Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > October
October 2008
Sophisticated — and cool — chamber music
Fun, virtuosic, full of flare — Michelle Schumann, pianist and Austin Chamber Music Center artistic director, is arguably the best classical music program creator in this town.
Cleverly keyed to this weekend’s Halloween and Dia de los Muertos celebrations, Schumann is presenting “Mmmmm…. Creepalicious!” a decidedly spook-inspired concert Saturday night at the Rollins Studio Theatre in the Long Center.
Schumann will be joined by violinist Annette Barbara-Vogel and cellist Joel Becktell for Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D a.ka. “Ghost.”
Then it’s George Crumb’s evocative and haunting Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for Three Masked Players. Inspired by the singing of the humpback whale, Vox Balanae calls for the musicians to wear masks and to perform under a blue light.
Frankly, that sounds just cool. And there needs to be more cool like this to the classical music in this town.
Shostakovich’s Trio in E minor finishes the program, the composer’s haunting and veiled tribute to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust — a fitting way and thoughtful to mark the holiday.
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Click here for more information.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
‘Recession Special’ — $7 tix to ‘Unbeaten’
No recession is going to stop the shows at Salvage Vanguard Theater.
The Salvage folks are offering $7 tix to this Saturday’s showing of “Unbeaten,” Shannon McCormick’s one-man quasi-improvisation about professional football. Graham Reynolds provided the original score to the 75-minute piece.
You can read more about ‘Unbeaten’ here.http://www.austin360.com/arts/content/arts/stories/xl/2008/10/1023xlarts.html
And if you get there early, there’s a pre-show tailgate party with beer and munchies at 7 p.m. Saturday, before the 8 p.m. show.
SCORE!!!!!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
‘Dug Up’ held over to Nov. 8
“There’s no place like alone, when all you have is bones…”
The latest from Austin playwright Cyndi Williams, ‘Dug Up,’ is proving popular at Austin Playhouse. It’s been extended for an extra week, with shows now running through Nov. 8.
‘Dug Up’ is a gothic ghost story of sorts set in Louisiana bayou country. Something dark happened at the Rutherford estate and it unravels through the stories of three off-kilter characters including Rutherford siblings Lissa and Dewitt, both of whom have a strange habit of talking to people and animals who aren’t there. When a storm threatens the ancestral home, it threatens the carefully made-up world of the Lissa and Dewitt.
‘Dug Up’ plays 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 8. Tix are $20 (students half-price). See the Austin Playhouse Web site for more info.
Jessie Tilton as Lissa and Jude Hickey as Dewitt.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Not going to downtown on Halloween?
Not keen on battling the crowds downtown on Halloween night?
Whether you consider “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” to be classic camp or a wickedly chilling melodrama, the 1962 psychological horror film” exhibits remarkably terrifying performances by both Bette Davis in her Oscar-nominated role as Jane and her longtime rival Joan Crawford as her sister Blanche, paralyzed and held captive by Jane.
PKWproductions returns to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on Friday, Oct. 31, for another of its popular “Music and a Movie” events.
PKWproductions director P.Kellach Waddle will present pre-movie and intermission live concerts that will include a cross section of famous movie music and the premiere of new pieces written for this event by Waddle.
Featured selections of the pre-movie concert include two new works by Waddle inspired by “Baby Jane.” And both bear wryly funny titles — “The Air in Blanche and Jane’s House is Filled With Alcoholic Psychotic Regret”: Evocation-Bagatelle for Violin And Bass and “A Decaying Mansion”: Tone Poem for Two Basses.
Boo! Ha-ha!
Also on the bill is a take on Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” or the theme from “The Exorcist.”
The intermission concert features two of Bernard Hermann’s most familiar scores — “The Prelude” (or the stabbing music from “Psycho”) and the haunting waltz from “Vertigo.”
11:15 p.m. Friday.
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, 1120 South Lamar Blvd.
Tickets are $14 at the Alamo Web site
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Rude Mechs bag NEA grant
Congrats to playwright Kirk Lynn of the Rude Mechs who just bagged a $20,000 grant from the NEA’s Distinguished New Play Development Project.
The monies Lynn and the Rudes will receive will go for the early development of Lynn’s latest script, “I’ve Never Been So Happy.” The project is one of only five in the nation to receive the NEA New Play Development grant.
With music and lyrics by composer Peter Stopschinski, “I’ve Never Been So Happy” is sort of a carnival of the great American West and an exploration of the wild frontier of parenthood. “A single mother ties her son to the last mountain lion in Texas to toughen him up,” reads the Rudes’ description. “A single father tries to keep his daughter from leaving home.”
The Rudes will present “I’ve Never Been So Happy” in a serial workshop format with the father/daughter story, Scenes 2, 4 and 7, will be presented in Dec. 4-13 at the Off Center. The mother/son story, Scenes 1, 3, and 6, will be presented in April. And then all of the scenes plus the climactic last scene will be presented at the world premiere in September 2009.
See the Rude Mechs Web site for more info.
Get to work Kirk!
Playwright Kirk Lynn
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Review: Round Rock Symphony Orchestra
If it wasn’t exactly auspicious, the debut of the new Round Rock Symphony Saturday night at First United Methodist Church was at least a commendable effort that resulted in an able though not perfect production.
About 300 turned out to hear the new non-profit 40-member professional orchestra — Round Rock’s first — give a concert of lush, pretty Romantic-era symphonic pieces.
Led by music director Silas Nathaniel Huff (also one of the organization’s founders), the orchestra started Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides with a certain timidity, the horns entering the first few times with a nervous wobble in pitch. Eventually, the ensemble got its footing, but still never seemed to quite settle into the piece with full confidence and conviction.
The violins struggled with the quieter sections of Wagner’s gentle Siegfried Idyll, not always staying on pitch. A relatively intimate piece compared to the rest of Wagner’s oeuvre, the Idyll is a spaciously romantic musical poem of sorts, Waqner’s symphonic birthday greeting to his wife. But — perhaps in an effort to entertain? — the Round Rock Symphony’s presentation was accompanied by a slide show featuring the work of wedding photographer, Roy Allen Stagg, an orchestra donor. Rather than add artistically to the understanding and experience of Wagner’s music, the slide show proved a bad distraction and just an advertisement for Stagg.
