I've Never Been So Happy

I've Never Been So Happy

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo, 476-7833, www.rudemechs.com

Through May 7

Running time: 2 hr, 30 min.

It would do no good to write a conventional theatre review of the Rude Mechanicals' production of I've Never Been So Happy. If this were The Glass Menagerie, I could write that the play is about a displaced Southern family trapped by their mother's longing for past glories, and you'd get the idea. But if I said that I've Never Been So Happy is a love story, it wouldn't get across the scope of this thing. A theatre review is, in part, supposed to provide an established record of the experience of seeing a production, so perhaps there's some better way to convey the impact of watching this show.

Here goes: For 2½ hours, I've Never Been So Happy leads to its final song in such a way that you don't realize where it's been going until you're there, listening with your jaw on the floor as the whole cast sings about breakfast tacos.

Before the final song, there is a multitude of other songs with dancing, plus an intermission to end all intermissions. (Wear active clothing to fully enjoy the carnival.) Observe the theatrical framing of the narrative within a Western variety-hour show starring a daughter (Meg Sullivan) and her overbearing father (Lowell Bartholomee). A hero (Jason Liebrecht) enters, and when we first meet him, he is being dragged across the stage by a mountain lion – the last mountain lion in Texas, no less. Yes, a freaking mountain lion, and in that beautiful show-don't-tell way, playwright Kirk Lynn and company have created a play that is somehow, in some subrational way, entirely for Austin. Possibly it could play elsewhere and audiences would enjoy themselves (they'd better!), but as it is, with a cowboy playing the piano outside the theatre and seven people on violins inside, with a chick dressed up as God delivering poetic verse to visitors in exchange for a piece of rope during intermission and a heavy metal number in Act II in celebration of the mountain lion, I've Never Been So Happy is a show that fills you with Austinite pride in exactly the way that makes you, at other times, roll your eyes at how proud and happy everybody in Austin is to be in Austin.

Again, about the final song: It is earned. Composer Peter Stopschinski, who co-wrote the lyrics with Kirk Lynn, has created a song in which every line suggests first selfishness and then simple generosity, not unlike a two-step. All of the music in I've Never Been So Happy is excellent in composition and execution, but it's that final song that brings together all parts of the play. Who cares that not everyone in the cast is a singer to the degree of Amy Hackerd, who sings backup and shares the mountain lion role? The cast does that thing where an actor with a decent voice imbues the music with his or her character to the point where the singing is elevated beyond arguments about technique.

After the performance ended, I went home to my husband. Seeing I've Never Been So Happy, one understands that the words "I love you" don't cut it. Instead, I held his hand as he watched a movie and thought about how these are the times, the quiet and ordinary ones, that allow one to share in love and joy. I wish the same for you who are reading this.