XL Weekend reviews

'Static,' The Books, 'Pulse,' 'Barely Still Lifes,' DMC International DJ Competition, 'The Beard of Avon,' 'The Odd Couple.'

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Music

ELVIS VIES TO BE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

It's not news that Elvis Costello, once New Wave's angriest young songwriter, has wanted to be Ol' Blue Eyes. And Nelson Riddle. And George Jones. And possibly also the Pogues, ABBA and Fletcher Henderson. Costello stretches out stylistically just to prove he can, and Tuesday at Bass Concert Hall, he -- along with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, guest-conducted by Alan Broadbent -- displayed his copious talents as a composer, songwriter and singer.

The program started with a 30-minute suite from "Il Sogno," the symphonic commission Costello composed for an Italian dance company's riff on "Midsummer Night's Dream." Costello briefly introduced the evening ("Just a little bit of a change from the Armadillo World Headquarters") noting that Puck was a "jazz fairy."

Somewhat betraying Costello's roots in rock, "Il Sogno" is a riffy piece, filled with identifiable hooks and phrases. Was there a drum kit back there? Costello noted that the authority figures were represented by the richer instruments, while martial beats and jazzy passages were saved for the proles. The opening sections felt a little two-dimensional, saved by light touches, such as a snake-charming saxophone solo and the occasional anxious melody. Ultimately, Costello's anthemic phrases and bookish strings built to a detailed conclusion.

Once Costello began the vocal portion of the evening, you remember why he gets away with all this. Not only are a nice percentage of the songs pretty good, but his voice has held up startlingly well for a dude whose been in the game nearly 30 years. Costello grabbed an acoustic guitar and opened with a bracing, angry "The River in Reverse," the excellent title track from this collaboration with Alan Toussaint, to be released later this year.

Joined by longtime Costello pianist Steve Nieve, Costello and the symphony set the man's song book on "maximum croon." Ballads such as "All this Useless Beauty" and a string quartet piece from "The Juliet Letters" stayed pretty much the same. The crowd really should have had a tumbler of scotch for "Almost Blue" and "My Flamer Burns Blue," while the dull "Veronica" was mercifully cranked up, "Watching the Detectives" became hard-swinging '50s TV jazz and "Alison" is still a slow dance for the ages. To his credit, the arrangement worked, avoiding the "Boston pops plays ELO" feel for something richer. Ol' Blue Eyes would have approved. --Joe Gross

One Man Show

WERZNER FINDS CLARITY IN 'STATIC'

Only until May 6. That's how much time is left to see Brent Werzner give what's probably the most physical or affecting performance by an Austin actor this year. In "Static," Ryan Pavelchik's probing indictment of the American status quo, Werzner expresses the collective trepidations of a misinformed and overprivileged nation.

Set and performed in a hotel room, "Static" is the story of one man's tough luck in love and life told through film, audio recordings and monologue. The play opens as the man lies in bed, his beanie-hugged head peaking out from under an itchy hotel-issue blanket. He strips the bedding and tacks onto the wall a sheet emblazoned with a blue-stitched map of the United States. The man reaches for the phone chord, which he plugs into his bellybutton. A chat with mom commences.

During the next 75 minutes, the man will transform the map into a disfigured representation of himself and, in the process, contend with the difficult realities of being a spurned lover and a self-reliant being.

Director Jason Neulander elevated a sticky premise — a hotel play presented in a hotel — above mere gimmickry. Neulander maximized the room's potential, using everything in sight to facilitate the show's progression. He was wise to enlist stage manager Adriene Mishler, who called the pivotal technical cues in an untested space.

But the news is Brent Werzner. As the production's only in-the-flesh actor (everyone else appeared in the film), Werzner was charged with sustaining the small audience's attention. This appeared to be an easy task for the actor, who conveyed paradoxical notions of American isolation and interdependence with mind-blowing consistency. Werzner's comfort and credibility in shifting between complacency and outrage rendered his a must-see performance.

("Static" continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through May 6 at the Woodward Hotel, 3401 S. Interstate 35. $20-$50. 474-7886, www.salvagevanguard.org.)

— Tommy O'Malley

Experimental rock

CONCERT BY THE BOOKS WASN'T BY THE BOOK

You have to wonder at a certain point: If it's this simple, why isn't everyone doing it? If one can put 80 percent of a concert's entertainment on a DVD and still wow your audience, why even bother with the synth and the wah-wah and the cowbell, right?

