Recent Reviews
Review: The Taming of the Shrew by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 29, 2026
The Shakespearian brilliance of the Baron's Men in a new setting, with a swift, entertaining TAMING OF THE SHREW.
We all lamented the sale last year of the grounds beneath the Curtain Theatre in the far west of Austin, where the Baron's Men had performed for twenty-five years. There was something heady, even ineffable, about witnessing Shakespeare's plays performed quasi-outoors in the quarter-sized replica of London stages of the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James. The night air, the view of the bare thrust stage from the two-storied stands or from the groundlings' …
Review: PRIMARY TRUST by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 27, 2026
Here's a heart-warmer we all need: Robert Joseph in a gentle grownup fairytale about finding someone to trust. With Vivian Noble's dazzling versatility.
It's apt that this modern adult fairy tale should have won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for drama, announced on May 6. It was the best of times, about a month before Joe Biden faltered in his first and only debate with Donald Trump. The United States, at least the urban United States, was ready for an ingenious, firsthand account from a gentle Black man of friendship, imagination, and small but life-changing successes. The Pulitzer Committee …
Review: She Kills Monsters by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2026
MMNT's SHE KILLS MONSTERS is a lark but also a meditation. A strikingly handsome and capable cast unites a Quest with an honest look at growing up.
I went prepared. I took with me my son-in-law, who was intensely engaged in the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons in the 1990's, the period in which Qui Nguyen's colorfully entertaining and surprisingly deep She Kills Monsters is set. Though in fact, he wasn't much help during the actual performance, for he was riveted on the action and geeking on the references (some of which the playwright deliberately misstates so as to dupe the protagonist). …
Review: The Yellow Wallpaper by The Archive Theater Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 19, 2026
The appalling yellow wallpaper evokes a world of cruelty that hasn't yet disappeared. Deeply disturbing.
I’ve been waking up late at night, thinking about yellow wallpaper, fretful and upset. Or, rather, about Archive Theatre’s The Yellow Wallpaper, which I attended on opening weekend in early September. Not the way that beautifully fragile Sadie Okerstrom obsessed over the grim, grimy yellow wallpaper hung precariously on the set depicting a room with barred windows in a dilapidated, isolated manor. This script by Jeff Davis based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1891 twenty-page short …
Review: And She Was Loved by Black Rose Theatre
by Mark Briody
Published on September 16, 2026
Real emotion, real pain, real reflection in Austin Poet Laureat Zell Miller III's AND SHE WAS LOVED.
Zell Miller III's And She Was Loved - A Choreo--poem -- If you've had a parent you revered, this show is for you. Sitting in a sandwich shop poking at one letter at a time to write this, I tell you: this the show worked on so many levels. It put Austin's poet Laureate into a version of Peter Pan's Neverland. Not one where he wanted to stay young forever, but where the death of …
Review: Gruesome Playground Injuries by Miscast Theatre Company
by Donna Provencher
Published on September 15, 2026
Deceptively simple, intriguingly deep, memorably acted: Miscast Theatre's GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES.
There’s something deceptively simple about Gruesome Playground Injuries. Rajiv Joseph’s two-hander, presented by San Antonio’s Miscast Theatre Company, follows Kayleen and Doug across three decades, moving backward and forward through time as the pair repeatedly find one another at moments of physical or emotional injury. And sure, it’s a story about wounds. But more importantly — like a more graphic version of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters — it’s a story about what happens when two …