Things We Loved in the First Half of 2010 [Theater]
As 2010 begins its second half (already! Can you believe it?), there've been a number of spectacular performances, productions, and scripts to grace the Austin stage this year. And, as we start to look ahead to what the next six months have in store, we first want to take one last look back. Austinist polled its theater and comedy writers and asked each of them to offer two moments that stood out in the first half of 2010.
Bastion Carboni:
A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits was orchestrated chaos overall. While some of the actors struggled to follow that tenuous line between high theatricality and deep sincerity, Robin Grace Thompson and Halena Kayes bounded down it with aplomb. More affecting than their history-rich, enveloping scenes together were their monologues, these crystalline and complex character examinations performed with quaking, raw delicacy. The sheer, brutal hurt with which Helena Kayes seethed as she lamented the irony of her inability to carry children shook me, and the dream-drenched wist with which Robin Grace Thompson discussed her inability to meet the expectations of her sister was captivating. These women drew my attention and personal hurt like venom out of a wound, leaving me feeling a little lighter, more prepared, and more aware than I did when I walked into the theater. And that's extraordinary.
The proliferation of puppets in Austin theater has been really good to see. Austin audiences, as well as those at large, have become reacquainted with and re-enamored of our symbolically-effective, non-autonomous-but-able-to-be-imbued-with-something-more-potent-than-sentience brethren. Since the debut of Avenue Q, characters like this guy have been getting a whole lot more exposure on Austin stages thanks to advocates like Conner Hopkins of Trouble Puppet Theatre Co. and touring companies like the Black Forest Fancies. Puppets are excellent facilitators of the "impossible", constant crowd-pleasers and, perhaps most importantly, a theatrical device which draws otherwise reluctant prospective audience members in. One might not know who the hell Albee is, but Said One is 99% likely to have fond memories of Cookie Monster and be willing to experience the exploits of his relatives for nostalgia's sake. With the state of theater as it is, our stringed cohorts are welcome proponents of the cause.
Patrick Knisely: Last year the new owners of The Hideout staged a 40 hour marathon where 8 improvisers did 40 hour-long shows in a row. They shared the stage with a variety of Austin's improv troupes and formats as special guests. This year, they upped the ante by an hour. From 4pm on June 4th to 9am on June 6th, another 8 improvisers (some new, some returning) performed in the 41 hour marathon. What's outstanding about this event was that it wasn't pure spectacle. Sure, some of the fun and funny comes from the loopiness of the performers having been on stage without sleep, but the quality of most shows was still there. What's also nice is to see all of the Austin improv community participating and showing off the breadth and variety of improvised work that Austin is home to. An event like this helps demonstrate, in just under two days, the fact that Austin really is a hot spot on the national improv map.
ColdTowne Theater has been working hard at producing regular live sketch comedy offerings over the last year or two. Their most recent main stage sketch show, Shanty Town Lake, is still running through July. So I won't ruin it by offering too many details about the show or my favorite moments, which come from Bryan Roberts. Roberts is funny in all of the sketches he appears in, but he steals the show as Austin's Mayor. The writing of this sketch is tight and deserves a lot of credit, but the delivery sells it. Of course, it wouldn't be as funny as it is without the necessary grounding from the rest of the cast, but it's hard not to credit Roberts with making those bits work. Roberts also shines in another sketch where he shows off his rapping talents, normally reserved for another of his projects, Ghetto Sketch Warlock. The show overall is solid, but Roberts deserves credit for making me laugh more than I have at any other show this year.
Michael Meigs:
Martin Burke doesn’t sing or dance - or anyway, not much - in the Zach Scott Theater’s new production The Drowsy Chaperone but his performance lifts a conventionally splashy musical into something really special. As the anonymous Man in the Chair he hosts us for an evening alone in his apartment with LP recordings of that mythical 1928 musical. Burke sits on our side of the fourth wall and he rambles on with confidential ease, converting the entire audience into his best friend. His presence and delight shine a wonderful light on the imaginary Broadway piece; his lightly carried cynicism and personal reticence give us a whole back story to guess at. He can spin my turntable and imagination anytime.
