Recent Reviews
Review by Dr. David Glen Robinson (#3 of 3): FALLEN ANGELS by Noël Coward, Different Stages, January 8 - 30, 2016
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 17, 2016
The design credit to Paul Gilbert as cook for the champagne-splashed supper in Act II seemed highly appropriate and very well deserved.
Different Stages, one of Austin’s longest running theatre companies, presents Fallen Angels by Noel Coward, at Trinity Street Theater inside the First Baptist Church of Austin on Trinity Street. The play dates to 1924, and it is one of several Coward plays that remains in the regular theatre repertoire. Different Stages takes a fresh and lively approach to all its productions, and Fallen Angels is no exception to the rule. For those newly exploring theatre, …
Review by Michael Meigs (#2 of 3): FALLEN ANGELS by Noël Coward, Different Stages, January 8 - 30, 2016
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 13, 2016
The lightheadedness and the lightheartedness of these women friends is charming. Director Norman Blumensaadt moves them smartly and cleverly about the stage.
Comedy is fundamental to the human condition. We laugh at the unexpected if it's pleasurable, and we laugh at the incongruous. Often the comic moment in art depends upon a certain distancing: it's funny when a clown slips on a banana peel but it's not funny when we do the same thing. And comedy can be cruel. Satire exposes and intensifies that which we find ridiculous. We poke fun at the pretentious, those who think …
Review by Brian Paul Scipione (#1 of 3): FALLEN ANGELS by Noël Coward, Different Stages, January 8 - 30, 2016
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on January 13, 2016
The comedic tension Different Stages' Fallen Angels has the riveting frenetic pace of a Wimbledon tennis match. Cheers to this production.
Martinis, Champagne and the Requisite Amount of Passion “Don’t be young Jane!” Rebecca Robinson as Julia Sterroll shoots out icily at her longtime friend (both in and out of character) Emily Erington as Jane Banbury. In other words, be mature, respectable and a proper English wife: a task neither of them achieve after the first ten minutes of the play. They are the titular Fallen Angels of Noel Coward’s classic (and very controversial at the …
Review: Beauty and the Beast by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 18, 2015
Those in this extravaganza are two-dimensional characters for the most part, except for Ismael Soto as the Beast, whom we see both yearning and learning.
I lingered after the Georgetown Palace's Saturday matinee performance of Beauty and the Beast, intending to say hello to Kristin DeGroot, the sweet soprano who plays Belle. Watching the excitement onstage well after the curtain call, I was treated to an unmistakeable demonstration of why this production is running strong and full for its more than six-week run as the Palace's annual Great Big Holiday Extravaganza. DeGroot was surrounded by her fans, a press of …
The Devil and the Details: A Review of Austin Playhouse’s The Philadelphia Story
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on December 11, 2015
The spell has been cast. It would be folly to single out any individual performer in this review, since the cast as a whole is so delightful.
The atmosphere is tense but not too tense: family members mill about the living room preparing for the second wedding of the eldest daughter. The nervousness is almost rote, stakes not being quite as high as, say, those for a first wedding. The mother titters about with last minute details.The bride to be makes declarative but none-too bold statements, and the butler is prompt and complacent. Nearly all of them take a moment to bark …
Review: Now Now Oh Now by the Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 07, 2015
Entertaining, thought-provoking and a touch disturbing, this bracing 70 minutes of play is deeply serious. Just like the Rude Mechs themselves.
The Rude Mechs are looking for exactly thirty spectactor-participants to fill the seats at each performance in Now Now Oh Now. Or perhaps I should say at each experience of the work, for they carefully structure it to make those numerological thirty transit with them through the varieties of theatrical experience. Dress warmly, friends, for you'll wait in the yard outside the Off Center until summoned. The Rudes now promise to have a fire, which …