Recent Reviews
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2011
The faces are familiar, regulars all, and the only real surprise is Rick Roemer's enchantingly starchy and autocratic dignity as Lady Bracknell.
This "Trivial Comedy for Serious People" opened in 1895 and it was the last shining moment for Wilde's career as writer and dramatist. Soon afterwards he found himself in court, accused of immoral behavior and then sentenced to gaol. Because of that scandal the original production closed after only 86 performances. Since then it has become one of the most dependable and regularly revived comic satires on the boards. Wilde's earnest young men show themselves …
Review: Steel Magnolias by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 03, 2011
Tickets for the Round Rock hometown production of this hometown comedy-drama are moving briskly. Everyone wants to go down to Truvy's. Even the good ol' boys.
At one point in Robert Harling's mischievous script for Steel Magnolias, set in Truvy's beauty shop in Chinquapin, Louisiana, newly hired perm-and-trim assistant Annelle worries that one of the husbands might intrude into that women's world. Tidily turned out Clairee Beltcher responds, "Oh, those men wouldn't ever come in here. They're afraid that we might be running around nekkid or something." Harling's 1987 play and the 1989 film of Steel Magnolias succeed exactly for that …
Review: Flying by Breaking String Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 01, 2011
Mukhina, Schmidt and this talented company create a terrific, terrible and hypnotic spectacle for us. Flying is an experience not to be missed.
Olga Mukhina’s Flying is a fast, dangerous and exhilarating ride. Graham Schmidt and Breaking String Theatre put audiences up close to the beautiful youth of post-Soviet Russia in this 2004 piece. Olga Mukhin was one of those who originated the “New Drama” that came raging into Russia's mid-1990’s. Flying plays until February 19 at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street (behind Joe’s Bakery on 7th Street). This is the North American premiere. Heedless, hedonistic and …
Review: One Venus Hour by Sheila Gordon
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 30, 2011
The widowed or divorced father, retired alone in Florida, with the querelous mutter and collapsed world of an aged New Yorker, pushes back at his daughter's pained, well-intentioned ministrations.
Equity actor Shela M. Gordon took the opportunity of FronteraFest 2011 to do a solo turn showing friends, the general public and her students at St. Ed's that she's endowed both with an actor's shape shifting wiles and with a warm and thoughtful writer's imagination. Gordon developed this piece with support from Scriptworks, here in Austin. Her One Venus Hour is not about the goddess or even about the planet. It's about time, the final …
Review: Cardigan by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 29, 2011
Are we in a classroom or in a fantasy world? The setting is inconsistent, probably intended as ironic, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Maybe a playwright shouldn't act in his own play. Unless, of course, he's one of those comedy yuksters who speaks directly to the audience and makes smartass observations about his own life exeriences and surroundings. Trey Deason, the playwright, plays the lead character in Cardigan, a piece expanded from a well-received 2010 Short Fringe offering. His assumption of that identity may be disconcerting to those who have run into him in so-called real life. Deason …
Review: Agamemnon by City on a Hill* Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 28, 2011
Kimberley Mead as Clytemnestra had impressively mastered the language and joined it to gesture and presence. She gave the queen a lively, alluring murderous intelligence in which every syllable had meaning.
Agamemnon as produced by City on a Hill* Productions and directed by David J. Boss is a satisfyingly crunchy rendition of the first part of Aeschylus' Orestia. In this season of Academy Award nominations it might be useful to note that the trilogy won the annual competition at the Greater Dionysian Festival in Athens in 458 B.C. In a chronological sense it's not "the first play in the Western canon," as stated in the program. …