Recent Reviews
Review: How The Other Half Loves by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 08, 2010
We get to watch the two dinner parties develop in the same space in alternate time-stop action. The result is a devilishly clever bit of plotting and some sparkling comedy.
Alan Ayckbourn applies a clever staging twist of time and space in the first act of this contemporary English comedy of manners, and it is a delight to watch the City players accomplish it. How The Other Half Loves, as the title implies, is a satire of class and sexual mores. I repeatedly mistyped that title in the ALT "images" feature for the production, because my fingers were finding their way back to How The …
Review: Harvey by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 05, 2010
The Palace gives this old stuff a vigorous production, including its signature attention to sets and detail. Michael Rhea comfortably nudges Jimmy Stewart out of our minds with his interpretation of Elwood P. Dowd.
If it weren't for Jimmy Stewart, Mary Chase's gentle comedy Harveywould probably have been forgotten long ago. It's a pretty broad farce about a hysterically pretentious small town woman desperate to avoid the social opprobrium of her unmarried brother's mental delusions. The local mental clinic Chumley's Rest is one locus of the fun, where blinkered psychiatrists and a muscle-guy attendant think Veta Louise is the nut-case. Brother Elwood P. Dowd serenely accepts their diagnoses while …
Review: Waiting for Godot by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 31, 2010
In his massive apprehension Benge works to master the uncertainity of the eternal, ever frustrated expectation of the arrival of Godot. Kanne's Gogo lives from moment to moment and from word to word, ever capable of surprise and enchanted by mystery.
Director Veronica Prior took on the job of directing this classic piece of twentieth century theatre despite some misgivings. She writes in the program, "I studied this play in college, as many of us did. I have seen several different productions over the years, and wondered what was wrong with me, that I just didn't 'get it.' I am a simple person, not a philosopher. To be honest, I know very little of the 'isms' …
Review: The Taming of the Shrew (all-women version) by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 26, 2010
In the post-show discussion on opening night, University of Texas prof Dr. Emily Richmond-Garza, head of the comp lit department, reminded actors and audience that in the theatre of Shakespeare's time there were two sure-fire crowd-pleasing delights: fights and wife-beatings.
Much of the comedy in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew arises from farcical transformation. Lucentio changes places with his servant Tranio; both suitors to the fair Bianca disguise themselves as tutors; an aged traveler is intimidated into playing the part of wealthy old Vincentio, Lucentio's father. And of course, the titular shrew of the piece, "Kate the curs't," is a woman seeking to assert her rights to autonomy, choice and respect, as if she had …
Review: The Carpetbagger's Children by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 24, 2010
Ever present in the story is the land itself, the Estate that produces the revenue supplied to the good sisters and denied during Father's lifetime to the single bad seed. Family endures; the Estate lasts.
The Carpetbagger's Children, staged in 2005, was the penultimate of the Texas playwright's dramas, the next-to-the-last of from 40 (according to Wikipedia) to more than 60 (according to the New York Times). Like many of his dramas, it is set in the mythical town of Harrison, Texas, based on his birthplace Wharton, a crossroads southwest of Houston. Foote's final play was, aptly enough, a reworking of his earlier Dividing The Estate. He died last year …
Review: Jack and Jill by Sustainable Theatre Project
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 20, 2010
Jack and Jill is an amusement for 20-somethings and 30-somethings, or perhaps for the recently divorced, individuals who are reaching out or who have been sharply slapped back.
Jack and Jill is "a romance," according to playwright Jane Martin, the mysterious alter ego of Jon Jory, retired artistic director of the Theatre of Louisville. The Mother Goose reference implies a jaunty comedy approach, but Jack and Jill is anything but that. Martin's two-character play is energetic and witty, but it's a portrait of two individuals incapable of merging two I's into a We. Jack is a big, bashful stumbling guy, all thumbs and …