Weekend Reviews

'Shear Madness' still offers bangs for your bucks

Theater: "Shear Madness"
Rock: Monte Montgomery
Choral music: Texas Choral Consort

Web posted: Aug. 15, 2005

Much has happened since then. Alice Wilson, the show's original co-director and the person primarily responsible for the current revival, long ago left her position as Zach Scott artistic director. The original star and beloved celebrity, Boyd Vance, died in April. And since 1992, Zach Scott and other theaters have adopted audience participation and gay characters almost as rules.

Which makes the current show all the more interesting for its cultural implications. In 1992, it was easy for theater purists to dismiss "Shear Madness" as a gimmick, a extraordinarily profitable gimmick that produced extremely long runs in Boston, Washington D.C. and, yes, Austin. How gracefully had the gimmick aged in all these years?

On Saturday, a cheering, giggling, delighted audience jumped right into the fray, suggesting clues to investigators played by Zach Freeman and Jamie Goodwin. The comedy is constructed with four endings to suit four suspects in the murder of a former concert pianist, so it is possible to see four different second acts. The constantly updated script is chock full of local and temporal references, but there remains, especially in sound designer's Craig Brock's scene-change music, a feeling of the late 1980s, early '90s.

Larissa Wolcott expanded her repertoire of humorously voiced characters as a second hairdresser, while Tish Brandt and David Jarrott relished the roles of the most obvious suspects. Which brings us to Espie Randolph in the role of Tony. In 2005, this portrayal of a gay character as an exaggerated stereotype could be deemed borderline offensive. Yet Randolph, like Vance before him, invested the role with so much flirtatious warmth and high-energy fun that it's hard not to think the show was written expressly for him.

Oh, sure. Go. Go four times. It's still a scream.

"Shear Madness" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 25. Zachary Scott Theatre Center, Whisenhunt Arena Stage, 1510 Toomey Road. $28-$38. 476-0541. www.zachscott.com.
— Michael Barnes

Rock

MONTE MONTGOMERY STILL ROCKS

Monte Montgomery's youthful image has changed, I'll definitely grant you that. He's no longer that up-and-coming Texas rock punk with spiked bleached blond hair often caught strutting around downtown Austin — that look has long since expired. When he walked on Momo's stage Friday I hardly recognized him. In fact, I almost had to double-check the schedule just to make sure that the thicker, older man behind the microphone was Montgomery, and not some Cory Morrow look-alike.

It was Monte, all right — and the dude could still rock.

He proved to every guitar geek, frat boy and soft-hearted sweetie in the house that "Momo's" stood for "MOnte MOntgomery'S." That weathered, scarred and tarnished guitar, which easily could be the clichιd metaphor for Montgomery himself, sounded more electric and less acoustic with each song. He slapped, bended, twanged, palmed, stiffed and teased his six strings without relent. "When Will I" proved itself to be Montgomery's "Freebird," as the nostalgic, show-stopping sampler of nearly every technique in the book. His marathon solos sounded as if his fingers were going to need physical therapy just to play again. Instead they just needed a drink.

While most classics, such as "Wishing Well," stayed afloat without any strain on the band's composure, the newer repertoire, though well-performed, was unoriginal and lazy. "Sunday Song" was dull and easily the most expendable number, while "Out on the Road" follows all the street signs to the standard traveling song without any scenic detours. Although his singer-songwriter abilities are losing their spice — the've become less like Jack-and-Coke and more like Bushmill's-and-ice-cubes — to send him to the "adult-contemporary" nursing-home genre is still a tad premature.
— Jeff McCrary

Choral music

TEXAS CHORAL CONSORT'S EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT

If anyone chose to stay home from the Texas Choral Consort's presentation of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" Saturday night because they couldn't handle listening to Christmas music on one of the warmest nights of a Texas summer, they missed a consistently excellent and satisfying concert.

Bach wrote the oratorio as a series of six cantatas to be performed on the six holy days strung from Christmas Day to the Epiphany. All told, it's around 2 1/2 hours of music and hard work for a single evening. Conductor Barry Scott Williamson presented the first three cantatas, which was not too painful a compromise, sung in the original German. My complaint is that the intermission occurred in the middle of Part 2 instead of before or after it.

Williamson was fortunate to have found in Hope Presbyterian Church's sanctuary a concert room well suited in size and sound to a moderately large chorus and orchestra. Even better, while no one scaled Olympian heights of artistry Saturday, every participant made a sturdy contribution to the performance, led by vocal soloists soprano Kirsten Watson, alto Leigh Northcutt-Benson, tenor Christopher LeCluyse and bass Gil Zilkha. LeCluyse's high tenor was tailor-made for Bach's "Evangelist" parts. His singing was beautiful, but this role calls for more storytelling. Zilkha found the best mix of vocal beauty and clear diction.

The chorus was clearly in control of its part, though its singing was more enthusiastic than refined. The orchestra was also fine, with special salutes to the oboes led by Ian Davidson and the trumpets led by Bob Cannon. Masterworks such as this create their own holiday spirit. If the performance is right — as was the case here — it doesn't matter what the calendar or the thermometer says.
— David Mead