Austinist Theatre Review: A Brief History of Helen of Troy

Capital T Theatre, led by Artistic Director Mark Pickell, is getting down to brass tacks. Small, young companies like Capital T – especially in Austin – often suffer from a lack of focus or attention to detail. In his production of A Brief History of Helen of Troy, however, Pickell does a fine job in replicating the kind of aesthetic and professionalism you might find Off-Broadway. The lighting design is intelligent and effective; the sound design is tasteful, and supports the tone of the script; the actors move from scene to scene on the clean-lined, all-black set in a series of sleek transitions…

But in the end, it’s only a replica – the shell of a professional performance with nothing to drive it. Despite appearances, these brass tacks don’t have anything to hold up.

First and foremost, Troy is an incredibly demanding script – a very bold choice for a company of young actors. Fantastically crafted by Mark Schultz, the play – as you might expect – is based in the overwhelming tragedy and pathos of Greek mythology. Charlotte, the play’s main character, is a 15 year-old who, after the death of her mother, desperately seeks the attention of her father. The father’s grief over the loss of his wife makes him push Charlotte away, creating an over-sexualized, misguided adolescent with a tenuous grasp on reality. Chaos ensues. To fully facilitate these characters’ intensity, Shultz’s dialogue is ever-so-slightly stylized. He creates a meaty, visceral language that extends the emotional capacity of the text – a capacity that, for the most part, this company of performers simply wasn’t capable of inhabiting.

While all the actors in Pickell’s production are capable of creating believable, life-like people on stage, to succeed with an emotionally-charged play like Troy, that’s just not good enough. Outside of standout performances from Theresa Baldwin (as the aforementioned Charlotte), and Ryan Ciardo (as Freddie), the cast fell into every imaginable acting trap. They became lost in the language instead of finding choices that worked with the language – stuttering and inflecting their speech for no reason like an unmotivated, foggy impression of [insert the name of your favorite “actor’s actor” here]. Instead of allowing the overwhelming circumstances of the play to provoke their emotional outbursts (or breakdowns, or whatever), the actors simply pushed too hard, thus requiring themselves to rely on gimmicks and superficial emotional indicators to which they clearly weren’t connected (like screaming for no reason, crying out of nowhere…or worse yet, pretending to cry). As a result of this forced performance aesthetic, the play – instead of leaving us with the carnage of these characters’ destroyed lives – leaves us wishing the damn thing would end already.

Capital T is an exciting new company in that they have a clear vision, and are committed to the professional presentation of both their productions and their organization. We hope, in subsequent productions, that they apply the same commitment and professionalism to the pursuit of honesty in their performances.

A Brief History of Helen of Troy
Remaining performaces tonight & tomorrow night, 8pm at Hyde Park Theatre.
Tix $10-$20, reserved online via Capital T's website.

Image courtesy of Capital T Theatre Co.

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