Krapp's Last Tape AND Hughie
by Actors Theatre Austin
Oct. 07 - Oct. 15, 2017
Saturdays-Sundays
From the 2015 CTXLiveTheatre review:
There are few things more disturbing and moving than the sight of a mild-mannered funnyman in despair.
Michael Stuart's always a welcome presence on Austin stages. A tall man with a large frame, gently balding pate and subtle smile, he's always turning up in reassuringly comic or quirky roles, particularly at the Austin Playhouse. The tut-tutting Lord Summerhayes in Shaw's Misalliance; Angus the dreamy mentally handicapped Canadian farmer in Hyde Park Theatre's The Drawer Boy; LBJ for Larry L. King's The Dead President's Club and Nixon for The Frost/Nixon Tapes. And the list goes on and on; he's been a core member at Austin Playhouse since 2004. Writers at the Statesman and the Chronicle gave him an award for conspicuous versatility in 2014, and the 2011 B. Iden Payne voting chose him as best actor, supporting role in a comedy, for his the-worm-turns role in the otherwise pretty grim Zach Theatre production of August Osage County.
As if to prove the insularity of Austin audiences, during the Zach run sometimes people would come up to congratulate him and ask if he'd done anything else in Austin.
Stuart's solo turn in Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett and his near-solo turn in Hughie by Eugene O'Neill offer a different Stuart, darker and bleaker, related more closely to the three bad-guy roles he played in Waiting for Lefty for Street Corner Arts. Performed on the near-empty black box stage with a short intermission, these two pieces complement one another, each opening the shadowy doors of memory and self-delusion.
Krapp's Last Tape AND Hughie
by Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill
Actors Theatre Austin
October 07 - October 15, 2017
Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m. Pay what you can
Reservations available at actorstheatreaustin@gmail.com
