Reviews for Hyde Park Theatre Performances
Review: Circle Mirror Transformation by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 19, 2010
It's a bit of an inside joke. A cast of accomplished actors is impersonating a group of non-actors who are seeking the mysterious meanings and unknown fulfillments of the dramatic experience.
The Village Voice annointed Annie Baker's comedy its Obie (off-broadway) award this year for best new American play and gave another Obie to the cast for their ensemble work. So you can expect an amusing evening when you stop by the Hyde Park Theatre to see them do their second play this year by the 29-year-old Annie B. They delivered her Body Awareness just this past April. Director Ken Webster and the gang like to play …
Review: Body Awareness by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 10, 2010
The real joke, and the one that makes this such an appealing play, is that the adults around Jarred don't have very clear answers to any of his questions.
Annie Baker's Body Awareness is a well crafted, attractive little comedy with lots of heart. I hadn't really expected that, for the Hyde Park style is more often sardonic, grimly humorous or menacing. After all, director Ken Webster had been using a publicity shot of the cast in which they looked as if they'd been arrested by the Austin Police Department at a wild party. Because of a trip out of town, my first chance …
Review: The Atheist by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 20, 2010
The Atheist is billed as a "dark comedy," but it is no barrel of laughs. In fact, there are virtually no laughs at all in Joey Hood's intense, two-act 90-minute performance.
Sleazy, pushy Augustine Early is the just the sort of brilliant sociopath that fascinates Ken Webster, judging from the programming at the Hyde Park Theatre.The Atheist is billed as a "dark comedy," but it is no barrel of laughs. In fact, there are virtually no laughs at all in Joey Hood's intense, two-act 90-minute performance. If it's a comedy at all, it's a sardonic comedy, in the etymological sense: from 1630–40<>sardoni(us) (<>sardónios of Sardinia) + -an; "the primary reference was …
Review: What Was I Thinking?? by Michelle Rundgren
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 05, 2009
The girlfriends were laughing rather than crying, though behind the hilarity was the feeling that the clock was ticking and eligible men were getting harder and harder to find. Isn't the best comedy often based on apprehension?
What Was I Thinking? is Michele Rundgren’s clever transformation of a book of women's tales of woe into a tipsy party of girlfriends who can laugh – now – at the world’s worst boyfriends and the world’s worst dates. The show ran for two weekends at the Hyde Park Theatre, and its sassy attitude brightened up that often foreboding space. I got there only at the closing show, on Halloween, which ran from 4 p.m. to …
Review: The Collection by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 23, 2009
Pinter gives us a cynical meditation on trust and truthfulness. The cast plays it absolutely straight, establishing Pinter's rhythms and his merciless understatement of visceral emotion.
First of all, you are NOT going to get to see Joey Hood frolicking naked in a bathtub. That's just the way it goes. The Collection is not that kind of play. I guess that photo was just to good to pass up. Ken Webster's a Harold Pinter man. During Hyde Park Theatre's FronteraFest of short stage pieces back in January, the usual program of five thirty-minute pieces came up short when a couple …
Review: House by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 04, 2009
Very early and without a word Webster differentiates between his spectators. First are those who embrace the incongruities with delight -- the ones who yelp with short, delighted laughs.And then the others, with empathy, who sense the danger in this character.
Ken Webster's Victor is in control from the first instant of this piece. Lights dim and he flings open the doors to the theatre, entering to waves of recorded applause. Victor's expression is sardonic, dismissive, impatient. He gestures and cuts off the applause, then launches into a stream of consciousness monologue about group therapy. He is scathing, sarcastic, in control, telling us about the misfits and about the facilitator Just Call Me Joe -- "and I will …