The orchestra re-couped its dignity with Schubert’s Italian Overture giving it a lively if not fully spirited rendition, though its hard to say if that was because of timidity or a certain directorial passivity.
After intermission, the orchestra was joined by the Round Rock Rock Community Choir, pianist Brett Bachus and six vocal soloists for Beethoven’s sweeping Choral Fantasy. Bachus brought on an invigorating flare, the first real fire of the evening, as did the vocal soloists (sopranos Elizabeth Schwab-Fike and Amy Mathews-Muttwill, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Petillot, tenor Scott Blackshire, baritone Bryan Bolzenthal and bass C. Houston Hill) who performed with confidence and clarity. And that energy made for a finale that had some flourish and flare.
While certainly commodious, the First United Methodist Church has perfectly decent though not super sharp and dynamic acoustics. The result — at times, the orchestra sounded ever so slightly muffled.
It’s admirable that those behind the Round Rock Symphony have the desire to start a new professional orchestra. Certainly, it bodes well for the entire greater metropolitan area that new professional arts groups find the means — or at least the interest — to launch.
The next step? Amping up the gusto and finesse.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
2007-2008 B. Iden Payne Award winners
Austin Circle of Theaters awarded its annual B. Iden Payne Awards at a ceremony Sunday night at the Long Center. The Payne Awards commend outstanding work in comedy, drama, musical theater, youth theater and production design.
COMEDIES
Outstanding Production of a Comedy ‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ (Hyde Park Theatre)
Outstanding Director of a Comedy Ken Webster (‘Dog Sees God’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Matthew Radford (‘Benedick,’ ‘Much Ado About Nothing’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Katherine Catmull (Winnie, ‘Happy Days’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Comedy Ben Wolfe (Michael, ‘Featuring Loretta’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Comedy Bernadette Nason (Madame Arcati, ‘Blithe Spirit’)
DRAMAS
Outstanding Production of a Drama ‘Doubt’ (Zachary Scott Theatre Center)
Outstanding Director of a Drama Shawn Sides (‘The Method Gun’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama David Stahl (‘Henry Drummond,’ ‘Inherit the Wind’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Kathleen Fletcher (Catherine Holly, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama Tyler Jones (Happy, ‘Death of a Salesman’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Drama Rachel McGinnis (Zubaida Ula et al., ‘The Laramie Project’)
PLAYS FOR YOUTH
Outstanding Production of a Play for Youth ‘The Red Balloon’ (Tongue and Groove Theatre)
Outstanding Director of a Play for Youth Andreá S. Smith (‘Wiley and the Hairy Man’)
Outstanding Actor in a Play for Youth Mark Stewart (the Boy, ‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Actress in a Play for Youth Kristin Bennett (Mammy, ‘Wiley and the Hairy Man’)
MUSIC THEATER
Outstanding Production of Music Theater ‘Troades: The Legend of the Women of Troy’ (VORTEX Repertory Company)
Outstanding Director of Music Theater Bonnie Cullum (‘Troades’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in Music Theater Cedric Neal (Sportin’ Life, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in Music Theater Marva Hicks (Bess, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in Music Theater James La Rosa (Abraham, ‘Altar Boyz’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in Music Theater Janis Stinson (Maria, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
TECHNICAL
Outstanding Set Design Arthur Adair (‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Lighting Design Jason Amato (‘Troades’)
Outstanding Sound Design Jeffrey Alan Jones (‘Death and the King’s Horseman’)
Outstanding Costume Design Derek Whitener (‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Music Director Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Choreographer Robin Lewis (‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Original Script Zell Miller, III (‘Radio Silence’)
Outstanding Original Score Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)
SPECIAL
Outstanding Cast Performance ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenan’e (Renaissance Austin Theatre and VORTEX Repertory Company)
Outstanding Ensemble Performance Content Love Knowles, Betsy McCann, Kira Parra, Emerald Mystiek, Ashley Edwards, Leigh Shaw and Elizabeth Rast (Chorus, ‘Troades’)
Outstanding Youth Performance David Bologna (Mickey, ‘Golly Gee Whiz!’)
SPECIAL CERTIFICATE Special Certificate for Outstanding Achievement in Animation to Leah Sharpe for ‘The Red Balloon’
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: ‘Hansel and Gretel’
Composer Engelbert Humperdinck (not the pop star Engelbert Humperdinck) and his librettist explicitly designed their opera ‘Hansel and Gretel’ for an audience with children. Like a brand clearly carved into all the gates of a ranch, a musical proverb is sung near the start and at the very end of the piece like an inscription: When we’re in trouble, God helps us.
It’s one thing to be in the forest at night and afraid of the dark. Hansel and Gretel are helped through the night by 14 guardian angels, a sandman, and a dew fairy (I admit, it’s a curious mixture of Christian and pagan beings, but they’re all on our side). In the morning light the children face real evil, a witch who bakes children into gingerbread. Now it’s their wits that save them.
So what happens when Richard M. Isackes, director and designer of the production in performance by the University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center, systematically inverts the entire moral order of the world in which this piece takes place? The various ministering spirits become bag ladies, complete with a pair of grocery carts, and the same bag ladies return in the last scene as the gingerbread children. Economic, yet illogical. The witch is visible overseeing the action at the opening and — explain this, please — at the end, AFTER she has been baked in her own oven. (That means that evil wins in the end, doesn’t it?)
As a visual experience, this forest is some sort of dystopia, a collection of objects, a few of which can be seen to serve a purpose in the story. But light and dark are really important in this story, and nightfall comes only AFTER the sandman has put the children to sleep.
Unlike other elements of this production, the musical elements are quite good. Let the record show that the Witch was portrayed by a mezzo-soprano, obeying the composer and contrary to the vile American habit of using a tenor. George Garrett Keast, conducting his third production at UT and a kind of principal guest conductor, draws a rich, full tone from the orchestra. Particularly on Friday evening, he was able to pull back into line players and singers who fell victim to opening night jitters.
