Review by Hannah Kenah in the Austin Chronicle, July 24

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, July 21

Received directly:

Weird City Theatre Company to produce

THE RIVALS

Weird City Theatre Company to produce an adaptation of THE RIVALS, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and directed by John F. Carroll. The WCT adaptation takes the classic comedy out of the 18th Century and into the 1980s with a great deal of inspiration coming from the films of John Hughes.

Performances run July 16—July 26, 2009. Performances will take place at the Dougherty Arts Center, 110 Barton Springs Road, in Austin, Thursday through Saturday night at 7:00PM and Sundays at 3:00PM.

Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512.745.2636

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encouraging the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works, cross-media, and merging a new audience with the traditional. Keeping a child-like since of play, we focus on the process of the actor and are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a non-profit performing arts service organization.

Upcoming: Fundraiser for Weird City Theatre Company, Blue Theatre, Jun 20

Received by e-mail:

Hi Everyone,

Weird City Theatre Company will be holding our first Fund raising event on June 20, 2009 at the Blue Theatre. The fundraiser is our "Totally Awesome '80s Dance Party" to coincide with the concept of our upcoming production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals.

You are welcome (and encouraged) to bring friends, co-workers, family, take pictures for publication, etc.

The fundraiser will be at the BLUE THEATRE, 916 Springdale Road (just north of 7th Street, a couple miles east of I-35), from 6PM until 12:00AM on Saturday June 20. General Tickets are $5.00 at the door (cash only), and we will serve beverages, for a suggested donation, and hors d'oeuvres.

Donations to the company are tax-deductible and we can accept cash or checks.

There will also be a raffle during the evening. The WCT Fundraiser is family friendly, and we encourage all to come. We will be playing music from the '80s and encourage guests to put on the radist '80s attire and come on out!

Please find attached a press photo from our upcoming production of The Rivals and our new logo.

If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely, --

John Carroll
Weird City Theatre Artistic Director

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's THE RIVALS
July 13 through July 26, 2009
Dougherty Arts Center
Tickets on sale soon!

Check us out on the web:

www.weirdcitytheatre.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/WeirdCityTheatre
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Weird-City-Theatre/65641856436?ref=mf www.myspace.com/weirdcitytheatre

Auditions for The Rivals, Weird CIty Theatre Company

As published on Austin.com:

Open Auditions for The Rivals at Weird City Theater

Written by Dan Viotto

Auditions to be held on Tuesday May 19th. Wierd City Theater is calling out to all you budding thespians in the area in the hopes that you want your moment in the spotlight. Auditions for the upcoming performance of The Rivals will take place on Tuesday May 19th, but actors will need to arrange for the audition before the fact. Auditions will be held at the theater offices of Austin Circle of Theaters located at 701 Tillery Street in East Austin. To schedule your audition, please send an email to weirdcitytheater@gmail.com.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The Rivals is written by Richard Brinsly Sheridan and directed by John F Carroll. Performances run July 13 —July 26, 2009. Performances will take place at the Dougherty Arts Center, 110 Barton Springs Road, in Austin, Thursday through Saturday night at 7:00PM and Sundays at 3:00PM. Weird City Theatre Company is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a non-profit performing arts service organization. Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works, cross-media, and merging a new audience with the traditional. Keeping a child-like since of play, they focus on the process of the actor and are playing their part to keep Austin weird! For more information visit the theater's website.

Sherlock Holmes by William Gillette, Weird City Theatre Company, February 19 - March 1

William Gillette introduced a new naturalism to the theatre of the late 19th century, exercising an influence that helped convert the broad, artificial acting styles of the day into something more more natural. With his impressive charisma, he used silent stage business to carry part of the story; as a playwright and director he pioneered the use of fades and blackouts. He was hugely, hugely successful, earning enough to buy himself a river steamer and to build a castle on a hill in New Jersey that cost a million dollars back in 1910.

And Gillette gave us much of the popular image of Sherlock Holmes. After Arthur Conan Doyle had terminated his first series of Holmes stories in 1893, getting rid of the detective via a confrontation with the infamous Dr. Moriarity at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, Conan Doyle attempted to write a play using his famous character. He offered it to Henry Irving and to Beerhom Tree. Irving refused it and Tree wanted it rewritten. Conan Doyle turned to the American Gillette, newly on the London scene.

