The London Cuckolds
The London Cuckolds received a 2001-2002 Austin Critic's Table award nomination for Best Comedy, and Emily Abrams and Shannon Grounds were both nominated for Best Actress - Comedy for their roles in The London Cuckolds.
Reviews:
"Delivering lively innuendoes and puns, the Bedlam cast masters the complicated verbal pace without ever dragging. The actors deliver crude, clear, funny lines, first written in 1681, without stilted diction . . . Though there's no single director to the Bedlam Faction, the group approaches the topic of sex with general, goofy seriousness . . . Be sure to bring a partner to this naughty, naughty show. "
--Allyson Gonzalez, Austin American-Statesman
"Already fatigued by predictable, slickly packaged holiday arts? Try the theatrical fringe for a change of pace.That's what I did last weekend. Since no shows of consequence opened, I attended smaller performances -- rough, but bearing their own rewards -- all previously reviewed by American-Statesman correspondents.
"Most impressive was The London Cuckolds produced by the Bedlam Faction, a youthful collective. It's never easy reviving the wordy, cynical comedies of the Restoration period, much less updating the setting. Yet these nervy thespians adapted Edward Ravenscroft's near-farce for an entirely different sexual revolution in the 1960s. Behold a retro rock band and a close approximation of sensibilities and fashions from a groovy decade well before the birth of any of the artists. It continues through Dec. 8 at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo St., 963-3851."
--Michael Barnes, arts editor, Austin American-Statesman
"...a madcap sexual farce of the seventeenth century...brought to life bery bawdily by BEDLAM FACTION...this thing has more twists to it than lombard street...and more between the sheets than a player piano...quite ably manipulated by a cast...led by ROBERT MATNEY, MICHAEL NELSON, SHANNON GROUNDS...the script cleverly comingles with the music of a commendably competent rock band of the beatles genre...all this makes for a fery funny show...one i wouldn't mind seeing again."
--Larry McGonigal, outgoing chair of the B. Iden Payne Awards Nominations Committee, in his Weekly Austin Arts Email Bulletin
The Austin Chronicle
Well, there's the good news . . .
"The story has all the typical -- and hysterically funny -- elements of Restoration comedy . . . Scenes burst with energy and blast their way across the stage . . ."
. . . and then there's the bad news . . .
"What you find here is not so much a group of actors telling a funny story as a group of actors insisting that what they're doing is funny . . . They didn't illuminate the story or help me care about it or them because any possible subtlety was lost in the frenetic tempo and constant face-making. By the time it ended, I felt like the titular husbands: disappointed, betrayed, cuckolded."
--Barry Pineo, Chronicle staff
Ouch! (Thanks, Barry!)