XL WEEKEND REVIEWS

'Take Me Out,' 'Ways to Get There,' University of Texas Dance, the New Music Co-op, the Nonsense Company, Plain White T's

Monday, April 02, 2007

Theater

'TAKE ME OUT' CLEARS THE BASES WITH SMARTS, SYMPATHY

With polish and panache, Zachary Scott Theatre hits a home run with its production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning comedy "Take Me Out."

Artistic director Dave Steakley finds the perfect balance of smarts, sympathy and humor for this tale about baseball. He is aided by a vivid ensemble of 11 actors who deftly personify the complex spectrum of modern professional athletes.

Greenberg's ambitious plot starts when Darren Lemming, a biracial god of a baseball player and the star of a team called the Empires, publicly announces — for seemingly no apparent reason — that he is gay. That sets off a complicated — and almost not credible — chain of events.

But if Greenberg's plot is full of potholes he makes up for it with a kind of verbal gymnastics that gives free and delightful reign to extended passages of stylistically clever dialogue about sexual and racial prejudice, celebrity versus personal identity and moral responsibility. Most of that gets pitched between Darren (Jody Reynard) and Kippy Sunderstrom (John Rochette), a shortstop with a poet's worldview and vocabulary. If Rochette occasionally lacked the gravity to match Kippy's more serious locker-room soliloquies, Reynard exuded the cool confidence (and almost unlikeableness) of a man who takes his godlike status as fact.

Zach Thompson turned in a compelling performance as the angry, ignorant, damaged Shane Mungitt, the racist hillbilly pitcher.

But it was Martin Burke who knocked it out of the ball park as the gay, socially challenged financial adviser Mason Marzac who's assigned to take over Lemming's portfolio. Burke's considerable comedic talents seemed to have taken on a new maturity. And he uses that to deliver a refreshingly nuanced portrait of middle-age nerd. Indeed, it's Mason's transformation from nerd to passionate, besotted baseball fan that forms the true heart of "Take Me Out."

Not surprisingly, there were titters from the audience Saturday night when the actors stripped naked to play the first of several shower scenes. But Greenberg's use of full frontal male nudity isn't so much about eroticism; instead it's a potent maneuver that demonstrates the discomfort that ripples through the all-male enclave when it's been rocked with questions of sexual identity.

Indeed, Greenberg obviously tries to rock as many conventions and prejudices as he can — maybe even too many for a three-act, two-and-a-half hour play. Thankfully, Steakley and the cast keep their eye on the ball and deliver. —Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

"Take Me Out" continues 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sunday

through May 6 at Zachary Scott Theatre, Kleberg Stage, South Lamar Boulevard and West Riverside Drive. $30-$38. 476-0541. www.zachscott.com.

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Modern dance

UT STUDENTS HAVE SPRING IN THEIR STEPS

Friday night in "Ways to Get There," University of Texas Dance Repertory Theatre's spring offering, feet ruled. Gracefully arched feet, twisting feet, playfully tapping feet and rapidly pitter-pattering feet that seemed to levitate dancers across the stage.

In a lively and impressive program of short pieces choreographed by professors Holly Williams, Yacov Sharir and Andrea Beckham along with graduate students Charlotte Griffin and Mary Chase, the student dancers deftly captured a wide range of modern dance moods, the best of which made the most of footwork.

Sharir tapped into graceful Asian gestures for the captivating "Parade," which featured dancers clad in breathtaking, delicately cut abstract white paper costumes that shimmied and fluttered like giant origami.

Griffin's "Corner" pulled a sly and quirky one on us. To jittery big band music, a solo dancer kept demurely to the side of the stage and methodically worked through slow abstract movements that were a few times interrupted by short bursts of jazzy moves.

Williams reprised her haunting "The End of Firpo in the World," a brilliant blend of storytelling and modern dance that premiered in 2001. Based on the short story of the same name by George Saunders, Williams' version used a narrator (Corey Jones) and a dancer (Yebel Gallegos) to tell the sad tale of a young boy's last bicycle ride. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, Williams's charming short film "Raw Luck" followed a young man tooling around Austin in a red convertible only to find a group of dancers energetically cutting it up on the sidewalk. Now, how lucky is that?

— Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

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Theater

SOMETIMES EXPERIMENTS WORK

There's a problem with a lot of experimental art. It's bad. It's often interesting without being as moving — or skilled — as traditional forms. Fortunately, the New Music Co-op's presentation of the Wisconsin-based Nonsense Company on Saturday was a welcome change.

The night opened with new local work. Steve Moore, Kirk Lynn and Slappy Pinchbottom (aka David Fruchter) showcased "3x5 Theatre," an interlude of three well-crafted narratives divided onto five index cards, shuffled and read flatly. Brandon Young brought "Curious Finger," a story about the literal meaning of "putting your finger on it." Brent Fariss showed off "The Magic Show," a noisy piece about an inept magician's emotional breakdown.

All three pieces seemed dedicated to the destruction of language. Words were muted, growled, drowned out or rendered as monotonously as possible. "3x5" managed to be engaging, but the musical numbers, while interesting, were also simply frustrating.

The anti-language theme continued in the Nonsense Company's "Great Hymn of Thanksgiving," a sound-based number produced almost entirely from the settings for a Thanksgiving dinner. The pot-banging climaxes drowned out military reports and poetry, forcing the audience to absorb the feel of the conversation and not its substance.

"Conversation Storm" was the peak of the evening. The dialogue was audible, but the disjointed conversation about torture commented at least as much on the frustrating, repetitive nature of such talks as actual ethics. Moving, funny, and provocative, the short play was theater at its best.

So here's to the New Music Co-op and promoting professional experimentation. — Joey Seiler

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Pop music

AN EXPLOSION OF LOVE

If there is a correlation between what bands the kids are into and successful musicians, the Plain White T's should be huge. You could tell it was time for pop-punk's TRL heat seekers to hit La Zona Rosa's stage Sunday by the sound of young girls screaming and swooning. From that moment on it was catchy sing-alongs, heartsick ballads and hand claps a plenty while the group played hits off their latest record, "Every Second Counts." Showing the band's loyalty to the love song, the group even pulled two engaged devotees on stage and serenaded them. The club's emotional thermometer was running at a level that would have been better suited for Valentine's Day.

Canada's Boys Night Out did their part in raising the temperature with emotional pop-punk tracks occasionally breaking into screams and metal guitar chugs such as "I Got Punched in the Nose for Sticking My Face in Other People's Business." Some of the credit also must go to the adeptly titled Lovedrug for their courtship of the crowd with piano-riddled alt rock and pristine, three-part harmonies.

But, of course, the baby-makin' love ballad of the night for a new generation was the Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah." It's just one of those songs that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up and could inspire even the coldest of hearts to melt. — Will Mills