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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > September > 15
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Review: Rude Mechs’ ‘I’ve Never Been So Happy’
Once upon a time — long before it became fashionable for every artist interested in performance to dub his or her work ‘transmedia’ — the Rude Mechs were making this thing called theater. The Rudes used all kinds of things to make theater — video, lights, overhead projections, sounds, live music, recorded music, puppets, lots of fantastical props and costumes, audience involvement and yes, multi-talented performers who could act and sing and even do the kind of absurd physical movement the Rudes really like to do.
The Rudes are still using the same stuff they’ve been making theater with for 14 years in their latest project, ‘I’ve Never Been So Happy,’ now in a workshop production through Sept. 20. And while they may have dubbed part of the participatory extravaganza a ‘transmedia performance party,’ you can rest assured that what they deliver is just wonderful theater. (Um, the Rudes use of the ‘transmedia’ word is tongue-in-cheek, after all).
“I’ve Never Been So Happy” starts on the Off Center stage where six selections of the operetta — with words by Kirk Lynn and music by Peter Stopschinski — get their first staging. (Early portions were staged last season by the company and this summer at UT). The operetta’s fantasical episodic tale involves clashing notions of what the West means in the 21st century: Where’s the freedom to be an individual? What’s wrong with traditional gender politics? Is there really only one mountain lion left in all of Texas?
Whatever. “I’ve Never Been So Happy” is one big smart 21st-century theatrical valentine to the Lone Star State.
The quirky fairy tale at the root of the plot — a young couple from opposing families falls in love — only get quirkier as absurd subplots entwine (think feminist commune vs. real estate development, sibling dachsunds who can talk, etc.).
Reminiscent of the Grand Old Opry, or perhaps old Texas dance hall bands, musicians and performers take one-half the Off Center stage in Western garb and line up in straight-ahead style on platforms. They clutch mikes and belt out songs; they writhe with ridiculous character movements.
The other half of the stage is occupied by a giant screen onto which a mesmirizing shadow puppet show unfolds to provide the visual for the crazy tale of mountain lions and daschsunds and crazy characters. Crafted by Erin Meyer and Noel Gaulin, the visual storytelling rivets and effects in surprisingly emotional ways.
Stopschinski’s music rockets from shades of country twang to heavy metal to art song, all with elan and delight and with zero sense of irony.
After 45 minutes of this tender, funny, super-intelligent, super-odd story, the audience convenes outside where a dozen booths offer the weirdest Texas-themed attractions you’ll never see at the state fair. You can learn how to make rope, get a haircut, make a prank phone call to a Yankee, sing county ballads karoke style or have your picture taken in a cut-out of an infamous moment in Texas history (like the Kennedy Assassination).
The Rudes’ enlisted a passle of artists to collaborate with them on the realization of the carnival booths, all of which subtly continue the odd-ball Texas story you’ve just been watching on the stage.
Or maybe this: the carnival attractions are the tangential ideas that didn’t quite fit it into the final script but that were just too good to let slip away and not share with the audience. Then again, maybe they’re the ideas that will later bring this show or another show into clearer focus.
Or else the goof-ball fun the audience can have as they stroll around from crazy, whacky attraction to crazy, whacky attraction is the kind of unadulterated fun all participatory ‘transmedia’ theater should offer.
Here’s the difference between what the Rudes do and what so many of today’s transmedia performance strivers do: The Rudes make meaningful connections — with their audience, with the world around them and with the times in which they live.
Now, what’s wrong with having fun with that?
“I’ve Never Been So Happy” continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday through Sept. 20 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $12-$21. www.rudemechs.com
Photos by Bret Brookshire.
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Review: ‘Measure for Measure’
For centuries, scholars classified Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” as a comedy.
But the Bard’s tale of sexual morality, justice and hypocritical politics is too complex and ambiguous for easy laughs. Yes, it ends on a happy note. But its consideration of government control over private morality doesn’t make for a tidy tale.
In a new production now playing at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theater, Austin Shakespeare director Ann Ciccolella takes the play’s ambiguity and complexity out of its original Renaissance setting and reconsiders it against the backdrop of the 1920s American South — Savannah, Georgia in particular. Bawdy flappers and gentlemen in seersucker suits reign in this ‘Measure for Measure.’
