Recent Reviews
Review: The Mousetrap by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 29, 2009
The treat is David Gallagher as the young perhaps-architect Christopher Wren.a walking nervous breakdown, a continuously recaptured cloud of italic exclamation points (!!!!!), parentheses and blurted thoughts. His performance, sets zinging the cords of this apparently predicable plot.
Theatre journalism has a half-life of perhaps two weeks, a fact that prompts me to strive to see a production as soon as possible. After all, a theatre review published only 48 hours before closing has not much more than archival interest. One would prefer to deliver the report and comments hot off the first-night griddle, particularly when the show's an interesting or engaging one. Perhaps, just perhaps, the review might contribute to increasing the …
Review: Hamlet by Austin Drama Club
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 20, 2009
Japhy and Ellen Fernandes and friends are more of a cult, one that is dedicated to dark and somewhat deranged productions of the classics, each done on half a shoestring. Their output is impressive.
Going to an Austin Drama Club production is like Alice's falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Their venue is a house just off E. 7th Street in Austin, Texas, and you enter through a scruffy back yard surrounded by a chain link fence. When my son and I arrived, Jennifer Fielding was standing by the gate on back yard duty. Her question was, "Have you been here before?"It wasn't a speakeasy challenge question, but …
Review: Season's Greetings by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 15, 2009
Every actor in this cast delivered a strong, nuanced performance. Aubrey Elenz as the needy, frustrated Belinda carried much of the overt action of the play -- not only as hostess but also as the most visibly vulnerable of these characters, all of them in need of love.
Their institution is ancient by Austin standards, with 80 years of theatre history under its present name, but the Red Dragon Players themselves are younger than most thespians in the town. They perform at Stephen F. Austin High School, at 1715 W. César Chavez near Mo-Pac, in the Praes Theatre, an impressive and well-equipped space with stadium seating three-quarters of the way around the playing area. The Red Dragons' Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn played …
Review: Laughter on the 23rd Floor by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 13, 2009
It's a vigorous, entertaining, vulgar, unpredictable evening, one that will blow away any stereotype you may have of Simon as a warm and fuzzy middle-of-the-road comedy writer. This has the authenticity of experience, with all the jagged edges that implies.
There's no assembly more live-wire, unpredictable and funny than a room full of comedy writers. In Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, director Andy Berkovsky and a wild, accomplished cast mint anew the eccentrics of the early days of television.Word has gotten around about this show, which opened in November, took a long weekend's break for Thanksgiving, and will now be on the boards until just before Christmas. I planned to slip in …
Review: Dionysus in '69 by Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 05, 2009
Dionysus in 69 is more successful as a 'way-back machine than as an edition of Euripides, for the high-spirited, satirical use of a triple time line gets in the way of the original.
The Rude Mechanicals' Dionysus in 69 is a charming exercise in illustrative theatre historiography, one that captivates us by illustrating how sincere, how naive and how lucky we were to be living back in the dark, dark days of 1968.Back in 1968, the Performance Group's interpretation of Euripides' The Bacchae resounded with the times. Their canny staging of the ancient classic about violence, ritual, unknowing and ecstasy scandalized conventional citizens and captured the imagination of …
Review: Petra's Pecado by Teatro Vivo
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 04, 2009
Petra's world is like that of playwright Rupert Reyes' youth: Manor, Texas, a community in which all the Spanish-speaking families knew one another. Petra is the simple, virtuous woman owner of a tortilla bakery.
First, a gentle admonition to the transcribers at the Austin Statesman: the title is not "Petra's Pescado" (Petra's Fish). Teatro Vivo's newest presentation is Petra's Pecado or "Petra's Mortal Sin," which makes for quite a different kettle of fish. And it's not "Petra's Picado," (Petra's Nose-dive in Iberian Spanish), the version offered by the Salvage Vanguard in its weekly e-mail. This is Teatro Vivo's flagship play, the first of three "Petra" works written by Rupert …