Recent Reviews
Review: Shooting Star by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 19, 2009
'Shooting Star' trades on a fascination similar to that mined by www.classmates.com. What ever happened to. . . .? Do you really, really want to know? Do you want that person to know what has happened to you and how you have changed?
Steven Dietz's latest world premiere is a wistful two-character piece aimed directly at the soft heart of the baby boomer generation. These two were lovers in their early twenties in Madison, Wisconsin, sometime in the 1970s but they've long been out of touch, getting on with their lives. By chance they find themselves -- and one another -- in a snowed-in airport somewhere in the Midwest (think, maybe, Midway in Chicago). It's a situation ripe …
Review: Cyrano de Bergerac by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 16, 2009
Director Michelle Polgar orchestrates a fine, vigorous production of the wonderfully romantic French drama Cyrano de Bergerac.
Director Michelle Polgar orchestrates a fine, vigorous production of the wonderfully romantic French drama Cyrano de Bergerac, playing through this coming weekend at St Ed's Mary Moody Northen Theatre. Edmond Rostand modeled the lonely, pugnacious cavalier with the big nose on the historical figure of Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a duelist and dramatist who did, in fact, fight in the Thirty Years' War between the French and the Spanish.One of my French professors …
Review: Wanda's World by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 16, 2009
This piece is a high energy, squeaky clean, simple minded retelling of the Ugly Duckling myth for the young TV generation. The school setting and the cardboard characters reminded me a bit of the Archie comic books.
I attended this production a week ago. I had trouble writing about it, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. These kids are full of energy, and my gosh, there are plenty of them -- in this, the first non-professional production of Wanda's World, there are 29 cast members.Bless them, they dance and sing their hearts out, and there is a goldmine of talent here. Director Jaclyn Loewenstein, judging by her brief …
Review: An Ideal Husband by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 14, 2009
Wilde has a message -- approximately, "We men adore women for their imperfections but you women will insist on putting your men on a pedestal, obliged to perfection."
The conventional staging of Oscar Wilde, within the frame of a proscenium, gives us a bright window into the highly mannered scene of London's Victorian upper classes.For Austin Shakespeare's An Ideal Husband in the Long Center's Rollins Theatre, the audience surrounds the stage. This staging in-the-square gives us a visual kaleidoscope of witty epigrams, paradoxes, brilliant costumes and exquisitely good manners. There's a technical challenge here, since at any given moment an actor will be …
Review: The Shadow Box by North by Northwest Production Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 11, 2009
As Agnes, the dutiful daughter, Miriam Rubin delivers a devastating performance, one of range and subtle intensity. Though she is largely silent in the early scenes, Agnes is the pivot of the play.
Now, here is a very frightening place -- a hospice somewhere in California, in which a disembodied therapist with a warm but neutral voice projects himself into your cottage once a day. "How are you feeling? Would you like to tell me about it?" That voice is kind, as calmly reflective and enigmatic as a mirror, and it offers not the slightest shred of hope or counsel.You look good, you might have a few physical …
Review: Almost, Maine by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 09, 2009
Playwright Cariani takes them in some surprising and very comic directions, sometimes applying a deft dab of magical realism.
Lockhart, Texas, is about as far as you can get geographically from this mythical almost-town in the wilds of Maine, but that hardly matters. Director Randy Wachtel and the Gaslight Baker cast of 16 actors open a big box of valentines here. Warm, humorous, comic and sometimes slightly surreal, these nine skits with a little modification could have been played anywhere.The Gaslight Baker motto is "Putting the ART in Lockhart." Anyone who has been following …