Recent Reviews
Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream by Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 11, 2010
This is an evening to be enjoyed and remembered, one of clever, lively action, beautiful players and knockabout clowns, exquisite renaissance music, masques and costume.
A Midsummer Night's Dream may well be Shakespeare's most familiar comedy. In his review of Austin theatre for the World Theatre Day celebration last April Robert Faires noted it as one of those plays that "circle round again and again like pop songs in heavy rotation." You have to admit it: he's right. The Tex-Arts youth program did the show ten days before his remarks, then Austin Shakespeare did it in Zilker Park with 1960's …
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 …