David Mead is a classical music freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
‘Hansel and Gretel’ continues at 8 p.m Oct. 31 and 7 p.m. Nov. 2 at McCullough Theatre, 23rd St. and Robert Dedman Dr., UT campus. $20 general public; $17 UT faculty/staff and seniors; $10 students. www.utpac.org
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: Ballet Austin and ‘Episodes’
Ballet Austin has a knack for choosing good bedfellows. Working with Washington company the Suzanne Farrell Ballet elevated the company’s dancers and brought a rarely seen, but important dance work to Austin audiences. The company’s season opener Friday at the Long Center featured George Balanchine’s 1959 ballet “Episodes,” reconstructed in partnership with Farrell and her company. The dancing, like the ballet, was clean, clear, and smart. (The season opening program also included Artistic Director Stephen Mills’ premiere “Liminal Glam” and Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs.”)
Balanchine built “Episodes” from intelligent couplings, too. Originally the ballet had two sections: the former choreographed by modern dance matriarch Martha Graham and the latter by Balanchine.
Musically Balanchine paired the sparse dissonance of Anton Webern with the lush baroque of Bach, arranged by Webern, and played this weekend by the Austin Symphony. Graham’s portions of “Episodes” lasted only two years, but what remained — Balanchine plus Webern and Bach — feels like a revelation, a palate cleanser of ballet.
“Episodes” featured dancers from Ballet Austin and Farrell. Ballet Austin’s Ashley Lynn and Paul Michael Bloodgood were excellent in the ballet’s first section, “Symphony,” which turns an investigative eye to the body’s joints, exploring how limbs move. The leads, accompanied by a corps that included Austin’s Orlando Canova and Christopher Swaim, suddenly break their legs at the knee or the ankle. Then Lynn and Bloodgood move on to the hips; he holds her as she swings her legs in ever-widening circles. Individual bodies break into pieces and then reform into coherent wholes as Webern’s equally segmented “Symphony Op. 21” spits notes into the air. Knees bend. A triangle tinkles. They connect.
If “Symphony” assembled the body, “Episodes” second movement assembled a couple. Austin’s Allisyn Paino and Farrell’s Momchil Mladenov play with moving together, rarely to graceful effect. Paino has had so many comedic roles in various Ballet Austin programs, and she is funny here, too. But it is not a character that makes her funny, but rather the placement of her body against Mladenov. The dancers take full advantage of the choreography’s intended awkwardness, coming together like the pieces of an old jigsaw puzzle. They fit together, but not so cleanly that the lines between them disappear. “Episodes” final sections, “Concerto” and “Ricercata,” feature Farrell dancers as the leads, though some of the most beautiful work comes from “Ricercata’s” corps, which included many Ballet Austin dancers.
Six women stand frozen for the ballet’s beginning, then start a series of arm and leg movements, visually and kinetically layered over the rest of the corps, who are on their knees, extending and circling their arms and legs. Bach’s music buoys Balanchine’s simplicity, and “Episodes” threatens a pleasurable overflow. All the pieces of Webern and Balanchine get added together, the precision of arms and legs in unison or in canon suddenly offer emotional sustenance.
Clare Croft is a dance freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Long Center, Reviews
Review: Alturas Duo
Austin Chamber Music Center’s annual free Hispanic Heritage Month Concert proved to be a jewel Friday Night at Mexic-Arte Museum. The Alturas Duo delighted and enchanted with a program that artfully combined the traditional Andean music that’s the Duo’s speciality, modern compositions by Chilean composers and also some refreshing new arrangements of Baroque selections as well as an impressive new composition.
The natural affability of violist Carlos Boltes and guitarist Scott Hill set a friendly and spirited tone to the concert, presented in one gallery of Mexic-Arte Museum. The pair did what audiences expect today in an intimate and informal chamber music setting: engage with brief and lively explanations and stories about their repertoire, their journey as musicians, the Andean charangos Boltes plays in addition to the viola.
Of course, their expressive virtuosity also resulted in sparkling concert.
With a flourish Boltes and Hill set the tone with a lively Andean folk songs. Then, flexing their artistic range, the duo presented Hill’s arrangement of Telemann’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra that re-imagined for viola and guitar. Not only did the Hill’s arrangement breath fresh air into Telemann’s sometimes busy Baroque stylings, it also made a salient musicological point: there’s much in common between Andean folk music as its known today and the Baroque influences brought by the European conquerors of the Americas.
“Suite Atacama” proved a highlight of the evening. A thoughtful arrangement of pieces by modern Chilean composers artfully arranged to be a four-movement musical homage to the Chile’s stark and starkly beautiful Atacama Desert. An achingly beautiful prelude led to a festive song then to a sorrowful lament and finally softly joyful ending. Boltes switched deftly between viola and various charangos (small Andean guitars). “Suite Atacama” was an trenchant and moving musical journey through the desert.
“No mas muertes” was the concert’s undeniable centerpiece. Commissioned by the Alturas Duo, the piece for viola, guitar and narrator by composer David MacBride took the bestseller “The Devil’s Highway”, Luis Alberto Urrea account of the Mexican immigrants who died in the Arizona desert as the tried to cross the border. MacBride was on hand to introduce the piece and play the part of the narrator. MacBride’s music made for a very impressionistic soundscape of a harrowing and tragic journey through the desert, with the tonal tension building and getting increasingly more angular. If the spoken narration resorted to the most gruesome passages from Urrea’s account, it only overshadowed whatever more nuanced expression the music conveyed.
Taken as whole, though, Alturas Duo’s concert made for an intimate and spirited little tour-de-force — full of resonant moments and many charms.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Zach Theatre receives $2 million towards capital campaign
$1 million each from Austin arts philanthropists James Armstrong and Bill Dickson.
Armstrong¹s and Dickson¹s gifts of $1 million each will help fund the organization’s $25 million capital campaign to expand its three-building campus at West Riverside Drive and South Lamar Boulevard. Zach also has $10 million from 2006 city bond election. Zach is situated on city property. The organization still has about $1.2 million left from a 1985 bond package.
