Recent Reviews
Review: Boudikka, the Warrior Queen by Philip Kreyche
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 07, 2011
This play has clear-cut heroes, victims, and villains but, unfortunately, not much depth, giving it an air of pantomime.
The story of Boudikka, a Celtic Queen who leads an uprising against the colonial Roman Empire, might be summed up by a Hollywood exec like so: “It’s like Braveheart but with a woman!” Roman historian Tacitus preserved the history of Boudikka, commonly spelled Boudicca, and Cassius Dio later expanded on it. Boudikka was accounted to be a fair and wise ruler who essentially followed her deceased husband's philosophy that it was best to play ball …
Review: Urinetown by SummerStock Austin
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 01, 2011
This is one of the most seamless productions I have seen in the 2011 season in Austin. Every minute is filled -- with a laugh, a sigh, or more preponderantly a toe-tapping musical number. While each song embraces a different musical style, all are unapologetically over the top.
You’re In It Now: Stepping Gingerly into Urinetown: The Musical Two minutes into the opening number of Urinetown, I felt my heart give a quiet groan: was I really about to witness two straight hours of potty humor? There must have been at least twenty different sweetly sung references to micturition in the first two minutes alone and with "p" being such an easy letter to rhyme, it could go on as long as rest-stop …
Review: The Imaginary Invalid by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 27, 2011
You won't find any solutions to current health care issues, other than the truism that laughter is the best medicine, but you will certainly lose your worries about them during the lively two hours of this performance.
The 85-seat house at the City Theatre was agreeably full on the opening Friday of Karen Sneed's staging of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. A full house of attentive spectators is always a boost to the cast. Amusement is amplified and reactions build. The natural curiosity of the audience becomes rapport with actors and characters. Comedy, by provoking shared laughter, binds the members of each evening's audience indefinably, in a fashion that differs from night to …
Review: Hedda Gabler (for export) by Palindrome Theatre (2010-2013)
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 25, 2011
Robin Grace Thompson's Hedda is a fierce, intelligent, cornered creature, and we watch with fascination as she advances toward the ultimate, explosive ending of the play.
Austin's youngish Palindrome Theatre is on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to perform their new, 90-minute non-stop Hedda Gabler every afternoon from August 5 to 29, except for Wednesdays. Outside those office hours the six-member cast and associates will be free to immerse themselves in the largest international arts event around, now in its 74th year. Last year, for example, Edinburgh offered 2,453 different shows staging 40,254 performances by 21,148 performers in 259 …
Review: Footloose by Zilker Theatre Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 19, 2011
Granted, recognized and applauded -- but for a viewer who'd never seen the film or the stage production, the book for Footloose was really, really lame. We're talking Elvis-Presley-movie levels of dumb.
I attended Zilker Theatre Production's Footloose ten days ago on opening weekend, and I'm only just now writing it up. They've got a nice long run -- six weeks, four nights a week -- and an Austin tradition of celebrating the summer that stretches back 53 years. Judging from the full parking lot and the large, cheerful crowd lounging on the slope above the Hillside Theatre, Zilker Productions doesn't need much help in selling the …
Review: 69 Love Songs by Gnap! Theatre Projects
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on July 14, 2011
It’s in the very nature of improv for the performers to search feverishly for the emotional click with the audience: most often a laugh but sometimes a revelation, a moment of disgust, or a connection of sympathy.
If you scour the liner notes of 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields you will find this admission by writer Stephen Merritt: “I like over-the-top sentimentality if there’s a justification for it.” While this thought is no way to sum up the majesty of his much-beloved indie/emo/pop/retro/folk rock masterpiece album, it is a good way to introduce it. The second necessary detail is that Merritt did not write 69 Love Songs as a collection …