Results tagged “theatre”

The Paramount Theatre may be nearly 100 years old, but that hasn't stopped the historic venue from incorporating some new technology: an iPhone application is now available to get show updates and buy tickets.

Mikhail Bulgakov, whose Black Snow is currently in the midst of a run by Tutto Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, is one of those figures it's hard to criticize on his work's merits, which is unfortunate. It's much safer to insist that the work's author is fully deserving of his exalted status, and that the flaws in the production belong to Tutto and director Dustin Wills. But the fact is that it's hard to imagine a better interpretation of Bulgakov's cranky, cartoony piece about what a bummer working in the theater was for him.

Jean Paul Sartre's Hell is other people, but the people onstage in Carboni's production of Sartre's No Exit are less effective at creating the discomforting environment one would expect from eternal damnation than the distraction-laden Domy Books gallery, a block off the highway on East Cesar Chavez.

The Austin premiere of Touch, written by Toni Press-Coffman and directed by Susie Gidseg, is the sort of performance that raises questions for the audience. Some of them, like whether it's fair to judge a person for how he grieves, are the sort that are comfortable to ask, if a bit sad. Others—for example, whether it's fair for a male critic to be wary of a play written and directed by women that uses a female character's rape and torture to explore a man's pain&mash;are less so.

Austin Shakespeare presents its inaugural "Young Shakespeare" production The Comedy of Errors from June 25- 28 at the Curtain Theatre. Comedy is Shakespeare at his farcical best. Shipwrecks, two sets of twins, love on the rocks, long-lost relatives and a few lusty wenches - what more could one ask for?

Lest this come off as a negative review, let’s get a few things straight up front about Capital T Theatre’s production of Killer Joe, currently playing at Hyde Park Theatre. The acting is across the board spot-on. The set, co-designed by Mark Pickell and Tommy Grubbs, is nothing short of spectacular in its authentic, exquisite disgustingness. And Pickell, who also directs, is clearly a man who understands timing, suspense, and recognizes that kid gloves have no place in the staging of this piece. That said, a warning to the faint of heart, past victims of violent crimes, and sufferers of PTSD: you might be better off going to see a matinee screening of UP. Because Killer Joe is, even in its lightest moments, about as light as a pile of bricks buried under a slurry mound of wet cement. And then, as the plot thickens, so, too, does the concrete, until you feel your innards tighten and your organs harden at the spectacle before your eyes. It’s like somebody took MacBeth, All in the Family, and Sylvia Plath, tossed them in a blender, and splattered them inside a beat to fuck trailer out in Dallas County.

Faster Than the Speed of Light is a triumph on so many levels that it's more or less fair to dismiss the fact that the show's plot is almost indiscernible.

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill will be presented at The Off Center directed by Lucien Douglas, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and starring long-time Austin theatre bastions Ev Lunning, Jr. and Patricia Pearcy.

In The Long Now, currently playing at the Blue Theater, Tish Reilly (played by Shannon Grounds) may or may not have Time on her side. That’s because in this case, time is not merely a concept of measurement, nor is time a chronological matter. Instead, Time, as portrayed in shadow via puppets and given voice by actor T. Lynn Mikeska, is a character as real to Tish—and at times more real—than the other humans who inhabit this original production written and directed by Edward Albee protégée Beth Burns. Burns plays with the themes of memory and trauma and how the latter can lead to severe arrested development, as is the affliction that plagues poor Tish. In a sort of reverse Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind trick, Tish is forever seeking ways not to erase the past and move forward, but rather, with the help of her friend Time, avoid the present and trip back to handful of happy memories that make up the before—no spoiler here, just know that early on, Tish had something very bad happen to her and to say she’s had a hard time facing reality is an understatement.

Debutantes and Vagabonds' Are You Alive?, billed as "a collection of macabre theatre", and featuring a series of short plays interspersed with performances from various notable local bands—White Ghost Shivers, The Georgian Company, or Scott H. Biram, depending on the night—turned out to be a compelling concept that, in practice, had little reason to exist.