Well, I suppose everyone isn't the Books, a duo originally from New York, who enthralled a sold-out Parish crowd Thursday night. With Nick Zammuto controlling the DVD and adding samples and Paul de Jong playing cello, the Books needed nothing else save a pair of microphones to produce their blend of experimental music.

The Books' aesthetic is born out of de Jong's accessible if overloaded melodies coupled with Zammuto's "found sounds," which filtered through the group's off-centered view creates tunes that are . . . are . . . bookish. There's a natural, almost indigenous quality to their songwriting, painstakingly planned and free at once.

They certainly planned out this tour. Not only did each song of the Books' set come with a mesmerizing video, but individual tracks were spliced together from samples of different records. Though their latest, 2005's "Lost and Safe," received more attention, the tour tunes weren't without phrases from 2002's "Thought for Food." The videos — strange, humorous, unavoidable — were played on a large screen behind the band, and seemed like a natural extension of the Books' style: as their music breaks common barriers, so should their shows.

Through their most complex passages, through the somber, sobering sections, there was something genuine, humane about the Books' pieced-together storytelling style of music, a fact that did not go unnoticed by an appropriately appreciative audience.

— Avimann Syam

Digital prints

FLATO'S NEW WORKS A PIXEL PARTY

Malou Flato is best known for her paintings. Particularly popular are her watercolors and acrylics of regional landscapes and still lifes often filled with flowers and fruits. Recently, she has delved into brave new territory — digital prints.

The results in "Barely Still Lifes" at the Davis Gallery are an amalgamation of scanned items from nature, dead animals, as well as scanned paintings and actual painting. One could call them digital collages. This attempt to blend traditional and digital media has become relatively common and often poses visual problems.

As seen in similar experiments with such processes, some of Flato's final images work more successfully than others. The few that highlight texture, repetition of form and abstracted details, such as "Tasajillo," are relatively seamless and very appealing. However, some of the final prints seem to force too many competing images into one space. The pieces just don't fit together. There are uncomfortable aesthetic gaps and gestural applications of paint that appear to be an afterthought.

That said, Flato's technical undertaking is still impressive, including the fact that she used an extra large scanner and Photoshop to capture, juxtapose, heighten and saturate elements, creating an original body of work within roughly a year's time. She could be on her way to something exceptional, something seemingly effortlessness in feel, much like her paintings.

("Barely Still Lifes" continues 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays through April 15, Davis Gallery, 837 W. 12 St., 477-4929.)

— Erin Keever

Hip-hop

DJS DO BATTLE

With the Texas Relays in town Saturday, Sixth Street was full to bursting, overfed with partiers spilling into and out of every club in the district. Muffled by the engine roar from hundreds of parading custom motorcycles, music fought to be heard.

Hip-hop culture turned out in force: Promo mixes littered the street, MCs hawked their albums — on generic CDRs with photocopied cover art — on corners, and white-label rap blasted from the Parish, the site of the Austin heat of this year's DMC International DJ Competition.

After the crush outside, the Parish was an island of tranquility. The sparse crowd huddled around the decks, which were flanked by two rows of chairs for the judges. These six judges, established DJs including Chicken George and Austin's Nick Nack, doubled the number of contestants, who put on a brief but satisfying show.

The three proved the diversity of turntablism. Up first, DJ Hot Tub traced hip-hop's evolution in reverse, beginning with futuristic electro-infused breaks before unleashing a gut-shaking two-minute finale of vintage 80s Miami Bass dance beats. Going beyond the stale old school versus new school debate, Hot Tub reinforced the already strong connection between hip-hop and dance music, genres that developed side by side in urban America.

Heavily tattooed and pierced, DJ Birds didn't look or play more conventionally. His eclectic selection of records, including metal guitar solos and overdriven 8-bit drum 'n' bass along with traditional hip-hop, led to some interesting mash ups, especially when smoothly beat-matched. Unfortunately, his scratch solos had too much in common with indulgent hair metal shredding, and he disturbed the flow of his set with cheap, beat-free, movie-sample transitions.

Reigning champ Donnie D defended his crown with authority. Sticking largely to Southern crunk, Donnie D seamlessly integrated vocals and scratches into his set. His hands moved with astonishing grace and speed, seemingly directed by a separate brain. At points, one could barely recognize the source record, as Donnie D warped beats into entirely new tempos and cut and pasted samples with surgical precision.

He'll move onto the Nationals in Chicago, where he hopes to improve on his third-place showing last year.

