Recent Reviews
Review: Let Me Down Easy by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 21, 2009
Her performance is a portrait album, recreating for us conversations or interviews with individuals as widely different as super model Lauren Hutton and a 16-year-old girl in small town Texas struck with cancer.
We go to the theatre to be delighted or to be moved.On rare occasions we are both delighted and moved. And on even rarer occasions, an artist of exceptional intelligence and ability delights, moves and educates us. This evening with Anna Deavere Smith, intimate and often amusing, reaches deep into the common humanity of Americans.Her performance is a portrait album, recreating for us conversations or interviews with individuals as widely different as super model Lauren …
Review: The Pajama Game by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 20, 2009
Despite the predictable story line and the cardboard-cutout characters, we embrace the star power of this cast. There's plenty of toe-tapping and foolery, and the leads are bursting with talent.
Michael McKelvey and that talented cast at St. Ed's send us whizzing in a happy time machine back to 1954, when the American musical was in its full, ripe heyday. That was the age of Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Dilemma Is Resolved and All Live Happily Ever After. Into that sure-fire mix the producers stirred a crowd of Supporting Hoofers, an Eccentric or two and an Almost Villain; they seasoned it with a …
Review: The Method Gun by Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 19, 2009
The art of acting in live theatre is dangerous and alluring, especially in a society that turns less and less frequently to the celebration of that collective and colloborate art. To venture onstage is to take a great risk. As in Russian Roulette.
So what, exactly, is the Method Gun?The short, obvious and wrong answer is that it's the loaded pistol that is secured in a birdcage by a troupe of intense, troubled actors. And like any loaded pistol that features in stage action, it will, eventually be used (cf., "the loaded gun theory").That piece of hardware is a gun, but it's not The Method Gun except in a very minor, representational way.The ensemble makes us at home …
Review: Age of Arousal by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 13, 2009
'Age of Arousal' is a strange, febrile comedy. It's like Dickens on drugs, if Dickens were to write about a closed circle of odd women.
Age of Arousal is a strange, febrile comedy. It's like Dickens on drugs, if Dickens were to write about a closed circle of odd women.These women are "odd" both in the numerical meaning of "not in a pair" and in the metaphorical meaning of "singular" or "remarkable." They are not "unique," because playwright Linda Griffiths intends them to represent for us the plight of women in late 19th century England, where by demographic quirk women …
Review: Macbeth by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 11, 2009
We see Straus's mind at work, his hopes invested in the witches' equivocal predictions. His berating of messengers is dramatic, effective business. His soliloquies late in the play are measured, beaten-down but defiant. His Macbeth reaches grim awareness.
One of the challenges of Macbeth is that we all know the text. Not by heart but, thanks to the hard work of generations of English teachers, just about anyone who is sitting in the theatre when the lights go down will have the elements of the plot.That's good, and familiar, and comforting. The downside of that familiarity is that the actors don't fear losing us. They have a text to deliver, and they make …
Review: The Hand That Cradles The Rock by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 07, 2009
Will they or won't they? And what will be the consequences? The answers to those two questions aren't really important, but they justify the ensuing nonsense.
Billy Alexander is beleaguered and bemused throughout this cheery piece of Canadian froth, now playing at the Gaslight Baker Theatre in Lockhart.As the stay-at-home writer Ross Cameron, he's a Mr. Mom surrounded by women: his wife the successful industrial designer, the friendly home care nurse Miss Bricker from the Canadian public health service, and his flighty mother-in-law Beattie, still a dish after all these years. Oh, and his infant daughter, offstage. We never see her …