Recent Reviews
Review: The Odd Couple by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 24, 2009
Simon makes it funny by taking both partners to the extremes of personality and by giving Felix many attributes more characteristic of a woman. Back in the 1960s that was an even bigger laugh than it is now.
Touchstone themes for the Georgetown Palace Theatre are "fun" and "familiar." Probably the most affectionately remembered piece of Neil Simon's 40-year career, The Odd Couple fits both themes exactly. Slobby Oscar Madison and meticulous Felix Ungar are seated firmly in the American consciousness. Simon's play opened on Broadway in 1965 and appeared as a film in 1968. It ran for five years as a television show, 1970-1975. ABC cancelled it at the end of every …
Review: Killer Joe by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 22, 2009
Brooding unhappily over this show for the past four days, I gradually came to the conclusion that playwright Tracy Letts has produced an exercise in degenerate art.
I knew that this one was going to scare us to death. I didn't get there early in the run but I saw that the reviews were popping up in the media and on line.My rule is not to read the reviews until after I've seen the production and written about it. My ticket was for last Thursday night.Thursdays are often down-time for Austin theatre, but this show was packing 'em in. There's no standing …
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: 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: 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: 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 …