For additional acclaim, a tie: Austin has got the venues and the creative culture, but most memorable stagings for me were beyond Austin city limits. The Georgetown Palace Theater’s staging of A Little Night Music was an elegant, moving story of loves in aristocratic Sweden, where Wendy Zavaleta and Jenny Lavery were heart-stoppers. The Palace production was a giddy delight. And out in Lakeway back in February, in a short Equity run in the small Kam & James Morris Theatre at Tex-Arts, Michael Costello’s staging of The Glass Menagerie was delicate, deeply moving and delicious—with Babs George, Jude Hickey, Jesse Tilton and James David Hart. If they had done it somewhere in Austin—say, at the Larry L. King stage over at Austin Playhouse - they could have run it for months.
Dan Solomon:
Katie deBuys gave the sort of heavyweight performance in Capitol T's Bug that demonstrates both why she's able to move on to a larger national theater (she'll be starring in Sarah Ruhl's The Vibrator Play at Washington DC's Woolly Mammoth Theater later this summer) and why that's such a bummer for us locals. Where the script's broader strokes allowed for over-the-top parody and goofy caricature—choices that would have been valid, given the work on the page—deBuys instead made the ranting about invisible bugs and the CIA work to deep emotional effect. It's one thing to go for the heart like that in a drama, but doing it in a show that also features Kenneth Wayne Bradley wearing a hillbilly mustache requires a fearlessness that we're lucky to have had on Austin stages at all.
FronteraFest—especially the short fringe—saw an especially high number of solo performances and monologues this year. On the Best Of Short Fringe performance night I saw, four of the five pieces were one-person shows. And while most of them were fine examples of the form, the fifth show, St. Matilde's Malady, was easily the highlight of the night. The performances were tight and on-point, but for me, the star of the show was Kyle John Schmidt's script, written in trochaic verse, but mostly full of lines about pirates and whores and STD's and stuff. FronteraFest short fringe is explicitly about giving theatermakers the chance to try something new (at least in part), so it was a real surprise to see something stroll onto that stage so fully-formed and professional. Here's hoping that Schmidt's next play, Fernando the Killer Queen, is able to see its debut at the Cathedral of Junk actually happen, now that all the city code nonsense is behind us.
Georgia Young:
I've seen a few Austin theater productions with striking design sense, but A Brief Narrative of An Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits at Salvage Vanguard Theater boasted an overall visual picture that was fun, off-the-wall, and innovative without falling apart or overwhelming the play's complex narrative. The set recalled a circus sideshow in bright primary colors, with Mare, the human mother in stirrups at center stage unexpectedly popping out bunnies. She was flanked by piles of puppet rabbits in an off-kilter Punch and Judy show to one side, and a queasy-comical pair of legs that opened wide to reveal a trio of creepy doctor puppets on the other. Gorgeous costumes (especially the emerald green dress worn by Halena Kays) and a punchy array of props, including a free-standing projection screen and a toy piano used to punctuate the Stork's ringmaster narrative) complemented the production's overall attempt at a careful balance of somber plot with a lighthearted touch.
More recently, Paper Chairs' production of Sophie Treadwell's Machinal (also at Salvage Vanguard) stood out for many reasons, but Chase Crossno's portrayal of the Young Woman was particularly intriguing. As the uneasy protagonist, Crossno gave a multidimensional form to a character who easily could feel like a caricature of the worst traits of the “modern” woman. Out of step with the world, she even speaks in her own rhythm, and Crossno's vocal cadence displayed a talent that had impact equal to her elegant, utterly 1920s silhouette. Whether hiding under her hat, nervous hands concealed carefully beneath gloves, or with hair loose, wrapped in the arms of her lover, the Young Woman held our attention. In all her recoiling, whimpering, dancing, lashing out, and even meeting her terrible fate, this actress made the audience feel what her character felt, even if we didn't all sympathize with it.
