XL weekend reviews

Rubber Repertory, The Marleys, 'Trash Anthems,' Old Haunts, The Miró Quartet

Monday, May 07, 2007

Theater: 'A Thought in Three Parts'

Wallace Shawn's "A Thought in Three Parts" is an absurd, over-the-top romp.

And more than 30 years after the play caused a ruckus with its London premiere, its U.S. premiere — by Austin's Rubber Repertory, staged at the Vortex Theater — is still shocking.

Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer scored when they got Shawn's permission to stage his triptych of unconnected short plays. Though Shawn — who is almost as well-known for his character actor career ("The Princess Bride," "Manhattan,") as he is for his typically absurd and edgy plays — wrote the play in the early 1970s, it was deemed too risqué and never had a proper U.S. production. The London premiere in 1977 garnered such complaints that it spurred the House of Lords to question government funding of the arts.

To be sure, the sex-and-nudity quotient of "A Thought" is high, even by Austin's liberal standards. But thanks to clever staging by director Carlos Trevino, in conjunction with Rubber Rep's Hislope and Meyer, the explicit sex amongfour bored residents of a youth hostel almost immediately turns to slapstick. Indeed, there's nothing sensuous, or even sexy, about all the, well, sex that takes place on stage. Instead, Trevino smartly plays it to its absurd, and even silly, extreme. And that had the audience Saturday night laughing and shrieking hysterically.

Congrats to Hislope and Meyer along with Rosaruby Glaberman and Kelli Bland for deftly handling what has to be one of the greatest acting challenges on Austin stages this season.

What is far more unnerving are the bursts of anger that explode when least expected. Shawn tries to push buttons while pushing his exploration of human behavior to the extreme. Just how far away is sex from hate and violence, he seems to ask us.

However, all that energy and action takes place in the second of the three short plays that make up "A Thought." And as potent as it is, what frames it is far less interesting. The introductory glimpse into a couple's stalemate over intimacy ends up being tiresome and predictable. An ending monologue by a fantastical character called Mr. Fabulous, thoughcleverly acted by David Yeakle, lacks potency and relevance.

Still, kudos to Rubber Repertory and Trevino for resurrecting "A Thought in Three Parts" and making what is a far less than perfect play into something to see. —Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

("A Thought in Three Parts" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through May 26 at the Vortex Theatre, 2307 Manor Road. $10-$25, 478-5282. www.rubberrep.org. No one under 18 admitted.)

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Theater: 'Trash Anthems'

One of our most consistently strong playwrights, Dan Dietz, is moving away to bigger and better things. His latest collection of short plays is almost good enough to wish him the bad luck of having to stay stuck here with us.

In Shrewd Productions' "Trash Anthems," the audience gets seven shorts from Dietz, ranging from a dark farce about three suicides to the story of a grave diggerlooking for Superman. The evening's only problem is that it's just too short to wrap up Dietz's run in Austin.

Two bits stand out as highlights, though. In "Trash Anthem" Andrea Skola is a bereaved murderer sorting out her late husband's affair through a screaming match with empty boots and the disembodied voice of Tom Coiner. When the lights come up on Skola singing to herself and grimly pounding her shovel on the stage, it seems like modern drama at its lowest. But Dietz quickly — irreverently considering the solemn start — moves to a black comedy that is both excruciatingly hilarious and emotionally engaging.In "A Bone Close to My Brain," Dietz himself takes over the stage as a man resigned to letting his emotionally troubled brother remove his tooth as a twisted sort of magi's gift. Illustrating his thought process on a sketch pad, Dietz draws the audience in to sympathize with both brothers.

Last hurrahs — and nights at the theater — don't get much better. — Joey Seiler

("Trash Anthems" continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 26 at the Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. $10-$15. 479-7529, www.hydeparktheatre.org.)

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Music: The Old Haunts, Strange Boys, Finally Punk, Follow that Bird

There was something wonderfully 1992-ish about Thursday night's show at Beerland. Back then, the indie rock scene in Olympia, Wash. — embodied by the (often willfully) amateurish punk rock bands on labels such as K Records and Kill Rock Stars — exerted a powerful hold on the underground's imagination. Olympia seemed like a mythical place, where scrappy punk bands grew out of the ground (or, rather, out of the ultra-liberal Evergreen State College) blending primitive rock, identity politics and a chaotic sense of fun.

Openers Follow that Bird have been accused of really flagrant Olympia worship, specifically the sound of now-defunct Northwestern rockers Sleater-Kinney. To be fair, the demos on their MySpace page are a bit on the nose, but they're a young band (around about two years, nobody old enough to drink). The Austin band exerts a charm all its own, and if they keep writing burners like the noisy rocker they opened with, they should find their own sound any minute now.

Finally Punk also seemed out of the Northwestern cuddle-punk tradition — four girls playing spunky guitar rock, trading instruments with every tune. Stephanie Chan, Veronica Ortuño, Erin Budd and Elizabeth Skadden yammer and prance in equal measure, a funny, hyper take on do-it-youself indie blurt.

