Recent Reviews
Review: The North Plan by Street Corner Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 13, 2013
Howls of delight met the finale and curtain call of The North Plan at the Hyde Park Theatre last night, an ovation more ecstatic and spontaneous than any I’ve heard in my six years of theatre going in Central Texas. Jason Wells’ black comedy about the chaotic breakdown of the United States sometime in the near future is a near perfect dramatic satire set in the jail and sheriff’s office in the mythical backwater town …
Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2013
Penfold's It's A Wonderful Life amply justifies its title. This production is an entertaining, reassuring and lively enactment, set in a simpler time. It's just the right tonic for the overdramatized complexities of our present day.
This is a warm, simple entertainment for the chill of the holiday season -- and it was so chilly in the Old Settler's Park in Round Rock last week that park employees had turned off the water at Rice's Crossing Store to prevent damage to the pipes. Penfold folk, using that recreation of a village gathering place for their third annual staging of Joe Landry's adaptation of the 1946 Frank Capra film with Jimmy Stewart, …
Review: And Then There Were None by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 09, 2013
You've arrived at an estate on an otherwise uninhabited island somewhere off the English coast along with nine strangers. Your host hasn't shown up. The weather has been steadily deteriorating. You spend the first hours tentatively making the acquaintance of this odd collection of mostly upper middle class individuals. The polite tedium is shattered when a voice from the next room sternly names each of you and accuses each of homicide. Ten lines of doggerel …
Review: The Undoing of Nonet by The Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on December 06, 2013
The Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company (KDHDC) is said by many to be the best modern dance company in Austin, and it also receives notable positive mentions statewide. Part of this reputation is built on the company’s athletically powerful performances and embrace of abstract communication, a hallmark of all modern dance inherited from Martha Graham. And while much of modern, or contemporary, dance in the 21st century has moved more toward narrative story dances or …
Review: Arsenic and Old Lace by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on December 01, 2013
Different Stages is mounting Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace at the Vortex Theatre in East Austin from November 22nd to December 14th. It is something of a comedy standard and comes highly recommended. As Director Blumensaadt stated during his curtain speech, Arsenic and Old Lace is from the 1940s, produced on Broadway in 1941. It is also listed as a comedy classic, and that it certainly is, a period piece with sharp dialogue throughout …
Review: Arsenic and Old Lace by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 01, 2013
Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring is one of those whimsical comedies that just won't die. The playwright wins our sympathies with a pair of comforting maiden aunts, their capable journalist nephew Mortimer and a sweet parson's daughter. He then plays a series of clever modulations in madness -- from the harmless to the surprising to the pathological. The play and the Jimmy Stewart movie are familiar, so this review's not likely to spoil …