— Bryan Berge

Dance

'PULSE' DANCE PROGRAM HAS PLENTY OF HEART

Wishing for more when a dance ends can only mean good things. Eric Midgley's "Ezekiel Wheel's," one of the works on Ballet East's Thursday program "Pulse" at the Dougherty Arts Center, closed with soloist Chika Aluka imploring the audience for help with an intense gaze and an outstretched muscled arm. The spotlighted snapshot provides climax, but Aluka's passionate performance and the larger choreographic structure could have garnered attention for even longer.

A set of two chairs gave Max Luna III's "The Hurt We Embrace" a sense of domestic drama. Matt Shields held his own chair, while Amberlee Cantrell and Elizabeth Palmer vied for both his attention and the second chair. A compelling dancer, Shields slipped easily from triple turns to breath-holding balances and every time he extended his already long arms, he stretched two inches beyond what seemed possible.

Another potent performer, Sharon Marroquin, first appeared in solo "La Cuca," using the robotic breakdance of popping and locking to create a body struggling with itself, searching for identity. In the middle of solo "Hold on Tightly, but Not Too Tightly," Marroquin plowed through phrases with technical ease and purpose, though her mimetic portrayals of a flustered mother seemed unrelated to the dance.

In the cohesive and pleasantly unpredictable "Between Third Base and Home," Andrea Beckham used baseball slides and shrugging shoulders to create a comedic take on Mozart's familiar "Marriage of Figaro."

The program, which also includes work by Gina Patterson, Amberlee Cantrell and Melissa Villarreal, continues at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

— Clare Croft

Drama

BRUSH UP YOUR THEATER HISTORY

Amy Freed's "The Beard of Avon" tackles the conspiracy theory (or, depending on which side you take, academic debate) about whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays and sonnets attributed to him — or whether he even existed. Yet at its heart, and as performed by Different Stages, it's a tragical comedy about life and art with a heavy dose of theatrical satire.

Shakespeare, played with pure effusive, engaging joy by Scott Tesh, is a bit of a rube. He dodges chores to stare at the rain and spout doggerel with simple friends. But Shakespeare escapes to London where he ranks only high enough to Shake a spear on stage as Mark Antony's huntsman.

The real story is the developing relationship between Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and Will. Oxford, played here as a lisping, slip-lipped proto-Dorian Gray by Marc Balester, struggles with the censorship placed on him as a noble. He writes, but feels no joy in the secrecy, so he publishes through Will. As Will begins to develop on his own, writing "Richard III" based only on "I see a hunchback. You flesh it out from there," he chafes at being regarded as nothing more than a breathing nom de plume.

He criticizes one of Oxford's devices as an "allegory of rhetoric and nothing of nature." The same could describe Freed's play. While the cast did an admirable job of infusing the play with humanity, they can't escape its winking nods to theater in-jokes, in vogue literary theory, and what is essentially footnote comedy. You don't need to know Shakespeare to enjoy the performance, but it certainly helps.

("Beard" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, through April 28, with an additional performance 8 p.m. April 26, The Vortex, 2307 Manor Road, 478-5252, $10-$30.)

— Joey Seiler

Comedy

WE CAN'T HELP BUT WATCH

It's been a long time since I've seen the film version of "The Odd Couple." I'd forgotten how funny, light, and nonsensical the mismatched-roomate comedy was — and why it was turned into a sitcom.

I wonder sometimes why chestnuts like this with memorable film adaptations are so often remounted for the theater. Under the direction of Don Toner, the current Austin Playhouse production, no doubt, respects Neil Simon's comedy. A highly professional rendition, its only fault was a tendency to slow down for line stumbles when Simon intends every bit of dialogue to crackle as a punch line. Regardless, the entire cast stepped into their roles, embracing absurdity with aplomb.

David Stahl as the uptight Felix upped the ridiculous tone of the play early on, sighing, groaning and drawing out the comedic tension of potential suicide from the very beginning. Michael Stuart brought out the glazed-eyed life surfer in Oscar, though his early benign, feel-good approach to problems made his later rage hard to fathom. Bernadette Nason and Janet Hurley Kimlicko, synchronized in British kookiness, stole the small scene afforded them as the odd couple's upstairs neighbors. And Ben Wolfe, always making the most out of a side role, amiably lolled his way through policeman Murray's fat wife jokes.

At the end, though, it's still "The Odd Couple" — well done, but done so many times before (currently by Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane on Broadway). Felix and Oscar will continue to bicker, the Austin Playhouse will continue to be funny, and because, new or not, it's unavoidably enjoyable, we'll continue to watch.

("The Odd Couple" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays through April 28, The Austin Playhouse, 3601 South Congress Ave, 476-0084, www.austinplayhouse.com.)

— Joey Seiler