Reviews for Different Stages Performances
Review: Morning's at Seven by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 26, 2010
Five strong, distinctive women actors play against four equally vivid men, and not a one of them is in years of the ardent twenty-somethings so familiar in this town.
Different Stages lives up to its name with this affectionate recreation of a vanished America. Paul Osborn created for his 1930's audiences a comforting family portrait, set in a small town. All three acts of Morning's at Seven take place in a back yard shared by two wooden frame houses. All except one of the nine characters are related. This gentle comedy was a quirky oldies play. All four of the Boulton sisters are in …
Review: Spider's Web by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 09, 2010
We enjoy Clarissa's elaborate persuasion and pretending, as well as the cover story's eventual collapse under investigation. The cat and mouse game is not between criminal and detective but rather between a spontaneous fantasizer and the minions of the law.
You don't see much of Agatha Christie in the United States any more, except perhaps in public libraries and the occasional revival of one of her many plays. Airport newstands rarely offer murder as genteel puzzle any more, instead stacking up thick paperbacks with vibrant covers, done by Clive Custler or Sue Grafton or any of a number of other contemporary producers of blockbusters. Different Stages does us a service by providing an accomplished and …
Review: The Carpetbagger's Children by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 24, 2010
Ever present in the story is the land itself, the Estate that produces the revenue supplied to the good sisters and denied during Father's lifetime to the single bad seed. Family endures; the Estate lasts.
The Carpetbagger's Children, staged in 2005, was the penultimate of the Texas playwright's dramas, the next-to-the-last of from 40 (according to Wikipedia) to more than 60 (according to the New York Times). Like many of his dramas, it is set in the mythical town of Harrison, Texas, based on his birthplace Wharton, a crossroads southwest of Houston. Foote's final play was, aptly enough, a reworking of his earlier Dividing The Estate. He died last year …
Review: Eurydice by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 14, 2010
It's disconcerting to see Ruhl the brief spark of human existence into drollery. A bit like accepting a slice of birthday cake and finding it full of shards of glass.
Sarah Ruhl's version of the Eurydice myth begins as a fable. Nicole Swahn, the childishly enthusiastic and simple-minded Eurydice, frolics at the beach with Bastion Carboni as her beau, the music geek Orpheus. They're on their way to an unreflecting storybook wedding. Little matter that she has no comprehension of the music in his head and apparently no head for her own history. In part, because she's not getting the mail. We learn that Eurydice's …
Review: The Skin of our Teeth by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 18, 2009
This is wild stuff -- a history of humankind as embodied by the Antrobus family, with a mad mix-up of times, epic figures, surreal settings and primal myths.
Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth is 67 years old but it plays as if it had been written and workshopped last week by one of those Austin indie arts groups of which we are so proud. It's wild stuff --a history of humankind as embodied by the Antrobus family, with a mad mix-up of times, epic figures, surreal settings and primal myths. Refract that story through the lens of a dramatic structure that …
Review: An Inspector Calls by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 11, 2009
Peters' Inspector Goole is properly spectral in aspect, conduct and reproach. He unleashes a moral questioning in this milieu, one that remains alive more with some -- the young and previously thoughtless Sheila, for one -- than with others.
Under the artistic direction of Norman Blumensaadt, Different Stages and its predecessor the Small Potatoes Theatre Company have furnished Austin Theatre with a considerable library of stage work. The back page of the program for An Inspector Calls lists 109 productions the company has brought to the boards since 1981.Different Stages has given the city a good dose of the classics and a wide array of works from the British and European stages. The company …