Recent Reviews
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 …
Review: Hair by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 02, 2011
But on the evidence of the City Theatre production, Hair reveals itself principally to be about sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, to quote Ian Drury and the Blockheads (1977). And I like it.
City Theatre's production of the 1968 musical Hair is easy to look at, lively, familiar and loud, all of which qualities I consider to be virtues. For someone who knew every note of the 1967 cast album but had never seen it on stage, City's Hair was like a binge on vanilla Oreos. Jeff Hinkle, his four choreographers and that enthusiastic cast of twenty actor-singers keep the stage full and lively almost non-stop. They out-do …