Recent Reviews
Review: The 1940s Radio Hour by Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 01, 2010
The theatre audience becomes the studio audience, responding appropriately to the applause signs. They get involved in all those secondary stories and relationships unfolding behind the folks currently talking into the big old clunky microphones down front.
Can there by anyone who doesn't appreciate the warm sepia glow of old time radio broadcasts? Of course, many favorite films from the 1930s and 1940s provide a similar feeling of nostalgia, but their images make a different experience. An old-time radio broadcast was magic because it came right into your home and into your head. Millions of Americans shared the experience of being, literally, "the radio audience" -- from audire, Latin, "to listen." Those …
Review: A Little Night Music by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 28, 2010
There's little of Ingmar Bergman's darkness about this glittering tale. Ah, the flesh, its delights and temptations, and the keen edge of time!
A Little Night Music at the Georgetown Palace theatre is a giddy delight. Stephen Sondheim’s elegant fable has the magic of a midsummer night in Sweden. The sun never fully disappears, time is in suspension and the world hums with yearning and expectation. In this gentle world of lovers and fools the story is attractively simple. Sondheim’s music and lyrics lift in subtle fashion the sentimental dilemmas of the cast of vivid, idle upper class …
Review: The Curse of the House of Usher by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 25, 2010
The piece contains moments of intense drama, which the WCTC cast delivers in good style. In particular, there's a tearing, revelatory moment at the sudden death of Madeline.
Weird City Theatre Company specializes in the creepy, the spooky and the haunting. Their sense of "weird" shares something with the scruffy, quirky laid-back attitude of the now clichéd slogan "Keep Austin Weird," in that they are working on a shoestring and a vision. But they are really embracing a different notion of Austin creativity: the idea of translating otherworldly out-of-copyright works into evening séances to give us suspense, a shiver and a release.Patti Neff-Tiven's …
Review: The Dixie Swim Club by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 20, 2010
What makes this production special is that it plays to the strengths of the informal, floating company constituting the Sam Bass Community Theatre. Like the Dixie Swim Club women, these women actors resonate as a group of friends.
The Sam Bass Community Theatre celebrates friendship and nostalgia in The Dixie Swim Club, by that clever trio of writers who dropped out of the big time to devote themselves to crafting vehicles for community theatres.Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten now have residences in Asheville NC and in New York City, according to their website. After careers in television and regional theatre, they hit gold with their 2005 North Carolina premiere of Dearly …
Review: The Atheist by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 20, 2010
The Atheist is billed as a "dark comedy," but it is no barrel of laughs. In fact, there are virtually no laughs at all in Joey Hood's intense, two-act 90-minute performance.
Sleazy, pushy Augustine Early is the just the sort of brilliant sociopath that fascinates Ken Webster, judging from the programming at the Hyde Park Theatre.The Atheist is billed as a "dark comedy," but it is no barrel of laughs. In fact, there are virtually no laughs at all in Joey Hood's intense, two-act 90-minute performance. If it's a comedy at all, it's a sardonic comedy, in the etymological sense: from 1630–40<>sardoni(us) (<>sardónios of Sardinia) + …
Review: Moonlight and Magnolias by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 19, 2010
Gaslight Baker's production was one that had a bit of everything, with something for everyone -- clowning, film buff history, zooming egos and parodies of that beloved-for-all-time American film. Not much room -- or need -- for quiet reflection in this one!
Lots of folks turned out for the last Saturday night performance of Roy Hutchinson's Moonlight and Magnolias by the Gaslight Baker Theatre. Word of mouth had been at work down in Lockhart about this guys' screwball comedy. There is a dame in the cast. Esther Williams has only a few lines in her role as Miss Poppenghul, the earnest and attentive secretary to Hollywood producer David O. Selznick (David Schneider). Most of those are variations …