And there a partnership was born. Gillette rewrote the piece, with Conan Doyle's permission. It was a great success and for the next 30 years Gillette and his collaborators produced it in Britian and the United States. Gillette set for us the catchphrase, "Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow," reformulated by another actor as "Elementary, dear Watson" for the first talking cinema version. Gillette introduced the curved pipe for Holmes and established the deerstalker attire. He even used a syringe onstage to depict Holmes' drug addition.

Gillette performed this play more than 1300 times but he never appeared in the cinema as Sherlock Holmes. A modern day admirer has resurrected in two YouTube slide shows key portions of a 50-minute radio version that Gillette recorded in 1936. The lines are exactly those used by John Carroll as Holmes and Robert Berry as Dr. Watson in Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, playing at the Dougherty Arts Center through March 1.

To modern spectators the piece may initially seem as creaky and worn as the shabby Victorian house in which the action opens. A nervous, talky man and woman attended by a butler of lapsed character and a French maid set the plot in motion with some pretty tedious exposition, particularly when they bring in a shady friend to crack a safe. They have held a young woman sequestered for two years because they know that she has documents compromising an unnamed, presumably British young aristocrat. That aristocrat's marriage is approaching and the Larabees (Kevin Goldthorpe and Amy Young) have become frantic to make Alice Faulkner (the delicately desperate Emily Hampton) reveal the whereabouts of the dossier. Director Patti Neff-Tiven gets her actors through lots of jawing back and forth, threats and mistreatment of Miss Alice -- and then the doorbell rings. It is Sherlock Holmes, who has been hired by sleazy nobility to get the dossier!

From that point, with the entrance of John Carroll as Holmes, the play comes alive, just as it must have done with the entrance of Gillette. Carroll is decisive, close to arrogant with the Larabees. He demands to see Alice Faulkner and quickly sees through their attempt to parade Madge Larrabee as that unfortunate girl. By force of personality he obliges them to bring her downstairs for an interview. Holmes succeeds by strategem in obtaining the documents but his gentleman's honor prevents him from taking them. After Holmes takes his leave, warning the Larabees of police action if Miss Alice is mistreated, they are off to the "emperor of crime" Dr. Moriarity to thwart Holmes.

There's no particular use here in a "who hit John?" recital of this ancient and relatively predictable plot -- whether the John in question is John Carroll as Holmes or John Smith as the black-clad, mutely fiendish Dr. Moriarity.

Moriarity, the Larrabees, Moriarity's underling Bassick (Stephen Reynolds) and a small platoon of picturesque thugs scheme to trap Holmes and we know that he will escape from the eventual talky confrontation in the atmospheric abandoned gas works in the second half of the play.



John Carroll is magnificent as Sherlock Holmes. Restless of spirit, articulate with riveting speech and gesture, subject to ennui and spleen, contemptuous of danger, he is most emphatically larger than life.








Robert Berry as Watson is perfectly cast to play as the fussy, friendly foil to Holmes' brilliance.

Gillette went against the canon by creating in this piece a love interest. Holmes falls for Miss Alice, against his will and better judgement. John Carroll plays this with subtle shading of Holmes' emphatic certainties about everything else. We see the unease of his moral conflict -- set to persuade, trick or seduce documents from Alice, he is attracted despite misgivings to her fragility and youth. Equally, he despairs of the difference in their ages, a cavil that in the closing scene Alice sweetly dismisses.

The success of Gillette's play raised the pressure on Conan Doyle to continue the exploits of his unique, brilliant detective, and the author resurrected Holmes from the abyss, revealing that instead of going over the waterfall, Holmes had in fact climbed up and hidden himself. Thus were we granted a most agreeable continuation.

In the crackling dialogue between Holmes and the temporarily subjugated Moriarity Gillette predicts an upcoming face-off between them "on the continent." Weird City's promotional video on YouTube gives us a sepia-toned version of that struggle. It was filmed, charmingly enough, here in Austin at Mount Bonnell.

And they're not finished yet! Weird City Theatre will be doing The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan July 13-26, again at the Dougherty Arts Center.

Review by Ryan E. Johnson on Austin.com, February 24

Review by Avimaan Syam in the Austin Chronicle, February 26