My Weary Query

On most summer evenings from July until mid August you can find nearby Barton Springs a hillside covered in blankets on which people lounge with friends and loved ones. It’s a family reunion of sorts—not necessarily one bound by blood, but rather a love of the Zilker Summer Musical (see http://www.zilker.org/).

This year’s show, My Favorite Year, is full of nostalgia, as are my own memories of Zilker Theatre. Watching a musical amid fireflies and an orchestra of locus as families picnic is a communal experience. If only fleetingly, there’s a connection among audience members as they share the experience of watching a show under a moonlit, starry sky.

I discovered the hillside in the summer of 2002 just as sunset was approaching. While doing my usual run around Town Lake, I decided I’d alter my route, and ventured toward Barton Springs. Suddenly music filled the balmy evening; a full orchestra soared and singing overtook the usual sounds of a summer night. A half mile closer, I felt I was coming upon some secret camp. Down from atop the hill, I saw that Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods was in full swing. I quickly joined the spectators, spellbound, and thinking — only in Austin.

Zilker boasts the longest running outdoor musical theatre in the country. Although it isn’t an Equity production, it showcases local talent, and introduces new actors into the local theatre scene (it is, I’m told, a rite of passage for many Austin actors). It does all this at no cost to the community—remarkably, the show is free to all who get a kick out of a story set to music. Local artists are paid to make the show a quality production, and their love for the event shows in every production I’ve seen or been part of on the hillside; and indeed, just being there beckons memories of past shows, and makes the space something like hallowed ground.

This summer’s show, My Favorite Year, is based on the movie that stared Peter O’Toole. The show recounts Benjy Stone’s (Andrew Canneta) first year working as a writer for the “The King Kaiser Comedy Cavalcade” — it models Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” that filled America’s TV sets in the 50s with bits of slapstick that now take the form of comedy routines such as those on Saturday Night Live.Benjy’s love of TV springs from the hours he spent as a kid watching his TV hero, Alan Swann (Scott Shipman), an Errol Flynn type, who always saves the day and gets the girl.

The TV image of Swann is Benjy’s placeholder for a father he never knew. When Swann shows up wasted on the set, and is on the verge of being dismissed as a “has been”, Benjy persuades King Kaiser to give Swann another chance, all the while relishing an opportunity to get to know his hero.

Over time, though, Benjy’s images of Swann as father fade as Swann’s insecurities and excesses corrode his posh, on-screen exterior. Fleeting assignations with women and booze, like his acting, keep him numb and at bay from reality, and from any long term commitment. His refusal to fix things he’s left undone, or even try to make things right with a daughter he abandoned contrasts his daring, on screen persona. Swann buckles when he discovers that he must perform live rather than have his scenes edited; he flees the set fully aware that his flaws are exposed, incapable of accepting love or confronting the grim reality of his undone world.

The Hollywood ending happens, though, via Benjy’s pen, always capable of writing a world as he’d like it: Swann reunites with his daughter, performs the live comedy sketch and, of course, saves the day. If our lives were scripted like the movies, the show implies, we’d know what to do and say; we’d be secure in our real life roles; we’d know our outcomes even before we make our choices, but we’d never really come face to face with ourselves.

Our love affair with movies is what gives this show a lot of its heart. Early in Act I, Benjy sings a tribute to the R.K.O. against video images of Swann’s movies, proclaiming Swann was “bigger and better and larger than life” and he, Benjy, stands center stage, childlike, looking up at a father he needed. In another tender moment, the production weaves dance, digital video, music from movies, and characters we grew up watching who’ve perhaps severed as beacons of hope or guidance. The seamless integration of movie images, some of pat resolutions and happy moments, contrast nicely with each of our own complicated lives that are always left “to be continued”.

These moments reveal how movies can be an escape from the harsh realities of an uncertain world. They also add new meaning to otherwise shallow material. The script is unwieldy at times, but the company gives the show heart and humor. Slapstick routines are executed deftly thanks to the comic timing of Emily Bem, Kirk German, Joe Hartman, Neal Gibson, Leslie Hollingsworth, and co.

Just when antics on the set get over the top, performances of Belle (Nicole Marosis) and her husband Rookie (Tomas Cantreras) help give the piece more footing.  Ultimately though, Benji’s quest for a father (even if it can only be an image), and Swann’s inability to measure up to the Hollywood images are the tensions grounding the piece. Even though we may look to movies as an escape or sanctuary, the show implies, we might find the biggest stars are those we count as family and friends in our humdrum lives.

So evident in this year’s show is the affection the producers have for this material, especially its reverence for family and story telling, which, after all, is why the actors and countless crew bring it to life on that hallowed hillside in Austin, TX.