The Strange Boys are another animal, old-school R&B so precise in their re-creation of a mid-'60s vibe and whine that you expect them to play a set in Antonioni's "Blow-Up" or something. (That's a Kinks joke, for the folks who aren't complete rock dorks.) Singer/guitarist Ryan Sambol sings with perfect teenage snottiness, his sleepy-eyed gaze and stoner-whine one of the finest riffs on "sullen" since "12x5"-era Jagger. No wonder they backed up R&B oddball Andre Williams a few weeks back.

Headliners the Old Haunts are an actual Olympia band, even featuring former Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail. Theirs was a strange brew of backwoods garage punk and the sort of frantic singing/belting that the Wipers' Greg Sage turned into a Northwestern icon for the Haunts' generation. That's how rock 'n' roll works, for both underground veterans and the new crop of kids — you worship something from afar, try to rip it off and accidentally make it your own. —Joe Gross

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Music: The Marleys and K'naan

Understand this — the Marleys are not ordinary human beings like you and me. Born into a lineage revered in many parts of the globe as divine royalty, brothers Stephen and Damian brought a sense of ceremony last week to their sold-out Antone's performance. And it began well before they even hit the stage, bringing with them, as always, a rasta cat to wave the Jamaican flag continuously throughout their performance.

The Marleys represent.

They carry with them father Bob's mission as a transcontinental cultural ambassador, framing the struggles of the Third World in the language of common humanity to bring a "One Love" consciousness to the West. On Thursday, the voice of that struggle was most clearly articulated by the "young lion from Africa" whom the Marleys hand-picked to open the show: the Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan. With a slight figure, an affable smile and a humble demeanor, the 28-year-old musician played with a minimal backing ensemble anchored by African drums. But with his presence, charisma and clear sense of purpose, K'naan had the audience fully engaged within minutes of taking the stage.

The message he carried was both of brutality and hope. Blending the pulse of the drum with East Coast hip-hop bravado on "Hardcore," he painted a bleak scene from his childhood full of machine-gun-toting children, corrupt politicians and African-style gangland rule. When he brought it to a cadence with the stinger — "If I rhymed about home and got descriptive/ I'd make Fifty Cent look like Limp Bizkit" — many in the house screamed along. But the most powerful moments of the performance came when the earnest performer actively enlisted the help of the audience. Breaking it down a capella, he taught the willing crowd the chorus "When I get older/ I will be stronger/ they'll call me freedom/ just like a waving flag," then unwound a harrowing tale of childhood horrors and a journey to America fraught with struggle and pain. Each time the chorus repeated, the audience's voices grew stronger alongside K'naan's, reinforcing an overwhelming sense of triumph that actually moved me to tears.

The tone for the show was set and the intensity only increased as the Marleys hit the stage. Stephen, supporting his new album, "Mind Control," was billed as the show's headliner, but he actually ended up opening for his brother Damian, aka Jr. Gong, the larger superstar of the family. Stephen looks and sounds eerily like his father, and half of his set comprised new-school renditions of Bob Marley standards. Nobody seemed to mind at all, but it was when Jr. Gong burst onto the stage with a raucous version of "All Night" that the entire house went crazy. With a hard-driving dancehall-oriented edge, Damian, the youngest male Marley child, is the one who puts a ferocious new spin on the family sound, and the crowd at Antone's couldn't get enough of him. From the contemplative anti-cocaine joint "Pimper's Paradise" to an explosive version of the 2005 hit "Welcome To Jamrock," Jr. Gong put it down hard, and at the end of the show the crowd screamed for a full five minutes until assured of an encore (which ended up lasting for a good 15 minutes).This show was ultra-super-sold out, with countless music lovers scouring the street outside Antone's for available tickets before the show. It was also easily one of the top five shows I've seen in my life. I hope next time, the promoters will have the good sense to book a larger venue. I left the venue feeling both musically and spiritually revitalized. And man, it felt good. — Deborah Sengupta

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Music: the Miró String Quartet

Several genuinely miraculous moments occurred during Friday's concert by the Miró String Quartet, and they involved silence. I'm not being cute or sarcastic. In the course of the Slow Movement by Anton Webern — an early work in Eflat — and the slow movement of Antonín Dvorák's String Quartet No. 14, the music faded slowly to silence, we waited, and the next portion of material emerged from nothing.

I can't recall another occasion when a pause was as much a part of the music as the notes surrounding it. The players savored the silence without testing the listeners' patience, and the audience in Bates Recital Hall clearly enjoyed the quiet just as much. The pauses and the music came from deep within the musicians' beings and were wonderfully expressive.

This ensemble generally is the most successful with late-19thcentury and 20thcentury works. Thus the Webern was the best reading of the evening, played with great sensitivity and richly colored tone. The Dvorák on the whole was nearly as good, with intensity and a nearly orchestral fullness of texture.

The older compositions — Schubert's Quartet Movement in C minor and Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga's Quartet No. 3, both composed in the 1820s — suffered from excessively fast tempos and a biting, bright tone. It all went by too quickly, without any opportunities for contemplation.

By way of experiment, Joshua Gindele and his cello were on a resonance box, with his colleagues standing throughout the concert. Both of these ideas improved the performance. — David Mead