The expansion plans call for a new 500-seat theater building, to be called Armstrong Family Auditorium, that will serve as Zach’s main stage.
In honor of Dickson’s gift, the building housing Zach’s current administrative complex and Whisenhunt Stage will be remodeled and named the Binning-Dickson Education Center.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Gallery openings: Two not to miss
Saturday evening there’s two exhibit openings not to miss. And with both
Though it’s cumbersome title sounds a bit too much like a graduate research paper — “Future Prologues: The Compression of Post-Pop Narratives into Non-Space and Pre-Time” — the new show at Creative Research Laboratory looks nifty and intriguing.
Featured is the work of the Totally Wreck Institute, and eight-member artist collective formed here in Austin in 2003. The group uses performance, video, photography, and new media to create post-apocalyptic fantasies and explore the limits of our technological reality.
Curated by CRL Director Jade Walker and Risa Puleo, assistant curator of American and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum, the exhibit opens Saturday with a reception from 6 to 9. Expect live performances at the opening. See here for info on the CRL.
In his new solo show at Art Palace, Austin artist Peat Duggins continues his years-long exploration of Hickory Ridge, the fictitious modern suburban community in the American West that has been the focus of his work for the past five years. Duggins has created beguiling and wonderous installations that chart the Hickory Ridge epic, a thoughtful metaphor on the particularly American penchant for conquering the Great West and making up its history. Now, Duggins creates eight large-scale woven tapestries that form a complete cycle of nature and culture. Or is that cultural destruction?
We say the early installation shots look utterly fascinating and potent. The opening is Saturday, 8 to 11 p.m. See the Art Palace Web site for more info.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Round Rock gets a professional symphony orchestra
Round Rock? A professional symphony orchestra?
We know, we know. We hear the slights and chuckles.
But an energetic bunch is busy staking its flag in Austin’s suburbs. Next week, the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra will play its first concert.
The orchestra is led by Silas Nathaniel Huff, a 35-year-old native Texan and graduate of Texas State University. Huff currently lives in New York where he leads the indie Astoria Symphony and is the producer of the opera studio program at Manhattan School of Music. He also pursues his own career as a guest conductor.
Huff said he’s been looking for ways to connect back to Central Texas and to start a new symphony. Round Rock, with its growing population eager to develop its own civie identity and its proximity to Austin and its talent pool, seemed a likely spot.
“I’m floored by the talent here, absolutely bowled over by how many talented musicians call [this region] home” Huff said.
Huff reports that some 160 signed up for auditions for the roughly 40 spots in the orchestra.
University of Texas graduate student Shana Bey has been appointed concertmistress. Bey says she’s excited about the professional gig. “Having another professional orchestra here gives us musicians more opportunities,” she says.
For its first concert on Oct. 25, the orchestra will perform Felix Mendelssohn’s “Fingal’s Cave,” Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” Franz Schubert’s “Italian Overture in C” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy” with the Round Rock Community Choir.
Soloists for the Choral Fantasy are:
Brett Bachus, piano
Elizabeth H. Schwab-Fike, soprano
Amy Mathews-Muttwill, soprano
Elizabeth Petillot, mezzo-soprano
Scott Blackshire, tenor
Bryan Bolzenthal, barotone
C. Houtson Hill, bass
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
FREE THEATER — and more!
Once again, Austin Circle of Theaters is participating in the Free Night of Theater program, a national effort organized to get you — a member of the public — to try out a new theater or just get to a show.
Free Night of Theater is project of the non-profit Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for America’s not-for-profit professional theaters. Started in 2005, the Free Night program now extends to beyond one night to several weeks.
Here’s how it works:
Between now and Nov. 2, you’ve got all kinds of options to check out some theater for free. Just go to this Web site and find an available show.
But wait — there’s more arts and cultural cheerleading happening right now.
Austin Circle of Theaters is also collaborating with CreateAustin and the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division to salute National Arts and Humanities Month with “Get Your Art On” , a two week public awareness campaign to celebrate the arts, culture and all kinds of creativity.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Long Center appoints temporary interim director
With Long Center executive director Cliff Redd on doctor’s orders to take several weeks to rest after suffering a minor heart attack last week, the Long Center’s board of director has has named Carolyn Gallagher, Long Center board chair, to act as interim executive director.
Gallagher will serve as interim executive director until Paul Beutel, who was named the Long Center’s managing director, can begin his job on Nov. 9. Beutel, who was appointed in August, was the longtime director of the Paramount Theater. He is currently wrapping up his position as managing director at Houston’s Miller Outdoor Theatre.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
BAM Festival review: ‘Viva La Diva’
Pro Arts Collective spread its reach far with this year’s Black Arts Movement Festival. And Sunday’s “Viva La Diva” concert at Huston Tillotson University proved that. The impressive recital by three up-and-coming opera singers broadened BAM Festival’s reach into the classical fine arts.
Mezzo-soprano Lori Brown-Mirabal, soprano Othalie Graham and contralto Judith Skinner drew progressively more rousing shouts of ‘bravo’ from the audience Sunday as they presented a very tight and polished program of well-known arias and songs.
The trio started the program together with a lovely interpretation of the traditional gospel hymn “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” before rotating through their individual repertoire.
Skinner stood out, making a sure-fire first impression with the dramatic “Re dell Abisso” from Verdi’s “Ballo in maschera,” her voice rich and mellifluous. She later returned for a sensitive rendition of “The Feeling We Once Had” from the 1970s musical “The Wiz” only to later finish the first half of the program with stirring and almost fierce-sounding a capella version of the hymn “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”
In the program’s second half, Skinner again demonstrated her ample artistic range with another Verdi aria (“Stride la Vampa” from “Il Travatore”) followed later by an utterly scintillating presentation of “Afraid, Am I Afraid” from Menotti’s histrionic 1946 opera “The Medium.”
Brown-Mirabal garnered the first of the afternoon’s calls of “bravo” with her graceful yet spirited handling of the “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen.” Later, Brown-Mirabal impressed again with a nuanced “My Man’s Gone” from “Porgy and Bess,” deftly handling the song’s jazzy dramatics.
