Recent Reviews
Review: Beauty and the Beast by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on December 12, 2025
The touring version of Beauty and the Beast is Disney comfort food: tamiliar, targeted, and as comforting as fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.
Beauty and the Beast is a beloved Disney fan favorite that despite the addition of a few new songs does not stray very far from the original animated film. Like many Disney properties, the words “beloved” and “fan favorite” do not go nearly far enough. Just saying the title of this piece will get you the question, which one? Based on a 1740 fairy tale written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (later revised and published …
Review: PARADE by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown, Ground Floor Theatre, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 12, 2025
Rarely has Ausin seen a production as complex, powerful, accomplished and harrowing as PARADE at the Ground Floor Theatre. A must-see (or must-stream).
The disturbing themes of Alfred Uhry's Parade are intensified by Jason Robert Brown's score and by production values unsurpassed by Central Texas theatres of comparable size. This isn't musical theatre as we're used to it; it's a dark, dark story founded in actual events, one that presents characters full of nuance and ambiguity and offers no easy resolutions. Events begin with the murder of an innocent, a killing that is never resolved or even closely …
Review: NORA by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 29, 2025
Ibsen for a Queer Eye—a stylish, roseate update that preserves the indignation 150 years after Ibsen scandalized the bourgeois.
I say it in admiration: this was Queer Eye for Ibsen, and it's too bad Trinity Street Players presented Jenny Larson-Quiñones's adaptation of A Doll's House over a single long weekend. Six performances is a healthy serving, but word of mouth might have created enough interest to support a second, perhaps abbreviated weekend for the run. Ibsen? You may think, Isn't Ibsen old hat? He was controversial in his day because he exploded the notion …
Review: A Doctor's Visit by Anikka Lekven, Broad Theatre, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 26, 2025
Broad Theatre's intense examination of accusation, perception, and truth is a deftly indirect warning to watch out when our own inner lights start flickering.
Anikka Leven's A Doctor's Visit leaves you feeling puzzled. What, exactly, happened within all of the encounters whispered about, alleged, listened to, intuited, or rumored? How far can you trust your own perceptions or those of others? What if your own synapses are short circuiting instead or someone—maybe you?—is tipping into paranoia? The structure of the story reflects those uncertainties. Both the opening scene and the final one occur in the examining room of Dr. …
Review: Dora's Gently Used Dreams Store by The Vortex
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 24, 2025
Dora's imaginary, imaginative tent has folded and left the Vortex, but her pitch, emotion, and shared dreams leave memories behind.
CTXLT publishes its criteria: our focus is live narrative theatre. You might be able to argue that Morgan McKenzie Kauffman's Dora's Gently Used Dreams Store, presented in the intimate space of the Vortex's "pony shed," didn't strictly meet that definition. It was equal parts solo description and experience. Katie Green's Twin Alchemy group presented similar short, intense, participatory experiences in Austin from 2014 to 2019. In this performance form, the playwright/producer imagines a place and …
Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 22, 2025
A faithful adaptation of Agatha Christie's famous novel raises the tension without resorting to comic relief. A large, capable cast raises the question: "Who DID kill Roger Ackroyd?"
Dame Agatha's clever plots and striking characters remain alive and well in our imaginations today, nearly a century after she first put pen to paper. Her first novel, which features the dapper Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, was published in 1920. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) was the third Poirot novel, and she'd already put Hercule into retirement in an English village. This was the first of her novels to be adapted to the stage, …