Reviews for The Baron's Men Performances
Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 25, 2024
Bravo to the Baron's Men for their devotion to the craft and art of this ROMEO AND JULIET; may ever more Austinites rally to the Curtain Theatre to applaud their elegant, accurate productions.
Austin’s Shakespeare geeks — and there are some! — have the opportunity this season to enjoy the equivalent of a Romeo and Juliet cage match at the Curtain Theatre, the city’s virtually unknown gem of a venue, a folie commissioned by Richard Garriott on the north bank of the Colorado River twenty-five years ago. Done as a classic Elizabethan-style thrust stage of appromately quarter size, the Curtain is reached via rough, winding roads that descend …
Review: Twelfth Night, or What You Will by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 20, 2023
Austin's Baron's Men is a Big Deal, and so is this TWELFTH NIGHT of comedy and courting we won't soon forget.
For those of you who weren't aware of it, the Baron's Men (BM) is a Big Deal and their Twelfth Night, winding up a three-week run at the Elizabeth-style outdoor stage The Curtain Theatre, is an equally big deal. Twenty-four years ago, enthusiasts associated with the video gaming industry grabbed the opportunity to occupy Richard Garriott's folly, a quarter-size replica of a sixteenth-century London theatre on the north bank of the Colorado just west of …
Review: The Comedy of Errors by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2022
Director Michael Osborn's blocking puts plenty of spin on the characters of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. It's a bit like a Feydeau farce, without the lechery!
Shakespeare probably wrote The Comedy of Errors in 1594, making it one of his earliest works, but it wasn't published until 1623. He crafted his script with lots of plot elements from Latin author Plautus's Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus)—twin brothers separated at an early age, a comic servant, a jealous wife who mistakes one brother for another, a quack doctor who attempts to cure one brother from supposed insanity, tokens and money given to or …
Review: Macbeth by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 20, 2019
Forget the footnotes and study guides. MACBETH by the Baron's Men is honest, vigorous Shakespeare, and they'll keep you attentive and rooting for the good guys right to the end.
Yesterday a fellow translator, who works from German to English, confided to me, "I really didn't like Shakespeare in school. I finally took a course, with one of the university's leading professors, the last semester before he retired. I'm glad I did. But I still don't like Shakespeare. He's too hard to read." How to respond to that comment? He wasn't seeking to be provocative; he was expressing genuine puzzlement. Here's someone capable …
Review: The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 07, 2018
The contrast between Nigro's mischievous comedy about Shakespeare amateurs and the accomplished repertory of the Baron's Men reminds us what a sterling but unappreciated resource this company is for Austin arts.
Faced with a request to adapt Shakespeare's As You Like It for a reduced cast, playwright Don Nigro, known for his comedies, probably decided it could be done -- but it would be more fun to turn the whole thing inside out. After all, Shakespeare's script features twenty named characters -- twenty-one, actually, if you include the masque of Hymen, the god of marriage ceremonies. So that's what he did. Nigro imagined an amateur cast …
Review: As You Like It by Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 20, 2017
If you haven't made it out to the forest of Arden on the banks of the Colorado just twenty minutes from downtown, you should do penance. Or, better, get thee hence and hie thee thither. There's nothing remotely like it elsewhere in Central Texas.
The Baron's Men's staging of As You Like It is indeed just as Shakespeare aficionados like it. Of course there's the timbered Curtain Theatre, a tidy recreation of the half "O" of Elizabethan theatre, and there's the costume eye candy from Liegh Hegedus aided by Dawn Allee and her busy stitchery fairies. But more than anything there's the play itself, Shakespeare's whimsical tale of two aristocratic maidens running off to the magical forest of Arden where …