The costumes! The cleavage! The shoes! All at House of Several Stories and that was just the audience. Okay, so maybe a review-of-crowd is not pertinent to review-of-show except, hello, this is Austin where dressing up usually means wearing your newest Crocs and maybe a t-shirt with sleeves. So it must be noted that the crowd that showed up to take in John Boulanger’s House of Several Stories at the Austin Playhouse last week was dressed to the nines (times ten). As was—at least for most of the evening, Lauren Lane, who, in the roll of Fuller Family Matriarch, Sue, sports some pretty fucking stunning duds courtesy of costumer Jillan Hanel. And let’s get a bit more about Lane on the table at the front end here. In a recent A.O. Scott review of Julie & Julia in NYT, Mr. Scott notes that Meryl Streep is so beyond outstanding in any role she takes that it’s almost a shame for those who must be in the same film—no matter how memorable they are in their own right, in Streep’s shadow, well, it’s impossible not to pale. Similarly, Lane is so enchanting, such an astonishing comic actress, such a gift to this city (nay—the stage that is the world!) that not only is she a hard act to follow, she’s a hard act to stand beside. more ›