Recent Reviews
Review: Hamlet (7-person version based on First Folio) by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 27, 2016
You awaken from the spell at the end of the night to realize that you've been captivated in Shakespeare's bubble of eternity, and you wish that it wasn't at an end.
It's undeniable: Hamlet is dark. When we first see him, the protagonist acknowledges to his mother his "nighted color" and replies that "'tis not only my inky cloak, good mother/Nor customary suits of solemn black." But mourning garb is only a minor symbolic indication of the vast darkness that lies across this story. It starts on darkened battlements with a ghost and soon returns there; and the darkness within men's souls is blacker and grimmer …
Review: The Wars of Heaven: Smackdown! by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 25, 2016
'Smackdown' is ambitious, and it takes on too many perceived evils at once. See it, by all means, and meditate upon it as you wait to see what this restless genius is going to come up with for Part III of the Wars of Heaven.
Connor Hopkins, artistic diector of Trouble Puppet Theatre Company, takes on the whole of Catholic theology and the idiocy of contemporary media. With puppets. So how can you resist? The first part of Connor's meditation, The Wars of Heaven, Part 1 in May, 2015, challenged audiences to soar in the skies and across the centuries, using John Milton's imaginative cosmology as expressed in the company's familiar bunraku style augmented by some impressive shadow puppetry. CTX …
Review: Romeo and Juliet by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 23, 2016
Love and Death share the stage equally in a production that's especially muscular, exciting and full of conflict.
There's this dreamy romantic notion about Romeo and Juliet, one that doesn't get much farther than the Capulet garden, the balcony, and the flattered surprise of sweet Juliet when her longed-for dreamboat comes scrambling out of the darkness. Innocence joined with ardor, two almost-grownups taking their love lives in hand and pledging them to one another. Sigh. But there's also the truth of the Facebook meme about R&J being the story of two teenagers whose …
Review: Field Guide by Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 22, 2016
What the Rudes are demonstrating to you is the unavoidable truth that an unexamined life is really not worth living. And that we're examining our own lives almost not at all.
Field Guide is odd and arrogant, qualities with which the Rude Mechs are entirely comfortable. On a commission from Yale, they've undertaken to interpret in MechStyle the classic metaphysical thriller of the Western canon: Fyordor Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov. And as Lowell Bartholomee breezily avows, most of them haven't bothered to read the whole novel. What you get is a sort of SNL/Idiot's Guide enactment of Dostoyevski's plot done with animated cardboard set pieces and …
Review: Gardenalia by Coldtowne Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 21, 2016
After the curtain call the women participants were surrounded by enthusiastic friends enticed to take up the curtain call invitation from the Dionysium: "Give it a try! It's a lot of fun!"
Since spontanaeity is a large part of the attraction of improv performance, repeated or long-run stagings at improv locales may beg the question. Is this or that clever turn of plot or wisecrack really straight out of the ether, or is the performer flourishing it again like a Derringer kept up the cuff, a reliable old whoopee cushion, or the cascade of cards for 52-Card Pickup? The occasional traveler in Improv World cannot know but …
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 …