The performance series, spread over three nights, splices together a series of short plays from local playwrights Aimee Gonzalez, Fred Jones IV, Greg Romero, and Sarah Saltwick, with live music from notable Austin bands—White Ghost Shivers on night one, Georgian Company on night two, and Scott H. Biram closing things down. Each play is punctuated with a song or two from the musical guest, creating a sort-of variety show effect that offers a few different takes on what makes the live arts so vital.

Waiter, waiter, there’s HAIR in my musical! It certainly seems that way with RENT, the smash hit Broadway musical currently playing at the Bass Concert Hall. And the plot/musical numbers aren’t just reminiscent, at times, of that other musical, HAIR. The audience will get whiffs of other shows, too. But above all, the plot derives (purposefully) from Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème, right down to the same-named female protagonists— Mimi— who, in both the original opera and the Broadway show, are both overly flirtatious and terminally ill. But one needn’t be familiar with the opera to enjoy its updated version. RENT is packed with some outstanding moments and more than a few excellent songs. Basically, what we have is a group of young, fucked up, starving artist types squatting in NYC’s East Village, trying to figure out life and love and, like, you know, The Meaning of It All. Is this a tired premise? Certainly not for fans of literary archetypes—the old man vs. man, man vs. himself, man vs. nature (or the concrete jungle in this instance). Mark (Anthony Rapp) is our narrator, a documentary filmmaker hounded by his answering machine, which fills up with nagging messages from, among others, his Jewish mother and a TV producer wanting him to make a soul-selling deal-with-the-devil. His roommate, Roger (Adam Pascal), is HIV positive, rendered more or less agoraphobic until Mimi (Lexi Lawson) the junkie-stripper with AIDs hurls herself at him and mad love ensues.

Kicking off in early October with American novelist and general literary badass Elizabeth Gilbert, the Paramount will play host to a variety of big productions (Of Mice and Men, Cirque Shanghai, Stomp), musicians (Rufus Wainwright, Wynton Marsalis, Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band), and heroes of public radio (David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell) through next May. Other notable surprises among the schedule include John Waters' doubtlessly over-the-top 'Holiday Show', the adorably rascally Don Rickles, and actress Diane Keaton.

This year, multiple-award winning actor and director, Ken Webster, celebrates thirty years of being in theater. He’s spent many of those yeas at the Hyde Park Theatre, bringing to life countless plays that are hilarious and dark, often at the same time. The thing about Webster and his domain—upon first glance we have but one man and one small room— both, rather than exhibiting signs of age, continue to hold up remarkably, amazingly, shape-shiftingly well. It’s something bordering on incomprehensible to contemplate how Webster can, time and again so utterly inhabit whatever character he is playing. His one-man shows are particularly magic as typically he will be onstage for a full ninety minutes— set totally spare, props precious few—and yet leave an audience feeling, as they stand to applaud (almost always the case) like they have been fully transported into another creature’s bizarre universe.

A diplomacy effort in the science/religion struggle with evolution.

Beginning this Thursday, Austin Shakespeare offers up the latest twist on the young romantics, as the 24th annual FREE Shakespeare in Zilker Park season opens and runs through June 7th, playing at the Sheffield Hillside Theatre (across the parking lot from Barton Springs). This bicultural interpretation, directed by Ann Ciccolella, is set in Central Texas in the 1940’s and looks at the story through a Mexican-American lens, including some dialogue delivered in Spanish.

The Scottish Rite Children’s Theatre production of Hansel and Gretel threatens to neither scar nor inspire a child—in fact, it’s almost a misnomer to call it Hansel and Gretel. While it does feature a pair of characters by those names, the heart of the story is more or less stripped from the production.

Fifteen years after the quintessential 90s musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop and over a decade since it won the Pulitzer and big stack of Tony Awards for its portrayal of artistic types living in America at the end of the millennium, Rent is coming to Bass Concert Hall, thanks to Broadway Across America. Originally conceived as a way to "bring Musical theater to the MTV generation", Rent exists as both a product of and a comment on the decade in which it's set.

Fusebox Festival continues with a rundown of today's events. Festival passes and individual event tickets are available online.

