Recent Reviews
Review: The Explorers' Club by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 19, 2016
Laughs are almost non-stop, but many are provoked by condescension and name-calling of world cultures and historical periods -- and the explorers finish with their privileges intact.
The Explorers Club by Nell Benjamin is a relatively new American comedy, nominated for the Drama Desk Best Play Award in 2014. Benjamin’s wit takes on a series of largely English characters ranging from stuffy to stiff in a club in London in 1879. These are high Victorian times, and a little wit suffices to bring out an abundance of comedic material. Austin Playhouse with its talented cast puts on an exceptionally funny version of …
Review: Bull by Street Corner Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 18, 2016
'Bull' may leave a sour taste in your mouth, particularly after that last unendurably long fade in the final scene, but it's exactly the taste that playwright Mike Bartlett wants you to have.
Mike Bartlett's single-syllable title for this piece doesn't give much away. The playwright's a Brit, so perhaps Bull isn't intended to suggest the American message of unbelievable mendacity. The verb "to bully" is more to the point, for one of this work-team trio has every reason to complain of bullying, and does so. For me the most vivid association is with the animal. Not for the power or muscle or determination of the bull; instead, …
Review: Durang Durang by Oh Dragon Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2016
Dismaying first-half material gives way to three sketches that are coherent, mostly non-referential, and entertaining, done by a fully engaged and energetic company.
The 1994 collection of short theatre pieces by Christopher Durang done by Oh Dragon Theatre Company at the City Theatre is a writer's wastepaper basket, the sort of collection of scribblings that the Harry Ransom Center might treasure and ponder some twenty years from now. They seem wildly uneven. Everything before the intermission I found dismaying. Not because of the actors or the direction, except for the choice of the material in the first place. …
Review: She Loves Me by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 12, 2016
Confident romantic leads Cheyenne Barton and Matt Buzonas, comic Maureen Fenninger with her hungry heart of gold and other undergrads have plenty of stage time and fine musical opportunities.
There's a sweetness to She Loves Me, compounded of shop dust, wistfulness and perfume. Miklós László wrote this romantic comedy in 1937, shortly before abandoning his native Budapest for America. His gently humorous character-based tale about shop clerks seeking romance lent itself nicely to the 1941 MGM film The Little Shop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, recycled in 1949 for the Judy Garland and Van Johnson musical In The Good Old …
Review: Memphis, the musical by Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 12, 2016
Attractive leads and high-spirited performances help to maintain a level of energy that rises above the clichés of Joe DiPietro's by-the-numbers book.
Continuing its ongoing tradition of tackling big Broadway musicals, the Woodlawn Theatre brings the sprawling, Tony-winning musical Memphis to its stage, marking another success for this ambitious company. Set in the titular Tennessee town in the 1950s, this is the story of Huey Calhoun, a white high school dropout who parlays his love of rhythm and blues into a career as a boundary-breaking DJ at a time when African-Americans were still treated very much as …
Review: Secrets of a Soccer Mom by AtticRep
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 09, 2016
Lockwood, DeLuna, and Tonra do the most they can with these simply-sketched characters, and their charismatic performances help to make the evening more enjoyable than it should be.
Theatergoers who will get the biggest kick out of Secrets of a Soccer Mom are, well, soccer moms — and perhaps the husbands and children who likewise have a ball in the game. For others, it’s pretty routine stuff. Kathleen Clark’s one-act plumbs all-too-familiar territory in its depiction of three young mothers who gradually bare their souls as they play a Sunday afternoon match against their sons. As they sit on the sidelines awaiting their …