Recent Reviews
Review 1: The Wars of Heaven, Pt. 1 by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 11, 2015
Puppets and death. Puppets and injustice. People and puppets. There's a transitivity there that haunts Trouble Puppetmaster Connor Hopkins.
Puppets and death. Puppets and injustice. People and puppets. There's a transitivity there that haunts Trouble Puppetmaster Connor Hopkins, a brooding concern about a world out of kilter that informs his choice of subjects -- Frankenstein, Sinclair's The Jungle, Riddley Walker -- and his treatment of them. His original juvenile adventure story The Crapstall Street Boys takes us through a world of exploitation and cannibalism far worse than that depicted by Dickens. Now Hopkins is …
Review: Krapp's Last Tape AND Hughie by Actors Theatre Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 10, 2015
Performed on the near-empty black box stage with a short intermission these two pieces complement one another, each opening the shadowy doors of memory and self-delusion.
There are few things more disturbing and moving than the sight of a mild-mannered funnyman in despair. Michael Stuart's always a welcome presence on Austin stages. A tall man with a large frame, gently balding pate and subtle smile, he's always turning up in reassuringly comic or quirky roles, particularly at the Austin Playhouse. The tut-tutting Lord Summerhayes in Shaw's Misalliance; Angus the dreamy mentally handicapped Canadian farmer in Hyde Park Theatre's The Drawer Boy; …
Review: Love's Labor's Lost by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 04, 2015
Love’s Labor’s Lost has long lingered in unlovéd obscurity, and not just for its alliterations. Present Company has organized a fine party for you up there on the rooftop and all you have to do is kick back, admire and enjoy.
What better time than spring — even a Texas spring — for a play about the foolishness of courting? And who better to present it than Present Company, the players who’ve left Rain Lily Farm again this year for the rooftop terrace at Whole Foods Market in downtown Austin? Love’s Labor’s Lost has long lingered in unlovéd obscurity, and not just for its alliterations. Shakespeare probably wrote this court entertainment in the mid-1590’s, at about …
Review: Cenicienta, at Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 26, 2015
Ten-year-old Belinda is solo but she's not alone. With the happy magic of object puppetry and the play of imagination, Gricelda Silva animates objects in the dreary basement so convincingly designed by David Molina Garza
If you've ever had the fleeting wish that Disney's Cinderella wasn't so dated and unreal, here's your remedy. The story of the valiant but terribly neglected stepdaughter dates back to Italian folktales and was retold in French by Charles Perrault and later in German by the Brothers Grimm. Now we have here in Austin a charming bilingual version, Spanish and English, that's the collaboration of talents from three Austin theatre companies or more. The Zach …
Review: All The Way by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 18, 2015
You arrive at the theatre expecting to be entertained by a play about LBJ, and in Vinovich's first three minutes on stage you believe that you are right there with Lyndon. It's an eerie and electrifying experience.
Let's shout it out right now: Steve Vinovich is an astonishing LBJ impersonator. He resembles our larger-than-life 36th president, but what nails it is his mastery of the man's accent, phrasing and physical gesture. You arrive at the theatre expecting to be entertained by a play about LBJ, and in Vinovich's first three minutes on stage you believe that you are right there with Lyndon. It's an eerie and electrifying experience. Playwright Robert Shenkkan's All …
Review: I'm Not Rappaport by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2015
It's a heart-warming tale, no matter how much you may be aware that your sympathies are being manipulated. As in the Quijote, the man's great disasters have an endearing nobility.
Lifetime New Yorker Herb Gardner hit the theatrical jackpot twice, with A Thousand Clowns in 1962 and I'm Not Rappaport in 1984. I didn't see the first of those on any stage, but my kids wondered why I would periodically proclaim, "All right, everybody out for volleyball!" That's Jason Robards summoning the neighborhood at 6 a.m. in the film version. In both plays Gardner portrays an oddball New Yorker down on his luck but indomitable …