This year's Fusebox Festival starts Thursday and fans of theatre, dance, film, visual art, or music should take note. Passes to the ten day event cost only $129 and guarantee advanced access for all the shows. For those who would rather pay for each performance piecemeal, tickets are available for each event on a sliding scale online or at boxoffices before each show. Some Fusebox happenings are free and the public can RSVP to attend at the Fusebox website. We'll be previewing Fusebox Festival events all week in an attempt to help you navigate the confluence of cultural occurrences that will be taking place. Here's a rundown of Thursday's events:

Avenue Q, the musical unleashed off-Broadway in 2003, is a send-up of Sesame Street, but everybody knows that by now, don’t they? Instead of mirroring the overly cheerful dispositions of the muppets that inspired their creation though, these puppets and the human characters they live with on a rundown street in New York are less concerned with exploring themes like counting and cooperation and more into examining why their lives suck. It’s a tale of coming of age and plain old coming, the latter occurring during a hilarious night of wild puppet sex prompted by the foreplay of drunken revelry. The show has enough of a buzz about it, even after all these years, to run the risk of…not exactly disappointing an expectant audience, but having to stretch pretty far to clear the bar. What with all the billboards around town promising puppet nudity and adult themes, you might arrive anticipating some NC-17 action. Nah. Sure there are plenty of funny bits about racism, homosexuality, Internet porn and schadenfreude, but overall the book is tame enough.

Theatre is one of the few art forms whose content-delivery system remains untouched by the technological advances of the past decades. You can't download a play, or put it on an iPhone; the only real way to take it in is to physically drag your carcass down to the theatre and sit in a dark room while people make art in front of your eyes.

Queenie Pie, a remarkable musical theater-jazz-opera combination, will be produced here in town by Austin's very own Butler School of Music, Butler Opera Center and Huston-Tillotson University, so this ain't no out of town roadshow, though the play promises to be out of this world. Renowned jazz vocalist Carmen Bradford stars in the show.

This week, local playwright and James A. Michener fellow Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig will debut a new play, LIDLESS, at the LAB theatre at UT. The play runs Thursday through Saturday night this week and closes with a matinee on Sunday afternoon. It is a short run, but, thanks to funding from the UTNT (UT New Theatre), the show is entirely free. We loved Cowhig's [410]GONE at UT last fall, so this time we made sure to catch her for an interview to help explain, among other things, why a play about a Guantanamo detainee might not be a bad idea for Valentine's Day.

The Rude Mechanicals’ workshop production of I’ve Never Been So Happy feels like theatre that’s a hundred percent Austin. The work nails its emotions, turning over-the-top character explorations into a Texas Two-step choreography of over-stimulation and joy.

Ah, the holidays. Sick of ‘em already? The Santaland Diaries invites you to commiserate, with the dry, biting wit of David Sedaris, and shining performances by Meredith McCall and Espie Randolph, while Jason Connor accompanies on piano. The first act presents spicy, spirited carols that you’ve probably never heard before—but it’s safe to say that by the time intermission hits, you’ll be want to add “Let’s Be Naughty” and “Making Love Alone” to the Christmas music rotation.

Based on a dream that Dallas-based puppet-master Ricki Vincent had back in January, the show is set inside a tiny goblin tavern called The Nauseous Fairy. The theatre is a small space (seats 16!) tucked behind an actual tavern, The Peacock. Guests enter the dark venue shortly before the event begins and sit inside a fairy circle while the action surrounds them. We were warned not to leave the protected circle, or eat or drink anything that might be offered.

Monkey kings. Dark and stormy nights. 8-foot long fingernails. PTSD paranoia. Dance Dance Revolution. Put it all together.... We go to the theatre to experience worlds beyond our norm. This week, UT will host some astounding acts of the imagination in the form of new plays by local emerging playwrights Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and Jenny Connell.

The Casket of Passing Fancy is not a play, and it’s not, in any conventional sense, improv. It’s a hyper-participatory extravaganza of perpetual surprise, culminating in a theatrical experience that, like a psychedelic Choose Your Own Adventure story, tailors to each individual audience member’s taste, curiosity, or hunger.

It’s rare for a production to offer a full-fledged meditation on grief, race/class struggles, greed, the questionable influences of technology, and the crippling effects of fear on human dynamics. It’s rarer for a large cast to offer such stellar performances that it’s nigh impossible to choose a standout. And it’s even rarer for these achievements to include Motown-inspired original songs that give beat and rhythm to an unpredictable story and a wide range of emotions.