Recent Reviews
Review: Austin Latino New Play Festival 2011 by Teatro Vivo
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 27, 2011
Garza's Dos Pocitos posits a hypothetical future in which the United States has de-accessioned an area of southern Texas, leaving it to drug runners, roving bands and the few stubborn Tejanos who refused to move to safer areas in Texas.
The three Austin playwrights showcased at the Autin Latino New Play Festival last week could not have had a gentler or more supportive audience. Organizers Rupert Reyes and JoAnn Carreon-Reyes founded their Teatro Vivo about ten years ago, producing appealing, comic pieces, usually written by Rupert and featuring him. Just the way that Austin has branded itself as the home of "live music," the Reyes' theatre group is known for its "live theatre." "Teatro vivo" …
Review: As You Like It by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 19, 2011
Chuck Ney's As You Like It served both as showcase and a satisfying entertainment. We left the theatre cheered and refreshed, exiting the cool blue ot that imaginary birch forest back out into the warm Texas night.
Marketa Fantova's designs for As You Like It at Texas State University establish at a glance the intentions of director Chuck Ney. The action opens at Duke Frederick's court, a bare space at the front of the wide thrust stage, bounded to the rear by a high, chill wall with a blue metallic sheen. That wall initially appears featureless, except for the edifice of steel tubing and dark metal treads parked against it -- the …
Review: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2011
This show won't give you much to ponder, but it will keep throwing things at you until you laugh and smile.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is set in a mythic French Riviera, a delirious paradise that seems to be populated only by rich Americans, a couple of rival American con artists, and one charmingly corrupt French police chief. It's a concept that would make the French laugh out loud. Not that they don't have their own share of nutty cinematic visions, including le vieux Far West, but because this is Cannes as the returned GIs imagined it. …
Review: Carousel by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 14, 2011
Carousel is a gorgeous thing out of another time. The story is simple. So are the characters, who for the most part good folk of the land, just as in Oklahoma!, the hit just two years earlier by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Carousel is a gorgeous thing out of another time. The story is simple. So are the characters, who for the most part good folk of the land, just as in Oklahoma!, the hit just two years earlier by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Carousel is a story of courting, disappointment in marriage between carnival tough Billy Bigelowe and bright-eyed local girl Julie Jordan, a robbery attempt and the bad end of the Bigelowe, then, unexpectedly, a counseling …
Review: August: Osage County by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 12, 2011
Tennessee Williams was a dour idealist. Letts, in contrast, is a nihilist whose message is that our American culture is rotting at its heart. He's a man of black humors entertaining us in a wasteland.
Director Dave Steakley proves that with a first-rate cast and a gifted scenic designer he can turn Tracey Letts' savage misanthropy into a mesmerizing long evening in the theatre. That's no modest achievement. The last -- and first -- Letts work I saw was Capital T Theatre's Killer Joe, which I found violent and obscene. Not in the sexual sense, but because Letts took such evident pleasure in degrading his working-class characters. Perhaps Letts is …
Review: Incident at Vichy by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 10, 2011
The reluctant accessory to the murder machine, the fully human and aware victim, the despairing exponent of German-speaking decency and moral feeling. . . Miller's accomplishment is to make them characters of dimension and prototypes of millions involved in the still incomprehensible atrocities.
The black box on the fourth floor has a claustrophobic feel. The central space is stark and looks more like a basement than an attic -- a couple of benches, neutral gray walls, a narrow high window, a couple of empty beer bottles left on the sill. As you gather and settle into the ranks of seats around that central space, the theatre serenades you with recordings of French music -- Jacques Brel, an anachronism, …