Recent Reviews
Review: Upon A Midnight Dreary by Last Act Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 11, 2011
In contrast to those somewhat overstaged pieces, The Tell Tale Heart was direct, convincing and suspenseful. Greg Klein's adaptation takes the principal concept -- the alarming and disorienting effect of heightened aural and visual sensitivity -- and develops it in a completely different context.
Edgar Allan Poe is a deceptively attractive figure for theatre makers. We've all read with a delicious shiver his best-known short stories. His themes of death, madness and mystery are so very elemental that they have never gone out of style. The elaborate early 19th-century style of his poetry may be a challenge, but the simple sardonics of his short stories, often in first person, appeal to our desire for intensity. As long as you're …
Review: No Exit by Chaotic Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on July 11, 2011
Director Andrew Black’s No Exit fulfills the promises of the original play while connecting it to a modern audience in a raw and beautiful form.
Death without End Inès slips behind Estelle and coos comfortingly in her ear, gives her promises of faith, sisterhood and protection, and then suddenly she pinches her and shoves her away. . . Estelle cozies up to Garcin and whispers of an endless devotion in the only place that, endless, really has any meaning, then she turns away, haughtily dismissing him. . . Garcin shrugs aside his social predators and affirms his own solitude and …
Review: Troilus and Cressida by Austin Shakespeare Youth Troupe
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 05, 2011
Shakespeare's sour vision of courtship and courtly honor is so off-putting, however, that a single unsuspecting hearing of the text could leave one confused and deceived.
Although the performance took place in the idyllic lakeside setting for The Curtain Theatre, Troilus and Cressida was no picnic. Austin Shakespeare put this summer's 16-member Young Shakespeare teen troupe into one of Shakespeare's grimmest and most cynical works. The epic characters of Homer's Iliad manifest gallantry and heroic courtesy, and the Trojan lovebirds Troilus and Cressida, grafted from medieval courtly romances via Chaucer, plunge into oaths and carnal pleasure. But the guiding spirits here …
Review: Anything Goes by Lee Colee Studios
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 29, 2011
Colée with assistant director Rachel McGuiness and other staffers brought these youngsters to an enthusiastic pitch, moving them with energy and precision. The set was simple but apt and perfectly well decorated.
The 'Broadway Bound' theatre boot camps run in Wimberley each summer by Lee Colée have become so popular that for the just-completed production of Cole Porter's 1934 musical comedy Anything Goes, she was instructing and directing a cast of 39 young persons ranging in age from 8 to 18. The turnout was so strong that she took the initiative of organizing the players into different configurations for "odd" performance dates (with the older players in …
Review: Putting It Together by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 28, 2011
Putting It Together has the polish and sharpness of cabaret, transforming the unadorned utilitarian lecture hall at the ACC Northridge campus at least temporarily into a window on a New York state of mind.
This is Sondheim song season. Not just because 81-year-old master incarnates the tunesmanship of Broadway of the last 50 years, but because his tunes and music so deftly capture the dreams of those sophisticates who have populated his audiences. Yes, his breakthrough was as the lyricist for West Side Story, but as this compendium song performance illustrates, Stephen Sondheim portrayed with wit and acumen the sentimental lives of Americans. Dr. Jimmy Shepherd of Austin Community …
Review: I Love You Because by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 28, 2011
If bartenders are so worldly wise and encouraging, why don't they rule the world? And when it all comes down to making the Big Hard Choice, is the rules-follower going to follow his game plan or follow his heart? (No points for guessing that one right!)
Michael McKelvey set up his collaboration with Penfold Theatre and Andrew Cannata six months or more in advance, long before the announcement that he will be leaving Austin for Pennsylvania this coming fall. Remembering their previous successes Five Years,Three Days of Rain and John and Jen, I arranged specially to return early from a family celebration in Houston in order to catch the show on Sunday, June 19. When we turned up at the Hyde …