Graham impressed with her sheer volume, if not always the control of tone, especially on “Dich tuere halle” Wagner’s “Tannhauser” and again on ‘in Questa Reggia” from Puccini’s “Turandot.”
As they began, the trio finished together, this time with a heartfelt and humorous version of “Scandalize My Name” that even allowed accompanist Eldon Little to get on the spirited call-and-response.
The audience demanded an encore from the singers. But unfortunately it seems planning didn’t permit for that. Still, it was clear sign that Pro Arts inclusion of opera and classical music struck a high note with their audience.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: ‘Casket of Passing Fancy’
You know you’re in for something different when you’re handed a legal release form along with your program, and Rubber Repertory’s “The Casket of Passing Fancy” is definitely that.
As you walk into the Blue Theatre, you’re funneled into a tight, closed space. Set designer Anne Marie Gordon has turned a small fraction of the theater into a parlor that, with its arm chairs, tables and board games, would feel homey if you hadn’t just promised not to hold your hosts responsible for physical or emotional damages. The back walls, filled with files and plastic tubs of props, holds out the promise for even more variety.
The premise of the event is that the Duchess, played by Jennifer Underwood, will offer the audience a series of opportunities, drawn as cards from her casket. Each audience member will choose one. Once you’ve chosen your offer, it’s fulfilled, and you leave the theater. The offer will never be made again. Not only is each performance guaranteed to be different, each viewer’s experience is as well.
The tone is set consistently, though, by an opening song from the Duchess’ servants, rotating through an open window with blankly cheerful faces, and a monologue from Underwood herself on the nature of pleasure. “I do everything in my power to make them happy,” she says of those she meets, “and yet…. And yet.”
That seems to be the underlying theme of “Casket.” A buffet of choices await you, each offering a chance at happiness or at least passing fancy, but you choose only once. And your choice may not always live up to expectations — of course sometimes it exceeds them.
A notion of fleeting fancy carries a bittersweet tone, and Underwood exemplifies it. When the offer to become her fourth husband — or first wife — came and went with no one jumping at the chance, the Duchess merely sighed, lingered with her card in the air, and tossed it into the recycling pile. When a member of the audience chose to see indoor fireworks, an experience that was shared with the rest of us, Underwood beamed gleefulness.
The options carry on like that, ranging from mundane to spicy to the absurdly bizarre to the unavoidably poignant. The choice to watch a “daring display of love and invulnerability” gives off the sense that you’re living in a fairy tale told by Jonathan Safran Foer, all piquance and heartstrings. Others, like the option to “poop your pants,” which went unchosen, seem designed to either pluck at taboos or childish goofiness.
It’s an idea that’s beautiful in concept and in the descriptions from the troupe and the Duchess. In practice, there are moments of potential revelation and true joyfulness, but also shy awkwardness and a feeling that you should push yourself toward seizing delight. Regardless, it’s a truly unique experience, and that’s a fancy worth seizing on. But watch out, because “The Casket of Passing Fancy” is bit like life: the longer you wait, the fewer your options.
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater reviewer and writer.)
(“The Casket of Passing Fancy” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 1 at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. $15-$25.1-800-838-3006, rubberrep.org.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: ‘So You Think You Can Dance’
More people may be watching dance today than have since the so-called 1970s “dance boom.” It’s just that all those dance fans aren’t necessarily making it to the theater. They get all the dance they want on television. This burgeoning dance audience left the living room’s safety Sunday for Austin’s Erwin Center to see the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour, the live version of the popular TV show featuring 13 dancers from season four.
The evening worked on a “best of” format, including snippets from the TV show, last season’s favorite dances, and spoken introductions from the dancers, who tried very hard to be funny.
Choreographically a few pieces stood out. Mia Michael gave season runner-up Twitch (Stephen Boss) intense duets built from sensitively phrased choreography. As Twitch and Kherington Payne slid down a tilted bed, Twitch’s bare chest sank and expanded, displaying emotion without too much melodrama. Mark Kanemura’s turn to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” had more musical dynamics than most. Kanemura understands how to use different parts of his body as the initiation for movement, drawing attention to something other than big tricks, the jumps, turns, and high kicks packed in elsewhere. Katee Shean, the season’s top female winner, also practices nuance in her choices.
Where the television show prizes versatility, on tour dancers can showcase specialties. In a solo and in Tabitha and Napoleon D’Umo’s duet to “Party People,” Comfort Fedoke displayed the fluidity and groundedness that makes good female hip-hop dancers captivating.
Despite performance and choreographic innovations, the touring show revolves around some painful clichés. The first time hip-hop was highlighted, the dancers, Boss and Payne, performed as escaped convicts. Dancers like Fedoke and winner Joshua Allen prove that hip-hop represents a much larger spectrum of culture than delinquency. And then there was Gev Manoukian, the Russian/Armenian b-boy from Utah. During a segment about the range of dances on the show, Gev continually appears in dresses to be mocked by his peers for his gender transgression. Gev ostensibly dons the dresses to woo dancer Courtney Galiano, so the cross-dressing, peer mocking, and girl chasing unfold in a familiar story: men should be masculine and women should be feminine. And don’t worry living room audience, he might be wearing a dress, but he’s chasing a girl — he’s not gay.
With such a diverse cast, artistically and culturally, the show could be so much more than another way to fill in familiar stereotypes.
(Clare Croft is a freelance dance and theater critic.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Charles Dutton show cancelled
Pro Arts Collective just announced that due to unforeseen circumstances, actor Charles Dutton has had to cancel his one-man show “From Jail to Yale” scheduled tonight for the Long Center. The show will not be rescheduled.
Dutton’s show was a part of Pro Art’s Black Arts Movement Festival.
Pre-sold tickets will be refunded. Call 474-5664.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
BAM Festival reviews: ‘No Boundaries’ and ‘Delta Rhapsody’
Historically black women have had to fight for control over how their bodies and their lives get written into history. Two shows presented in Pro Arts Black Arts Movement Festival — Gesel Mason’s “No Boundaries” and Nadine Mozon’s “Delta Rhapsody” — helped bring black women and their bodies into view on their own terms.
