Recent Reviews
Review: Hay Fever by North by Northwest Production Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 25, 2009
All those Blisses have a fine time trying to enlist their visitors in a post-dinner parlor game similar to charades, but their real joy is that of making theatre in real life.
Bernadette Nason sparkles like pink champagne in this amusing, silly piece written by "the master" Noël Coward when he was a mere boy of 25. Hay Fever lightly chronicles the start of a weekend at a country house near London, property of the Bliss family -- David is a novelist, Judith is an actress who recently said her adieux to the London stage and their children Simon and Sorel have no identifiable professions or preoccupations. …
Review: The Long Now by Shrewd Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 24, 2009
Beth Burns the playwright lays out for us the tangle of memory, emotion and opportunity, while Burns the director manipulates our perceptions and turns inside-out our understanding of the situation.
Beth Burns' The Long Now opens with the charmingly simple concept stressed in its marketing: Tish Reilly has a very special friend – Time. Tish can go back to any place where a good memory remains and enter it, reliving the moments that please her. We meet the winsome Tish, played by Shannon Grounds, at her dead end job of alphabetizing and filing folders beginning with the letter "F." Maybe this is an insurance company; …
Review: Sordid Lives by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 20, 2009
This is a revenge play. Shores acknowledges that he grew up in the mercilessly parodied town of Winters.
Round Rock's Sam Bass Community Theatre isn't a formal repertory company. It's a circle of players, techs and supporters who gather for six or seven productions a year in the plain playing space that was formerly a Union Pacific depot. As you follow the Sam Bass season, you have the pleasure of seeing familiar faces reappear in new guises and disguises. They're friendly folk; the cast always gathers outside the theatre to greet their departing …
Review: Are You Alive? by Debutantes and Vagabonds
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 18, 2009
The six sketches presented by D&V were mostly unoriginal and sophomoric. The opening and closing pieces by Greg Romero suggest strongly that he has a nasty obsession with bondage, mistreatment, and body fluids.
This evening was a predictable success for music and a huge disappointment for theatre.Debutantes and Vagabonds, active since 2007 according to the history posted on MySpace, got a nice shout-out in March on Austin.com for their piece "A Brilliant Revolution." Ryan E. Johnson called it "hands down the funniest piece I've seen at FronteraFest." So I was expecting something special for this "collection of macabre theatre." D&V secured the Rollins Theatre at the Long Center …
Review: Little Shop of Horrors by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 13, 2009
This was a Grade A production of a Grade D musical play.
The Georgetown Palace does its familiar high-gloss finish on this production with talented actors, a vigorous show orchestra, and an impressively atmospheric functional two-story set presenting Muschnik's shabby flower shop in the even shabbier surroundings of a NYC "Skid Row." The audience appeared to enjoy the goings-on and the six- and eight-year-olds sitting near me in Row B were fascinated by William Diamond's puppetry as Audry II, the extraterrestrial carnivorous plant out to conquer the …
Review: Romeo and Juliet by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 10, 2009
Director Ciccolella freezes the quinceañera in mid-dance for their mutual courting and first two kisses. They have stepped out of the flow of time, just as they have stepped out of the bounds of convention.
The Romeo and Juliet playing this month in Zilker Park is a perfect evening of summer Shakespeare. A play we all know, streamlined, given an apt and intriguing twist, with a production outdoors. The Sheffield Theatre is in fact just a stage situated below a bowl-shaped meadow. We the spectators are invited to sprawl on our blankets or bring our own folding chairs. The stage is wide, the players are amplified, and the full moon …