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City Theatre, Austin
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There's no assembly more live-wire, unpredictable and funny than a room full of comedy writers. In Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, director Andy Berkovsky and a wild, accomplished cast mint anew the eccentrics of the early days of television.
Word has gotten around about this show, which opened in November, took a long weekend's break for Thanksgiving, and will now be on the boards until just before Christmas. I planned to slip in on a Thursday night, usually a quieter time for theatre venues. The parking lot was full, and so was the theatre. They might have benefited from holiday spirits, but word of mouth and favorable reviews probably had a lot to do with it.
 This is Simon's tribute to the wild clan that wrote Sid Caesar's Show of Shows, the variety and sketch show that had a huge following in the early days of television. Caesar hired Simon and his brother Danny on the strength of comedy sketches they staged at Camp Tamiment, an adult summer camp in the Poconos. In the play the young writer Lucas Brickman, played by the affably sincere Keith Yawn, serves as narrator, chorus and stand-in for Simon.
Simon presents the eight writers as magnificent New York eccentrics, mostly Jewish and mostly with recent ties to Europe -- principally to Russia and Poland. The show program provides each actor's vivid and amusing one-paragraph imaginary biography of his character. Wikipedia matches Simon's characters to the real-life writers Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, playwright Michael Stewart, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond and Woody Allen and Dave Caesar, Sid's brother.
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Director Jeff Hinkle and the City Theatre cast led by Aaron Black as Hamlet give us a gripping up-tempo version of the famous events in Elsinore. Elapsed playing time from the first challenge on the battlements to Hamlet's dying gasp, "The rest -- is silence" is just a little more than two and a half hours.
 That fits the play well within the max bounds for today's young movie-going public and gives them the bonus of a break in the middle for snacks and bathroom. The nearly full house for opening night offered the encouraging prospect of a well attended four-week run to open City's fourth season.
It's a good ride, with some surprises along the way.
Aaron Black paints a two-speed Hamlet. From the first, alone or speaking to us directly in his monologues, Black establishes the prince's intelligence. His deft timing and effectively calibrated pauses show Hamlet's mind at work and establish a bond with the audience.
In company with any but Horatio or the player king, however, Black speeds up, provokes and antagonizes. His diction is precise but as his lines move toward rant, he seems to be less the master of his own thoughts. They burst forth in hectoring images.
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Director Bridget Farias and her cast have put together a jolly version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, with loving attention to the eccentricities of Narnia creatures.
Audiences will enjoy the glim from the 2005 film version produced by Disney, which was the best selling DVD in 2006, but both that film and this script follow closely the novel for children written by C.S. Lewis in 1949.
When this production was announced through ALT, one parent, Tim, was plainly disappointed. " Wish they had kid friendly show times. After my kid's bed time is a bit late to see a play. Was looking forward to this one. Oh well...."
Another reader, Anonymous, noted that the City Theatre runs a 5:30 p.m. show on Sundays. That could solve Tim's problem, but it does raise another point: what's the target audience for this production? |
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Molière was appalled and distressed when he learned that although Louis XIV had enjoyed the court performance of Tartuffe on May 12, 1664 the "Sun King" had listened to pious advisers and had forbidden any further presentations of the play.
This great comic tale of religious hypocrisy was in trouble from the start. The dramatist had produced a farce in elegant verse featuring a "holy man" intent on seduction, theft and exploitation, an adroit manipulator of religious concepts and of religious language. The court advisers were probably scandalized at the playwright's witty undermining of religiosity and some of them may have felt directly targeted.
Molière's eloquent protests went unheeded and the revised version he presented publicly three years later was immediately shut down. Not until 1669, after a delay of five years, was Tartuffe performed, apparently with the King's permission. It became the most successful and most profitable of Molière's plays.
Charles P. Stites serves as something of a Molière for the City Theatre's production of Tartuffe. He drafted this text, directed it and stars as Tartuffe.
And what better setting for religious hypocrisy (via tele-evangelism) than modern Central Texas?
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Rabbit Hole by David Linday-Abaires is a quiet play about loss. Becca and Howie were young parents six months ago when a swift series of random events sent their four-year-old son Danny running after his dog, just as a teenager drove down the street going maybe just a tiny bit too fast.
That back story is not shoved into your face. The action opens as Becca's loud, impulsive sister Izzy is sitting at Becca's kitchen table, telling a comic-horrible story about a confrontation that she had in a bar. Becca is folding laundry, tiny boys' garments, as she listens, fascinated, to Izzy crowing.
"You punched her?" Becca gasps, "Izzy, you mean that you were in a bar fight?" |
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