The range of choreography in Mason’s show last week at AustinVentures Theater works to explode any easy categories of “black dance.” Two pieces, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “Bent” and Reggie Wilson’s “Seeline ‘oman,” rewrite bits of history, but from different directions. In “Bent,” Mason first appears in silhouette, an Afro wig and bellbottoms rewind time.
Dancing a breakdown, Mason slouches, settles into her torso, then reaches out. Partnered with George Clinton’s “Maggot Brain,” “Bent” returns blackness to hippie counterculture, a historical moment too often literally whitewashed.
Wilson takes one of culture’s most frequent references to African American life, the spiritual, and places it in a broader context. There is no Alvin Ailey here. “Seeline” begins with Bessie Smith, but the Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir overtakes her. A female soloist’s voice burst upward; Mason walks, pushing a grocery cart or skimming a small wave — a series of arm dances. The voice hurls upward: Mason changes clothes, puts on make-up. Tiny dances of labor and life undo the fixation on the scream, the outburst, the ecstasy of the African American spiritual. Later, on a darker stage, Mason will do the space-eating movement the wail called for earlier, but in the dimness, the openness in the middle of a circle of candles resonates more. Still not everything can be seen.
David Rousseve’s “JumpBroom” deserves a review all its own, as it connects the lynching of a black woman after trying to marry her slave husband to a lesbian couple’s halted attempt to marry today. First Mason swings limp and twitching from an unseen rope, and then crawls across the stage, feet bound, reaching for another woman’s sleeping body. As the two stories are told by recorded voices, the impact of words on bodies, laws on bodies, creeps into the theater.
In “Delta Rhapsody” Saturday at the Off Center, Nadine Mozon, as the campy cabaret performer Delta, gives everything and more. Mozon, who wrote and performed the show (Madge Darlington directed), arrives in a flurry of white feathers — a white boa is Delta’s favorite prop. Mozon plays deftly with her words, her stage environment, and her audience. Delta’s monologues, half earnest self-help, half poetry, make theater through their attention to rhythm. Mozon knows when to let words flow and when to make them pitter-patter. As Delta grows increasingly drunk, Mozon’s body spreads out. She sprawls over a wooden stool, and then falls, giving her funniest line from the floor. Looking up through mussed hair, she says, “Well, since I’m here.” The audience laughed uproariously throughout the show, following Mozon on her trip through Delta, from knock-knock jokes to a mid-show reincarnation of a Katrina evacuee Delta met in Omaha. The woman’s story fit a bit oddly into the cabaret act, but Mozon’s portrayal had honesty and specificity in its storytelling.
Both Mozon and Mason shared programs with local performers. In Mason’s show, Houston’s Sandra Organ danced a solo that felt simple in its progress narrative of black life in Houston. Leigh Gaymon-Jones solo was a slow reveal beginning with a backwards walk, climaxing with a turn forward on the floor, limbs unfurling. Almost shy details — a heel drag, foot flexed in reticence — texture the story of a body expanding. The second half of Saturday’s Off Center show featured The Austin Project Performance Company’s “American: love out of context.” (Clare Croft is a freelance dance and theater critic.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Weekend Arts Pix: Not ready for some football?
Not ready for some football mania this weekend with the UT-OU game? You’ve got options. Arts options, that is.
‘A Thumping Raging Explosion of Light and Marvelous Texture’ may sound like a sports extravaganza, but it’s not. Choreographer Amanda Butterfield of Yellow Tape Construction Company has actually made a playful, spirited and very girlie romp of an hour-long dance piece. Butterfield and her five dancers don girlie house dresses (costumes by Kendra Loposer) and cavort on the Salvage Vanguard stage while indie rock band Masonic charges through their upbeat tunes.
The girls play, chase, dart around, steal each others coveted objects, challenge each other to silly feats. And they throw leaves — lots and lots of leaves — at each other.
‘Thumping’ doesn’t go real deep. And towards the end the playful dancers lose a little steam (hey — these women don’t take endless breaks between plays like football players) and the focus of the piece gets fuzzy. But ‘Thumping’ frolics in an upbeat and fun fashion.
There’s two more shows tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. See of Yellow Tape Construction Company
(front) Brazie Adamez (back, from left to right) Lisa del Rosario, Hannah Kenah, Amanda Butterfield
*
Get active!
Because politics is on everyone’s mind right now, Women & Their Work presents the group exhibit ‘The Activist Impulse.’ And to get the chatter going, exhibit curator Regine Basha will lead a panel discussion with curator Annette Carlozzi of the Blanton Museum; Tiffany Dowling, staff attorney with the Texas Center for Actual Innocence; and Ellen Spiro, director of the film ‘Body of War.’
The talk is 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free. Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St. www.womenandtheirwork.org.
‘The Activist Impulse’ continues 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays through Nov. 15. Work by Andrea Geyer, Emily Jacir, Kristen Lucas, Judi Werthein, Valerie Tevere and Angel Nevarez is featured.
Andrea Geyer. “Intaglio. Audrey Munson.” 2008. Digital archival print, engraved glass.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Long Center director suffers heart attack
Cliff Redd, executive director of the Long Center, suffered a mild heart attack at his home this morning, Long Center officials said. He was taken to Seton Medical Center, where he remains in intensive care while undergoing tests. Long Center officials said he was alert and resting comfortably.
Redd, 57, joined the Long Center in 2004 after more than 30 years in Dallas as an arts leader. He is credited with kick-starting the Long Center’s $77 million capital campaign, raising $82.5 million by the time the two-venue center opened in March.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment
Review: Conspirare’s ‘Home’
Conspirare scored a home run with “Home” the first concert of its season, performed at various locations last weekend.
Essentially a greatest hits offering from the Grammy-nominated choir led by Craig Hella Johnson, “Home” was also a chance for Conspirare to tighten the show they’ve developed for a PBS special. The show will be taped by Austin’s PBS affiliate KLRU Sunday night at the Long Center in front of a live audience. It’ll be broadcast nationally in March 2009 during PBA’s pledge drive.
