Recent Reviews
Review: Touch by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 21, 2009
'Touch' is an affecting portrayal of loss. Because it offers no resolution for its protagonist, the audience is left with more questions and concerns than reassurance.
The Vestige Group starts Touch at 9 p.m., under a tall tree in a street-side courtyard by an empty coffee shop on east Sixth Street.At night the neighborhood has a deceptive air of abandonment. Both the warehouse across the street and Hot Mama's Espresso sit within a tight triangle of railroad tracks near modest apartment buildings. Traffic is sporadic on Sixth Street, just behind the row of plywood partitions. Touch is quiet but focused. Though …
Review: Good Things by Renaissance Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 18, 2009
Lochhead writes a vigorous but gentle farce with these folks, giving us their very human sides while keeping us laughing. Lochhead's plot twists and misunderstandings are neatly calculated.
Scottish toffee comes to mind when thinking of this U.S. premiere of Good Things by contemporary Scottish dramatist Liz Lochhead. Sweet, chewy, rich and surprising, made with sugar, butter, Tate & Lyle's golden syrup and just a dash of vinegar. Unlike English toffee, Good Things has no nuts. The characters are ordinary folk, for the most part, except maybe for Scottish Doris who haunts the "Good Things" thrift shop in search of the perfect bargain.The …
Review: Trying by Paradox Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 18, 2009
Don Owen inhabits Biddle with ease. If anything, he makes the man a good deal gentler than the text would suggest.
This piece is a curious blend of memoir and fiction, drawn directly from the playwright's year as personal secretary to the patrician Francis Biddle in 1967-1968, the last year of Biddle's life.Biddle had clerked for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes but had abandoned his Republican background to rally to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s. FDR appointed him Solicitor General and then Attorney General of the United States throughout World War II. In that position Biddle …
Review: Iolanthe by The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 17, 2009
Victorians are reputed to have been sexually repressed, one result of which was the fashionable obsession with fairies -- not with the self-aware and sometimes swaggering ones of our own day, but, rather, with barely pubescent young women.
What a sensation Gilbert & Sullilvan must have been back then, the 19th century London equivalent of our Capitol Steps and Second City rolled into one! In fine satirical style, in their best known works they took on the Empire, the peerage, exotic Asia and the Royal Navy. The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin in its 34th year brings us with Iolanthe their mockery of Parliament itself, pairing the pompous velvet-clad peers of the …
Review: Nunsense by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 16, 2009
McAtee has won our hearts by then, so she can play dizzy misadventure of the very pure Reverend Mom with clever wonder and a great build of physical comedy.
This saucy, sparkling production of a popular favorite plays merrily with its basic premise: even if you're very, very good, you can laugh and dance to the joy of life. Dan Goggin's idea is so simple that it started out as a line of greeting cards. Their immediate popularity prompted him to put his mischievous nuns on stage. He reworked a warmly received trial run (of 38 weeks!) into a longer piece that opened off …
Review: The Frog Prince, musical by Scottish Rite Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 15, 2009
how often are you going to get to see a grown-up frog do a rap lesson foretelling the plot? He can't reveal to anyone his real princely identity, and (1) he has to live in the palace, (2) the princess has to tell him a secret, and (3) she has to fall in love with him.
Concerning children's theatre, let me come clean in the first paragraph. By the time I was 18 I had performed as a pasha, a pirate and a king for a children's theatre in north Alabama. I was stage-struck for life. That particular community children's theatre is entering its 49th season. The Scottish Rite Children's Theatre (SRCT) is much younger than that but it is much more richly endowed. Established in 2004 through the efforts of …