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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > September > 15
Monday, September 15, 2008
Reports from Houston: Museums, theater district OK
Reports from various news agencies and anecdotal accounts reveal that Houston’s museums and downtown theater district have weathered Hurriance Ike with little damage.
News photos showed crews clearing tree limbs from streets in the theater district in downtown Houston, an area that suffered some damage to windows on highrises but otherwise appears to have escaped major damage.
Residents close to the Menil Collection reported trees and limbs down, but some a few blocks away from the museum never lost power during the storm. Power was restored to parts of the neighborhood surrounding the Menil Sunday afternoon.
Near Hermann Park, the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston reportedly suffered no damage beyond some downed limbs in its sculpture garden, but otherwise maintained power for all but four or five hours during the height of the storm. Ditto with the Contemporary Arts Center across the street — reports indicate that power went out only for a few hours.
The MFAH plans to re-open on Thursday. There is no word on whether the Museum District Day celebration scheduled for Saturday will take place as planned. The event includes free admission and special activities to 18 museums.
In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped an estimated 38 inches of rain in six days on Houston causing severe flooding in the theater district. The alley Theatre, the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Symphony lost millions of dollars worth of costumes, musical instruments, sheet music, archives and other material.
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Review: ‘Blackbird’ at Hyde Park Theatre
“Blackbird” may wind up being one of the most richly challenging plays for audiences this year.
Ray (Ken Webster) and Una (Xochitl Romero) meet and recount their relationship from 15 years ago, when he was in his 40s and she was 12. And that’s it.
There’s little action beyond their dialogue as they look for redemption and only as much plot progression as each audience member’s notion of how successful that journey is. There’s no time and no place beyond Ray’s generic office.
That limited frame, made even more claustrophobic by a low-hanging false ceiling, becomes a boiling kettle with no vent for the steam. Whenever catharsis, whether redemption, destruction, or sex, becomes a possibility, it’s quickly muted or counterbalanced by more tension.
Una ultimately fails to get the trial she never really experienced. In a long monologue recounting their last tryst, you expect and almost need a climax — rage, something, anything! — but even the worst details are recounted quietly, though not always calmly, by Romero. Ray doesn’t embrace his nature with playful superiority like Humbert Humbert; he argues against it, playing the role of a good man — a loving man — who made a bad choice. And Webster, with his mournful, reserved nature, is convincing.
It’s a feat to make that feel worthwhile while unsatisfying, but Romero and Webster do. “Blackbird” leaves the audience as the characters are left: with — instead of resolution — just experience.
(“Blackbird” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Oct. 11 at Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd Street. $16-$18. 479-PLAY, www.hydeparktheatre.org.)
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater critic and writer.)
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