After all, with Prohibition in effect and a double-standard toward drinking (and its related licentious behavior) practically official, the Roaring Twenties was an era riddled with moral contradictions.
Yet beyond the costumes, props and the sounds of ragtime and jazz that infuses between-scene moments (the music is courtesy of the Asylum Street Spankers), the 1920s Southern twist doesn’t have much of an over-arching effect on this production. Indeed, some Southern accents waver amongst the cast.
As the chaste Isabella — who must defy the hypocritical government to save her brother — Morgan Dover-Pearl never wavers in the intensity she brings to her super good-girl character. Matt Radford, as the Duke of the corrupt city, delivers with a seasoned polish. (Radford has had, after all, more than a decade’s professional experience performing Shakespeare in the U.K.)
If there’s an unevenness in this production it’s perhaps as much the problem of the play as this particular interpretation. The ribald, slapstick goofiness of the secondary brothel and street scenes remains in stark contrast to the serious — and very heavy — scenes the central story occupies. Indeed, that heaviness weighs this ‘Measure for Measure’ down just a bit too much.
‘Measure for Measure’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 27. Rollins Studio Theater, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr. $23-$38. www.austinshakespeare.org
On Friday, Sept. 19, the music starts early when the Asylum Street Spankers will play live in a pre-show concert starting at 6:30 p.m.
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Elisabet Ney Museum closed for landscape renovation
The Elisabet Ney Museum — the charming, quirky Hyde Park home and studio of the famed German-borb sculptress — will close for six to eight weeks while its grounds undergo an historic landscape restoration project to bring them back to the natural state they were in during the artist’s Austin life (1892-1907).
The free-spirited Ney came to Texas’ capital city and established a studio where she sculpted the “great men” of frontier Texas as she called them: Stephen F. Austin, Gov. Sul Ross, Gov. Francis Lubbock, among others.
She and her forward-thinking friends established initiatives that led to the University of Texas Art Department, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Texas Fine Arts Association and museums and art schools throughout the state,
The Ney Museum is one of the oldest museums in Texas.
The city of Austin’s Parks and Recreation released this info:
- The museum is closed for a Capital Improvement Project that will restore the landscape design to that of the time of the artist’s life at the turn of the 19th century. The work will be a restoration of a natural heritage landscape of Central Texas.
The landscape program is based on extensive research and documentation including Ney’s personal photographs, letters and descriptions. The native Texas landscape was an integral part of Ney’s studio, Formosa, (1892-1907), both in personal design and use. In addition to restoring Ney’s studio landscape, functional aspects of the historic site will be improved including access, sustainability and maintainability.
The landscape program complies with the city, state and national public land codes as required. Only one protected size tree will be removed from the Ney property due to the tree’s severely damaged and untreatable condition.
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Review: Ballet Austin II’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’
Ballet Austin’s Associate Director Michelle Martin opened “Peter and the Wolf” with a brief Ballet 101 lesson, explaining to the crowd of children in the Austin Ventures Theatre Saturday that ballet is a non-verbal art.
Part of the fun of watching ballet with a room of kids is that they refuse non-verbal spectatorship. As the members of Ballet Austin II, the apprentice company for Ballet Austin, danced Stephen Mills’ choreography to music by Sergei Prokofiev spontaneous reviews popped out all over the theater.
As the duck, Gwenyth Kelley’s dedication to character — most apparent in her waddle — sent waves of chuckles through the pint-sized crowd. Peter (Calvin L. Thomas, Jr.) is the hero of the story and seemed to capture the children’s enthusiasm. Thomas is a clean, clear dancer, more than capable of the buoyancy often used to mark characters as childlike in ballet.
Preston Andrew Patterson danced the role of the Wolf well, but the role proved a bit too much for much of the audience, a rather young crowd since the ballet has been advertised for 2- to 8-year-olds. The Wolf’s appearances resulted in frightened faces and heads buried in parental laps. Several kids looked reassured after the show, when Patterson removed his Wolf head and, with the rest of the cast, greeted the departing children.
Even if the scare factor frightened the youngest fans, the show did seem to hold the kid’s attention. Including Martin’s introduction, the entire production clocks in at 50 minutes.
“Peter and the Wolf” continues 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.Austin Ventures Studio Theater, Ballet Austin, 510 W. Third St. $14. www.balletaustin.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance dance critic.
Photo by Tony Spielberg.
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