So what to show the nation of Conspirare? Many things, but mostly how flexible Johnson and his singers are with such a wide range of musical styles, even though much of “Home” featured the choir’s popular and contemporary repertoire.
Most notably Johnson pulled out his signature technique — the collage effect in which he blends seemingly disparate songs from the classical, traditional and popular repertoires into seamless new musical montages.
Johnson and the Conspirare singers presented one such collage with unfailing perfection Sunday afternoon at the Northwest Hills Methodist Church to a full house. A Motown song, a selection from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” a traditional hymn and a Latin chant became one beautiful musical whole thanks to Johnson’s creative vision. And in a deft example of this ensemble’s considerable artistic range, the choir launched flawlessly from that collage to Samuel Barber’s “Agnus Dei,” the demanding vocal version of his Adagio in G, giving the oft-repeated piece a new delicacy and true emotional sincerity.
Outstanding in the program’s second half was Johnson’s arrangement of Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” — about as breathtakingly pure as song can be interpreted and sung — and “Each Shall Arise,” the third movement from a luminous new piece by Tarik O’Regan, from Conspirare latest CD “Threshold of Night.” Urgent and also joyous, the song captures the joy and tumult that comes from contemplating mortality.
Good news seems to stream endlessly from Conspirare of late. “Threshold of Night,” which features O’Regan’s music, made it to the Billboard’s top ten shortly after its September release and garnered rave reviews.
In June, the company will present a large scale oratorio piece from rising star composer Eric Whitacre — a piece specifically commissioned by Conspirare. After a couple of concerts at the Long Center, Conspirare will use the venue for a recording of Whitacre’s piece, likely the first ever professional recording to make in the Long Center. Talk about a score!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Sometimes a push broom, is not just a push broom
“Where’s the art?”
“They must not have their first exhibition up yet.”
We found it hugely entertaining that several of those who showed up Saturday night to celebrate the opening of the newly relocated Lora Reynolds Gallery couldn’t make sense of the few objects discreetly scattered around the sleek white walled gallery.
See, sometimes a push broom, is not just a push broom.
Sometimes a push broom is “Good Self Image” by British artist Susan Collis, who is getting her first solo show in the U.S. thanks to Reynolds’ initiative.
“Good Self Image” might at first glance look like a worn, stained push broom, it’s bristles dirty with bits of stuff. But those stains on the handles are actually exquisite inlay of precious and semi-precious stones and gems — amber, opal, turquoise, abalone, diamond, emerald, garnet. The fluff in the bristles? Beautiful pearls.
Collis’ show is an ingenious pick to open a new gallery location — especially a gallery that’s brought as much sophistication to town as Reynolds’ has.
In a brilliant and thoughtful manner, Collis has upended our assumptions about how we assign value to objects (including art objects) and about the act of art-viewing itself. The simple stuff of work and manual labor, seemingly left behind in a slick urbane art gallery, demands that we look at it and look at it again. By deliberately using precious and semi-precious gems, metals and stones, Collis gives her art objects an instant market-based — and easily recognized — value.
And what does THAT say about us?
Detail of “Fixed,” coral anchor with raw white gold screw.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Chaddick Dance Theater
Chaddick Dance Theater has the right name. It is Austin’s newest dance company, but its dancers and choreographer, Cheryl Chaddick, have a flair for acting. Making their Austin debut Friday at Ballet Austin’s Austin Ventures Studio Theater, the Chaddick company got more than a few laughs from a welcoming audience.
The funniest acting and dancing occurred in “Flights from Reality,” as Chaddick and Jim Kelly sat downstage on a couch. A romance novel gave Chaddick sensual respite from boring domesticity: Jim Kelly sitting next to her, moving just enough to eat potato chips and fiddle with a TV remote.
As Chaddick read aloud, two couples, Angie Johnson with Danny Herman and April Mackey with Rocker Verastique, pummeled each other in a parody of bodice-ripping love. Just when it seemed every comic take on straddling and spanking had been found, the women jumped on the men’s backs. As the men spun the women spanked themselves. The choreography became more physical and extravagant, even as the passion in Chaddick’s story subsided. Playing with the distance between bodies and text kept the literal at bay.
The three women of “The Gambit” Mackey, Maia McCoy, and Kristen Studer made clever work of slapstick as they alternated between elegance and coming undone. Each made prissy “I’m putting myself together” gestures, and then battled the rest of their bodies. McCoy had the funniest turn: she took on her chair, winding up pushing her neck through it, and then wearing it like the pearl necklace her character might have preferred earlier in the piece.
Seven women composed the cast of “An Oval Braid,” which felt sensual and clear in its lines. Chika Aluka was an absolute standout. She took every step with full knowledge of how to use her entire body, from her fingertips to her eyes’ focus, in order to create complete, yet kinetic pictures.
The program also included Chaddick’s solo “Bridgeboard,” danced by Kate Warren, and Kathy Dunn Hamrick’s “Six Passing,” a guest appearance by KDH Dance Company.
Clare Croft is American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: Eliot Fisk
Surely I was not the only member of the Austin Classical Guitar Society’s audience who sighed sadly this week upon learning that the advertised duo recital by Eliot Fisk and Angel Romero had become a solo recital by Fisk due to Romero’s temporary inability to travel. These two artists sharing the stage would surely have given us an engaging, exciting performance.
To be sure, a Fisk solo recital isn’t slumming in any sense. He brought his usual kind of program featuring newer compositions for the guitar, numerous of his transcriptions for guitar, and a substantial dessert course of four encores. He constantly stretches himself and his instrument technically, employing what look like painful fingerings on the fret board and exploring ways to sustain more voices and produce more sound — significantly expanding the instrument’s expressive possibilities.
And yet I had to notice, as in Fisk’s previous visit that I attended, wildly fast tempos that became unsteady and led to wrong or smudged notes. These plagued the four Scarlatti sonatas, originally for harpsichord but well-suited to guitar, possibly betraying rushed preparation. It was with George Rochberg’s “American Bouquet” that closed the first half that he really seemed to get the music in his hands and succeeded in bringing to life the suite mostly made up of arrangements of American popular songs, ending with a delightfully raucous blues.
