Reviews for The Baron's Men Performances

Review: The Lark  by Baron's Men

Review: The Lark by Baron's Men

by Michael Meigs
Published on May 11, 2016

Anouilh admonishes that you cannot explain Joan, any more than you can explain the tiniest flower growing by the wayside.

With a decade of public performances of Elizabethan and early modern theatre behind them, the Baron's Men offer an adroit and subtle change of mode at the lakeside Elizabethan-style Curtain Theatre. The Lark is a costume drama, richly draped, and it's set in 1430, the period exactly contemporaneous with the settings of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays. It shares a principal character with them: Joan of Arc, the maid of Orleans who rose from peasant obscurity to …

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Review: Richard III by Baron's Men

Review: Richard III by Baron's Men

by Michael Meigs
Published on April 19, 2016

Andy Bond's casual mastery of Shakespearian verse is a treat. His delivery as Richard III is strikingly low key and has the charm of apparent spontaneity.

The Baron's Men company in Austin got started as a lark in 1997, when a group of friends inspired by the Society for Creative Anachronism put together a twenty-minute version of Henry V. They went on to perform occasional Shakespeare on portable platforms until in 2005 tech magnate Richard Garriot offered to put up an Elizabethan-style stage on his waterfront property. He was serious about it. Construction was sturdy, and capacity of the two covered …

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Review: Much Ado About Nothing by Baron's Men

Review: Much Ado About Nothing by Baron's Men

by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2015

In this sprightly production the transformation of the sullen Don John into Dona Giovanna (Leanne Holmquist) is deft, apt, clear and powerful.

"Twenty-one productions in thirteen years!" director Monette Mueller informed opening-night spectators gathered before the torch-lit boards of the Curtain Theatre. The Baron's Men first performed in October, 2002 on a makeshift stage erected that very day. Their patron Richard Garriott later had a tidy Elizabethan-style stage erected for them on the north bank of the Colorado River, just west of the 360 bridge, and they've explored Shakespeare and other authors of early modern drama in …

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Review: Lysistrata by The Baron's Men

Review: Lysistrata by The Baron's Men

by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 13, 2014

Aristophane’s Lysistrata is the world’s first anti-war play, and it is not produced often enough in the modern world for us to learn its lessons.  It is also a play about love, with a lot of kissing, hugging, nuzzling, and feeding each other grapes.  This is somewhat ccounter to its theme, but, eh, the play has its complexities.  The Baron’s Men give it a lusty go at Richard Garriott’s The Curtain Theatre in far west Austin.  The …

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Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men

Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men

by Michael Meigs
Published on April 20, 2014

Romeo and Juliet is probably the first work of Shakespeare that most of us encounter, and sometimes it's the only one.  That story of two star-crossed lovers is the most likely opportunity to interest distracted adolescents in the work of the 'Bard.'  Pedagogically it's pretty effective: Two impetuous and self-centered teenagers flout convention and through a series of mishaps and misapprehensions end their lives in a creepy crypt, desperately disappointed.  What's not to like, kids?  Maybe …

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Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men

Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men

by Casey Weed
Published on April 06, 2014

The Baron's Men finally put up Romeo and Juliet and I was in the rare position last evening of being in the audience with no other stake in the show than simply hoping for an entertaining performance. I was rewarded with much more than that. So often in Austin we're subjected to fussified Shakespeare tarted up with gimmick props and political or social agendas that cloud up the plot and characters and make the pure play indiscernible …

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