Recent Reviews
Review: The Alien Baby Play by Tutto Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2012
In this production Kathleen Fletcher will make you believe in the impossible, no matter how the script was produced.
Bethany appeared first to the Austin public and to friends of Tutto Theatre in the warm and supporting setting of a private home in Westlake, last weekend. About twenty persons gathered in a living room comfortably furnished with artwork, masks and handicraft from across the world. Bethany was pleased to see all these friends at her "mom's house." She hurried about, offered us cookies, disappeared momentarily and then came back, rubbing the arc of her …
Review: The Cinderella Waltz by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 25, 2012
Despite Samantha Melomo's stepmother readiness to trim feet with an axe as necessary to get 'em into that magic slipper, pretty much everyone comes out pleased at the end
The mischievous Don Nigro puts the Cinderella fairy tale into a humorous trailer-park context and sends it spinning around so unpredictably that you're never quite sure whether the sweet, mistreated Rosie Snow is going to turn up roses or not. Shannon Tipton directed a one-act version of the story last week as her inaugural outing with the Austin High School Red Dragons with their 401st stage production. It was a "novice" production with a cast …
Review: Viper Vixens of 2012 by Electronic Planet Ensemble
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 23, 2012
The video runs out before the music does, reverting to more abstract visualizations, and only then, in the last three numbers, does the EPE exert its real talent and reach beyond cheap vaudeville.
The Electronic Planet Ensemble are magic men -- I can say that since percussionist Rachel Fuhrer apparently has disappeared this year, leaving poet David Jewell, keyboardist Chad Salvata and bassist/video artist Sergio R. Samayoa to deliver this piece assisted by drummer Doug Marcis. I had to identify Marcis from the poster legend, since there was no program available at the Vortex this year. Their January offering for 2012, Viper Vixens, falls far short of earlier …
Review: I Hate Hamlet by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 17, 2012
I Hate Hamlet moves quickly, has a touch of wisdom, only a whiff of pathos, a good deal of tolerance for the acting profession, and plenty of laughs along the way.
You don't have to hate Shakespeare's Hamlet in order to enjoy this lighthearted romp, but it does help to have an appreciation for ghosts. We're not talking about the grim visaged former king of Shakespeare's imagined Denmark, but about the much friendlier shade of the great tragedian John Barrymore. Once he appears after the obligatory set-up scenes of the television actor and his girlfriend moving into an ancient and remarkable old apartment in New York …
Review: Conversations While Dining Alone by Ken Johnson
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on January 16, 2012
Conversations While Dining Alone is an exercise in humanity, in stepping into the shoes of another person, probably someone less fortunate than yourself, and trying on that plight for size.
An evening at the Dougherty Arts Center for Ken Johnson’s Conversations While Dining Alone is a voyage into the brooding, lonely thoughts of the saddest people we know. Or maybe into those of just about everyone we know. These original monologues capture some of the ideas we have when we’re alone, the frustrations and the very ugliest thoughts that haunt our quieter moments. Chuck Merlo enters and seats himself at a desk, places a McDonalds …
Review: The Children's Hour by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 09, 2012
There's a lot of Lillian Hellman herself in the determined and dangerous Mary Tilford. In part, The Children's Hour is the writer's savage revenge on conventional morality.
One must understand Lillilan Hellman's 1934 melodrama The Children's Hour as a vision seen through a glass, darkly. So much separates us from this play, its imagined world, and Hellman's provocative portrait of middle-class morality that we risk imposing on it our own twenty-first-century sensibilities. That's inevitable, but by becoming aware of our own mindsets, perhaps we can stretch them a bit. Two women friends have worked in collegial partnership for eight years to purchase …