Recent Reviews
Review: Gallathea by Poor Shadows of Elysium
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 10, 2014
Kevin Gates is intensely dedicated to the text of early modern English drama. In the same secret space where he was transformed into Shakespeare's Coriolanus just over a year ago, he has conjured up a graceful and whimsical staging of a work from the London of 1588 that you've not seen and probably have never heard of: John Lyly's Gallathea. It's a pastorale that provides definitive evidence that Shakespeare wasn't the only dramatist whose plots …
Review: Venus in Fur by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 06, 2014
Karrasch's transformations of costume and personae are by turns amusing, alluring and alarming; Haddock is fatigued, then intrigued, then confused, then spellbound. Karrasch is a chameleon but she's also a shape-shifter, an enchantress or an illusion.
What is desire? The attraction to a pair of long legs in black high-heeled boots and fishnet stockings? The fascination with a pair of bright eyes with heavy mascara, a mane of blond hair, and lips coated with a gloss as luscious and thick as blood-colored chocolate? The yearning for physical contact and the hypnotic intensity of mystery? Or perhaps the transmutation of half-understood, deep-buried memories from childhood? Or maybe the enigma of the Other, …
Review: Venus in Fur by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 06, 2014
The humor in the play is sharp contemporary adult dialogue. Someday this topical humor may date Venus in Fur to the early ought-teens of the twenty-first century, but so be it.
Venus in Fur by David Ives is a new, highly regarded American play making the rounds of theatres in Texas and across the nation. It's currently playing at Austin Playhouse, Austin’s singular shopping mall theatre through January 25th. Austin Playhouse is calling it an off-season play and discounting its ticket price for its initial run. Theatre-goers won’t want to miss this one. The setting is a rented rehearsal studio in Manhattan, where a young playwright …
Review: We Were Nothing by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 16, 2013
One woman starts to share a secret, then pulls back; they teeter on the edge of something unexperienced and unknown. How much are you willing to reveal to your friend? How much do you need your friend? What is it that you need? Can you put it into words?
You may want to budget some extra time for locating the venue if you don't already know Monstrosity Studio or have an informative friend involved in the Poison Apple Initiative production of We Were Nothing by Will Arbery. I wound up driving through a series of parking lots surrounding rental barracks south of Oltorf, then got warmer when I crossed west across South First. It's been dark for quite a while by 7 p.m. and …
Review: Missionary Position, Pleasure Journeys for the Intrepid Lady Explorer by Glass Half Full Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on December 15, 2013
The Missionary Position: Pleasure Journeys for the Intrepid Lady Explorer is a droll and satisfying show just completing its short run at Salvage Vanguard Theatre in east Austin. It's likely to return, and the public should keep it in mind as a performance worthy of their ticket-buying dollars. The show is a period piece on lady explorers in late Victorian times. Caroline Reck and Cami Alys of Glass Half Full Theatre portrayed our intrepid lady …
Review: Guys and Dolls by Playhouse San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 13, 2013
Playhouse San Antonio puts on a thoroughly enjoyable evening, I am telling you, one that reminds us with a smile that will not stop, that guys will be guys -- and dolls will be wives, if they can.
Broadway! The 1930's! Folks like Arthur Freed and Busby Berkley portrayed that fairytale sophistication in the black-and-white films they cranked out of Hollywood, but an even more magical version came from the typewriter of Damon Runyon, the sportswriter, gambler, drunk and divinely gifted portraitist of the demi-monde of Broadway. Runyon knew those people intimately and his colorful prose was laden with slang and surprising turns of phrase often inherited from Yiddish. His writing portrayed a …