Recent Reviews
Review: The Secret Lives of the InBetweeners by The Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 09, 2009
In all this mess, the most interesting character is None of the Above.
Aaron Brown's musical at the Vortex benefits from a strong cast, Bonnie Cullum's assured direction, and a bouncy score, well executed by a five-piece band including piano, keyboard, guitar/bass, drums and a cello. You can relax and laugh, sympathize with the dilemmas of poor Joe (Jonathan G. Itchon, below) and his acquaintances, and generally have a good time.But as for those Inbetweeners -- they seem to be the target audience for this piece, folks of …
Review: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2009
Ben Weaver sparkles in his role as Albert Einstein. Contained, naive and sincere, he has a Charlie Chaplin purity to him, a wholesome antidote to Martin's manic plotting.
Round Rock's Sam Bass Community Theatre gives us a charming production of this quirky play by America's quirky funny man Steve Martin.Here's the premise: since Pablo Picasso used to hang out at a bar-café in Paris called "The Nimble Rabbit," just suppose that one morning in 1904 Albert Einstein happened to meet him there. Einstein was a poorly paid patent examiner but by night he was working on his "Special Theory of Relativity." Two of …
Review: Things in Life by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 03, 2009
Imagine, if you can, this very very Anglo looking guy converting himself into a 63-year-old black man who ran a hotdog concession at a ball park for years. When he started to go there despite our age of political correctness, I almost held my breath.
Ben Prager's Long Fringe presentation carried the title "Things in Life," sufficiently enigmatic to cover just about anything that he might have wanted to do. The fest blurb advised only, "Actor/playwright Ben Prager uses a series of monologues to portray with unblinking realism a half dozen familiar types in various stages of life."He deserved his artistic license, considering that he has written seven shows of monologues and his "Four Monologues" was picked as one of …
Review: Leela's Wheel by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 31, 2009
Gemma is so good at shifting characters that she can give us a middle-aged woman seducing her crofter husband and make us believe in both partners at the same time.
Gemma Wilcox is a lively and inventive woman with a serious case of multiple comic personalities. Her two-act show Leela's Wheel runs about an hour and you never know who (or what) she's going to be next.This piece is dialogue-based, almost never in monologue style. One accepts fairly quickly her theatre convention of transferring instantly from one character to another by shift of position, body English, voice and accent. The impression is a bit like …
Review: A Matter of Taste by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 30, 2009
There's a core here of irreverent, smart alecky writing that delivers a good time on stage. The sketch format doesn't allow much character exposition, so we're provided jagged humor tied to the incongruities of the imagined situations.
Playwright Bastion Carboni has some good ideas but he gets in their way. There are five ingenious skits in this Long Fringe entertainment but he has the mistaken impression that an audience will be as interested in the creative process as he is.Carboni has actress Jenny Keto preface the evening with a confused, swaggering but finally non-helpful appearance as "the playwright." And at the end of a pretty enertaining evening he brings on the director(?) …
Review: Dancing at Lughnasa by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 29, 2009
This is the melancholy, nostalgic side of the Irish -- not the wake, but the dirge.
Ah, sweet Jesu, the Irish! A gifted lot, you know, close to the earth; fine women and, o' course, those charmin' but useless men of theirs. Think back with me, now, to the early days, and by that I mean, say, 1936, when the Mundy sisters had just gotten their radio, which back then they called a "Marconi. . . "An ensemble piece for five women actors, Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasagives us an Ireland …