Recent Reviews
Review: The Tempest by Emily Ann Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 25, 2011
Bridget's Gang has a good time with their Shakespeare, and they're happy to greet the audience at the conclusion of the play. Like the institution of the EmilyAnn itself, they provide this community with a place of delight -- a magic island in the archipelago of the Hill Country.
In this hottest Texas summer on record you could be pardoned for suffering a touch of cognitive dissonance when you decide to drive through the beginnings of the Hill Country, 45 minutes southwest of Austin, to attend Shakespeare's last work, set upon a magical island surrounded by the Mediterranean. Wimberley, Texas, is ranch country, and these days the rolling landscape is starkly dry. Even the EmilyAnn's illustration reveals the situation: Laura Ray, portraying magician's daughter …
Review: The Cherry Orchard by University of Texas Theatre & Dance
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2011
The acting in the piece is strong, a fact that gives one an ever greater wistfulness in the 'what if' realm.
What was Brant Pope thinking? That's not just a curmudgeonly expostulation. AustinLiveTheatre has an affection for alt-versions, augmentations and re-interpretations of the classics. Relatively small audiences have benefited from the Shakespeare riffs of the Wondrous Strange Players, their antecedent Austin Drama Club and the annual inventions of the Weird Sisters Theatre Collective. ALT applauds the current Hedda roll -- two modern language versions of Hedda Gabler from Palindrome Theatre, the SVT's Heddatron and The Further …
Review: The Guys by Flash Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 19, 2011
Playwright Anne Nelson reduces the September 11 catastrophe to human proportions, giving us only two characters of flesh and blood on this stage.
The attack on the World Trade Center towers ten years ago was variously recalled and commemorated around town last week in schools, churches, lodges, assemblies and official ceremonies. The tone varied, according to the sentiments and the level of extrovert patriotism of those involved. The Austin Statesman ran a distasteful series of "Where were you then?" articles, as if any random individual's reaction to the flagrantly mediatized events could validate the nation's shock and anger. …
Review: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Chaotic Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on September 16, 2011
The players of Chaotic Theater Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) are feigning madness half the time. The rest of the time they really are mad.
Though This Be Madness . . . When accused of madness by Rosencrantz, Hamlet replies, “I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.” The players of Chaotic Theater Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) are similarly feigning madness half the time. The rest of the time they really are mad. With more costume changes than a Lady Gaga show, more pop cultural references than …
Review: Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) by Wondrous Strange Players
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on September 14, 2011
Leonardo’s wife crosses the stage, desperation pouring in torrents from her mouth, “Where is he? Where is he?” The inevitable seems suddenly so blithely evitable . . . .
Darkness at the Break of Noon: Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding The stage is stark, the lights are dim, the crickets and the wind are rumbling in the background. A woman, weary and worried, enters the room and falls into a stiff chair. Her son comes through with the intention of going to work. The word knife enters the conversation and the mother explodes, going from worry to wailing at the world’s iniquities. She is …
Review: Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) by Wondrous Strange Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 14, 2011
The Wondrous Strange Players deliver a challenging and intense evening with this piece. The narrative style is relatively ghostly ghouly, along the Halloween traditions of local theatre, but that is consistent with their own history.
From Andalucía to Appalachia via Austin The Wondrous Strange Players have evolved and developed in Darwinian fashion despite the difficulties of schisms, bootstrapping and homelessness, and they now occupy a real theatrical space at the cavernous Community Renaissance Market at William Cannon and Westgate. They're still staging in the western corridor of what used to be an Albertson's grocery store, but they've acquired tall black drapes, rigging, and simple lighting instruments sufficient to turn it …