Recent Reviews
Review: A Flea in Her Ear by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 09, 2016
Director Michael Costello and the lively young cast do a bang-up job of producing this creaky but timeless classic. Gallic amusement at the foolishness of lust remains unbounded.
Sex farces never grow old because jealousy and foolishness are always with us. Georges Feydeau kept a table at Maxim's in Paris and produced one farce after another, some sixty in all staged over the 40 years before the First World War. A Flea in her Ear (Une Puce à l'Oreille) is by far the best known to English speakers but titles of others suggest that Feydeau knew when he was onto a good thing …
Review: Bright Half Life by Theatre en Bloc
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 06, 2016
Captured by the intensity in the Vortex 'pony shed,' one rapidly learns to accept and even embrace abrupt and profoundly disorienting leaps in time and context.
Theatre en Bloc has installed a jolting unpredictable time machine in the 'pony shed' at the Vortex, that orphaned little structure that's at the foot of the drinking deck and adjacent to the outdoor stage. Announced capacity is 15 persons, all classes of seating combined, from donors to regular admission types to the unmonied but curious who pay nothing. Director Jenny Lavery and company exercise some compassion and ingenuity, however, and Sunday evening's 8:30 p.m. …
Review: A Wolverine Walks into a Bar by Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 04, 2016
The content is mostly Texas-centric with some good-natured gibes aimed particularly at the Alamo City. A Luby’s cafeteria joke? Genius.
Actor/playwright Jaston Williams, whose most immediately recognizable contribution to the world of theater is as co-star and co-creator of 1982’s Greater Tuna, took the stage of the Classic Theatre last Friday night with the world premiere of his new performance piece, A Wolverine Walks Into a Bar. Introducing the show, Williams explained that Wolverine was still a work in progress, with further segments to be added. If the audience’s response to the 70-minute show on …
Review: Bus Stop by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 31, 2016
You've seen this kind of setup hundreds of times: the playwright collects characters and sets them spinning and bouncing off one another.
William Inge's Bus Stop sets for its audience the classic 'closed room' story, except that it's not an Agatha-Christie style mystery. The mystery being pursued here is the quest for love. It's 1 a.m. in the morning at a crossroads cafe somewhere west of Kansas City, well before the age of the Interstates. Cafe proprietor Grace and her young teen waitress are waiting for the arrival of the night bus, and taciturn Sheriff Will is …
Review: The Last Five Years by Sherrod Curry Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 30, 2016
Bittersweet: the fact that this enchanting experiment wasn't scheduled to run longer, so that more Austin audiences could participate in it.
If you don't already have your tickets for this intimate treat of a production, you're out of luck. Megan Sherrod and Sarah Marie Currie perform Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years a total of only six times, last week and this in Austin, tucked away in an annex to the Institution Theatre with seating for only about 30 persons. And they've certainly got more than 200 friends and fans who've wanted to see them …
Review: Is There Life after Lubbock? by Jaston Williams
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on March 28, 2016
Lubbock’s severe austerity creates resilient but mirthful characters. The discreet but ever sizzling electricity of latent natural disaster and the stark expanse of gorgeous but nearly barren land makes it a land of contradictions and majesty.
Dust in their Blood: An Intimate Night with Jaston Williams and Kimmie Rhodes Jaston Williams the actor, writer, producer and notable wit, got together with country singer and songwriting star Kimmie Rhodes at the Stateside Theatre at the Paramount in Austin to answer a seemingly simple question: Why Lubbock? Using songs, personal stories, poetry and many, many jokes they hashed out the possible reasons why a quiet and dusty outpost in the Texas panhandle had …