Recent Reviews
Review: The Wizard of Oz (Austin Drama Club) by Austin Drama Club
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 09, 2009
The lighting is dim but the show is not dark, despite the Drama Club's poster of a Dorothy appearing to come from the undead. It's principally a visual transformation, an extended solarized image, since Lavergne's script is mostly verbatim from the movie.
The great myths exercise a terrific and sometimes terrifying influence on us. For example, I've been driving around Austin listening to Derek Jacobi -- first, his recitation of Mallory's Le Mort d'Arthur, and more recently, his reading of the Robert Fagles translation of The Iliad. Those are stories that shaped the self concepts of the ancient races and nations. The narratives and the rich language exercise a hypnotic influence on a listener today, despite the …
Review: Black Snow by Tutto Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 05, 2009
Tutto Theatre gave us a bouncy, funny harlequin-esque farce. Gabriel Luna was comically suicidal as the novelist seeking to deal with the happily deranged theatre company.
I saw one of the concluding performances of Black Snow but because of visitors and a trip out of town I did not have the time to review it in a timely fashion. My memory is that Tutto Theatre gave us a bouncy, funny harlequin-esque farce. Gabriel Luna was comically suicidal as the novelist seeking to deal with the happily deranged theatre company. Smaranda Ciceu as the Stanislavsky figure was a hoot -- a senile …
Review: Oceana by The Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 03, 2009
This is a concatenation of sea myths and, frankly, not much of a story. Except for the requirements for gymnastics and a very brief moment of nudity in the closing scene, Oceana could be offered as a school pageant with its agreeable, unremarkable melodies, percussion, and a sea-green message.
There is, indeed, an oceanic feel to the staging of this production. Arriving spectators are welcomed by undulatingt costumed young persons bathed in shifting blue and green lights designed by Jason Amato. The actors are welcoming, slithery, playful and exotically costumed. Director/author Bonnie Cullum extends the compact playing space of the Vortex vertically, transforming it at times into the visual equivalent of an aquarium. She stations her three singing sirens on a high shelf across …
Review: Long Day's Journey into Night by Ar Rude
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 31, 2009
To attend this production and to watch this cast at work in the carefully tatty Victorian set designed by Scott Guthrie is to enter deep in the troubled psyche of one of America's most successful and most haunted writers.
Eugene O'Neill did not want you to see this astonishing, bleak and deeply moving drama. When he died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, he had left it locked up in the vaults of his publisher Random House with instructions that it was not to be opened for 25 years after his death, and that it was never to be performed. Instead, his third wife Carlotta Monterrey, who had fought with him and protected …
Review: The Fantasticks by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 29, 2009
The pretend nostalgia of this show plays well with old duffers like me, and the charm still inherent to the script plays well with spectators such as my 24-year-old daughter.
The Fantasticks at Austin Playhouse is charming. This reliable, charming low-budget winsome musical has been charming 'em since its low-budget opening off-Broadway in 1960.This is the show that smashed the records for long runs -- with a 42-year run by the original production and 17,162 performances. Then a New York City revival that ran 655 performances in 2006-2008 at the Snapple Theatre Center's Jerry Orbach Theatre on 50th Street, paused, then resumed and is still …
Review: Boom Town by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 27, 2009
All three of these characters are at the ends of their ropes. In the course of the two acts we spend with them, we begin to realize just how far each of them has to fall.
Compression facilitates explosion.This is a relatively simple application of basic physics. External pressure applied to a volatile gas speeds combustion, renders it violent and maximizes heat. That's one of the principles that runs your automobile with its internal combusion engine.Director/designer David Schneider at the Gaslight Baker Theatre in Lockhart applies the principle to Jeff Daniels' sardonically titled "Boom Town."Schneider shrinks the focus within the wide proscenium by masking the wings with black curtains, and sharply …