Recent Reviews
Review: Secondary Cause of Death by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 10, 2010
If you’re familiar with the Sam Bass theatre, by all means, turn out and smile. If you’re not, well, wait until next time; Peter Gordon’s Secondary Cause of Death isn’t an example of their best.
The Sam Bass players put their energy and ingenuity into Peter Gordon’s Secondary Cause of Death and I did get some smiles from it. The Round Rock thespian crew under Lynn Beaver's direction were performing the equivalent of CPR on a piece that probably should have been selected for unfavorable triage at a much earlier date. With this play the British playwright wrote the second in his “Inspector Pratt” trilogy, a follow-up to his Murdered …
Review: Noises Off by Way Off Broadway Community Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 02, 2010
Emotions are high and farcical confusion is everywhere as the now familiar figures of this oddball cast battle one another in semi-silence. It's a precisely performed and choreographed madness.
The Way Off Broadway Community Players in Leander are celebrating their spacious new locale by turning the theatre inside out with laughter. Literally. Michael Frayn's Noises Off is a lively amusement that pokes good-hearted fun at the conventions of the stage, starting with the most basic one: the agreement that we in the audience will accept you, the actors, as the characters that you are pretending to represent. You settle into your comfortable seat in …
Review: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers by Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 30, 2010
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has a simple message with an indulgent wink. Men are real men, except when they're really just boys; girls want to be won and whirled away.
The charming musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers now playing on weekends at the Wimberley Players' stage makes me think of the waggish definition of a "theatre classic": something that's really good but that no one does any more. Director Lee Colée Atnip has been working since February with members of this cast of 37, and that preparation pays off. Both the players and the members of the preview audience last week were having a …
Review: Hamlet by Black Swan Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 25, 2010
See what this focused, well-spoken, taut player does with the character who has haunted him. They jointly inhabit a swift and moving performance.
Those lustrous eyes, that bony frame, that complexion sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought -- many of us believe that Justin Scalise was born to play Hamlet. He has certainly trained for Shakespeare and for this role, in New Orleans, in England, and for the past three years in Austin. We have seen him as Bottom, Feste, Adam & Silvius, Don John, Mercutio and Lucio. And even Hamlet, freeze-dried, for Austin Shakespeare's 2008 …
Review: Rent by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2010
The show roars -- literally. The band dimly visible behind the chain link fence at center stage has got its amps turned all the way up under the direction of Allen Robertson. Microphones on the singers are not sufficient to protect them or us.
Rent is the sort of production the Zach theatre uses to pay the rent: the staging of a familiar rock and roll work with appeal for the young, for the young professionals, for the creatives and for the club goers. Seen as daring at its 1996 debut, Rent has become sufficiently mainstream that it can be staged in community theatres, summer theatres, and, this past February, even by the kidsActing studio here in Austin. Director …
Review: The Imaginary Invalid by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 22, 2010
Diminutive sophomore Sophia Franzella is one to watch. She has this single scene in which her papa Argan interrogates her about the love antics of her sister, but it's a cajoling, beguiling knock-about success, greeted by spontaneous applause.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin would not have objected at all to this re-do of his 1673 farce. He wrote The Imaginary Invalid in rapid-fire prose, using verse only for comic ballets at the intervals (omitted in this staging). David Chambers' translation/interpretation of the piece follows the action faithfully, although often with slangy word choices. Between them, Chambers and director David Long apply a clownification of the characters and a Borscht Belt leer not obvious in the original …