Recent Reviews
Review: Measure for Measure by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 15, 2009
The opening is a quick glimpse into a late night dive, with hectic ragtime music accompanying jazz babies and half-clad clients dancing in colored spotlights. That wordless surging tableau clears away and we find the Duke, Savannah's ruler, with cardboard suitcase packed.
Austin Shakespeare's Measure for Measure can offer you a good time. It has a dramatic intrigue, lots of clowning, a clever time-warp setting in Savannah, Georgia of the 1920s and a cast that I'd be happy to put up against any other American Shakespeare company out there.At the same time that he's entertaining us, Shakespeare is working some much deeper themes. These include the responsibility of authority; chastity, promiscuity, desire and disease; the role of …
Review: The Dragonfly Queen by Ethos
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 10, 2009
But you have to tell a story. Not just string together events. We simple human creatures have been looking for meaning since we crawled out of the trees.
The Vortex production of The Dragonfly Queen is a triumph for costume designer Lauren Matesic and for makeup & hair designer Helen Hutka, who also appears onstage.This is a manga world of eerie creatures locked in mortal combat. The program gives the background about the quest of Princess Mala. It includes a summary of the 2007 Vortex/Ethos production of The Dragonfly Princess, an outline of the 11 years elapsed since then in story time, and …
Review: You Can't Do That, Dan Moody! by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 08, 2009
You Can't Do That, Dan Moody is not the sort of happily fictionalized singing and dancing spectacle that is regularly offered at tourist destinations. It's not slick and sometimes the text is leaden, but it is, ultimately, gripping. It's a participatory piece for Georgetowners, both those in the p
You Can't Do That, Dan Moody! offers spectators some cracking drama, particularly in the second half, with riveting re-enactments of brutality by the Ku Klux Klan and of the 1923 trial at the Georgetown courthouse in which district prosecutor Dan Moody became the first in the nation to convince a jury to convict and jail Klansmen.But in intention and form this production is directly in line with the epic origins of theatre. An epic, taken …
Review: No One Else Will Ever Love You by Katherine Craft & Dan Solomon
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 08, 2009
No One Else Will Ever Love You is about coupling. Not about copulation, though the back story certainly featured that somewhere, but principally about the risks and dependencies as members of a couple negotiate their relationships with one another and with other individuals.
Offering a play in someone's house or apartment breaks down some of the conventions of theatre. There's more of a sense of risk for all concerned -- players, audience and host.In most theatrical events the audience is anonymous, a collection of shapes outside the brightly lit playing space. And most of them like it that way. The front row never fills up first. Maybe there's a latent worry about sitting within grasp of the actors. …
Review: El Cielo Nuestro . . . ¡Que Se Va A Caer!
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 04, 2009
Proyecto Teatro's imaginative production telling of an environmentally conscious "Chicken Little"-type story is a delight.
Proyecto Teatro's imaginative production telling of an environmentally conscious "Chicken Little"-type story is a delight. It runs again this weekend at the Dougherty Arts Center.The clever costumes alone are worth the modest price of admission to this all-Spanish-language frolic, where adults pay $8 and the youngest children only $2. Director Luis Ordaz and actor Guicha Gutiérrez have a wild sense of shape, color and transformation that the images here can suggest only approximately.The company's physical …
Review: Driving Miss Daisy by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 02, 2009
Each of the actors in the Palace cast is appealing, but the entropy sets in far too soon in this production.
Driving Miss Daisy is about nostalgia and trust, but it is also about entropy. Fortunate or not in this material life, we can all expect to age, to slow, and to become feeble. We may dislike growing old, but we shun the obvious alternative.That major theme should be mirrored in the dynamic of these familiar characters and in the rhythm of the production.We meet dowager Miss Daisy at a peak of annoyance. Momentarily confused a …