The Spanish composers populating the announced second half (mostly Albéniz and Granados) received more of Fisk’s exuberant, highly colored treatment, with the occasional smudged note and—inexplicably—chords out of tune. HUNH?!
His one announced encore was a sonata movement by Torroba, and I recognized the Prelude from Bach’s Partita in E major for violin. To the end, I had difficulty weighing Fisk’s brilliant artistry against boo-boos that aren’t tolerated from anyone else.
David Mead is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: ‘Rammed Earth’
Tere O’Connor’s “Rammed Earth” asks lots of questions. What do bodies in motion pick up from the people who sit near them? From the particular building that holds dancing bodies in?
The particular building holding “Rammed Earth” Wednesday (shows continue through Saturday) was Manor’s Richland Hall, a community center over a century old, haunted by hundreds of past social dancers’ bodies, some of whom apparently needed to be warned to leave their spurs outside, one of the prohibitions listed on a sign that hangs on one wall.
“Rammed Earth” takes its name from an ancient building practice, recently returned to popularity by the sustainable architecture movement. Rammed earth construction involves piling and packing earth from the building site to create walls, floors, etc. (Think children building castles on the beach from sand, but with much more durable materials.) Rammed Earth was O’Connor’s experiment with how to make a dance from what’s in a room—a room with a very present audience.
What’s in this room? How am I a part of this dance? What rises into the space for me, as the dancers run by me, their bodies creating wind that chills my cheek? From my seat, one of many strewn throughout the space, I twist to watch, the angle of my seat directing my gaze toward other audience members as often as I see the dancers.
A nervous tingle pervades the space. Squeak, scuff go the dancer’s sneakers, pacing across the Hall’s wooden floor. I cannot see the sneaker-wearers behind me. We are a community where some run, prance, walk, and other stare quizzically, unable to see fully.
“You may move your chairs now,” the dancers tell us.
The dancers rub their hands along the wooden beams that separate the Hall into two dancing areas. Dimming light says, “Look over here.” The four dancers slink along the far wall, bodies seductive, faces blank. The two women tiptoe, hips leading, away from the men. One man beats the other against the wall; the women only notice the violence when the abuser throws himself against the wall with a loud thud. Later the foursome all stands on one leg; torsos slumped, like sleeping flamingos. One man waves his hand, wrist supple; a head five feet away responds. “You may move your chairs now,” the dancers tell us.
I face half the audience; dancers bisect us, starting to move before we finish our migration. In this section, sound feels more important. From speakers we hear something that seems a result of an opera singer becoming a train and then yelling at us. Later a taped monologue ends, asking, “Is a white bear worth seeing? Is it better than a black one?”
In a solo Christopher Williams jumps high, turns fast. (Some sigh in relief: this looks like “dance.”) Williams is beautiful: Nijinsky’s “Spectre de la Rose” in sneakers in a Texas German dance hall.
“You may move your chairs now.”
I am returned to my fellow audience members. Back together, the end is near. The dancers pause in hugs: not squeezing hugs, just a wrapping of the arms, and a tilting of the head. A lone light bulb fades.
Is “Rammed Earth” good? Is it good when dance makes people notice people and think?
‘Rammed Earth’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Friday, and 2 p.m. Saturday at the Richland Dance Hall, 18312 Cameron Road. Advance tickets are $12-$15. Tickets at the door are $15-$18. 450-0456, www.danceumbrella.com.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Review: ‘Always… Patsy Cline’
There’s really only one surprise to Tex-Arts’ current production of ‘Always… Patsy Cline.’ And that’s that such a tight and polished show is squeezed into the back of a storefront space in a nondescript strip mall in suburban Lakeway.
Of course that’s not really a surprise. After all, Tex-Arts is the non-profit organization that for the last three years has brought slick concert versions or fully-staged productions of classic Broadway musicals at the Paramount Theatre. But after not quite attracting the audiences in Austin they had hoped, Tex-Arts founders Todd Dellinger and Robin Lewis have hunkered down in their newly expanded Lakeway digs, home to their quickly growing performing arts youth academy. Now a 50-foot-by-50-foot dance studio and rehearsal hall does double duty as Tex-Arts’ 99-seat black-box theater.
Of course it’s not the venue for the kind of old-school Broadway song-and-dance musical extravaganzas Tex-Arts offered in the past. But ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ isn’t an extravaganza. It’s a sweet, song-filled tribute to the one of the most revered pop vocalists to come out of Nashville. (Created by Houston writer-director Ted Swindley, the show had a successful Off-Broadway run in l997.
The show is based on a true story about Cline’s friendship with a Houston fan and housewife named Louise Seger who befriended the star in a honky-tonk in l961 and continued a correspondence with Cline until the singer’s untimely death in a plane crash in 1963.
Seger (a bubbly Edie Elkjer) tells us her story while Cline (an impressive Selena Rosanbalm) wanders in and out, singing the songs that made her famous — ‘Crazy,’ ‘Walkin’ ‘After Midnight,’ and ‘I Fall To Pieces,’ among many others — or engages in moments of dialogue with Seger.
On a platform running against the back stage wall sits the six-piece Texas swing band, for this production dubbed ‘The Bodacious Bobcats.’
It’s the quality of the music that makes this show. With a band made up of some of the most seasoned and smart Texas swing musicians on the Austin scene, the little Tex-Arts venue rocks as good as any honky-tonk (musical direction is by Lyn Koening). And Rosanbalm does an impressive job of channeling Cline, capturing the singer’s full-throated huskiness and down-home yet feisty spirit throughout the vocally demanding two-hour show.
Tex-Arts’ ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ is a tight little show with a big voice deftly shoe-horned into the most un-theatrical of theater venues.
Selena Rosanbalm as Patsy Cline.
‘Always… Patsy Cline’ continues 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 12. Tex-Arts Keller Williams Studio, 2300 Lohmann’s Spur, Lakeway. $30-$40. www.tex-arts.org.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
