Recent Reviews
Review: The BIrd and the Bee by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 27, 2009
Candlelight vigils, a dedicated website, Hannah's efforts to scoop some of that admiration and kumbaya feeling for herself . . . the focus is not on the dead boy but on his acquaintances' exploitation of his death.
Two worlds converge to dark uncertainty. These linked plays are completely different in style but taken together, they resonate and provide tremendous opportunity for gifted actors.Matt Hartley wrote The Bee with a satirical pen as broad as a paintbrush. High school sweetie Chloé (Tayler Gill, left, below) is devastated when her older brother Luke dies in a traffic accident. His dramatic end provides a point of excitement and assembly for the rest of his high …
Review: Kill Will by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2009
The finale? Think Jacobean revenge tragedy. I counted five corpses onstage at the last scene with two more characters rapidly approaching extinction. The company plays it all with sufficient seriousness for us to go along.
There's no Shakespeare in it, but it's certainly full of sound and fury. Signifying. . . .?Think of a crime caper that takes place in the sleazy east London, with a dose of pulp detective attitude, nasty obsession with lowlife violence, guns and Irish prolixity. Austin Alexander plays the lead in his own creation. Mickey Nichols is a guy in a bad way, roughed up in turn by black-leather gangster William Slate, by American cocaine …
Review: The Drowned World by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2009
The finale finds us with two couples, of unexpected composition, the first imprisoned in that drowned world and the second in inscrutable apotheosis.
Ken Webster's austere staging of this vision of a nightmare world uses the vocal and emotional projection of these four actors with the formal eloquence and depth of a string quartet. The music here is their inflection, counterpart, and conviction in a narrative that raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Ben Wolfe appears first, in solo, as Darren, citizen in a world drowned in gray totalitarianism and decay. Motionless, from the depth …
Review: Steel Magnolias by Way Off Broadway Community Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2009
So why would we go to see such a drama? As a celebration of community. Gathering in a community theatre to share that amusement, experience, grief and catharsis reaffirms us.
Leander's community theatre, the waggishly named Way Off Broadway Community Players, is located on Crystal Falls Parkway, which is an unlit country road between 183a and Parmer Lane. I almost missed it, and I did indeed miss the entrance, as did a car directly behind me. We decided not to chance the cross-lawn route and instead maneuvered back around to the driveway. The Players had a full house for the second night of their three-weekend …
Review: Drywall by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2009
This kind of TV sit-com writing is a constant diet of Hostess Twinkies. That's where Drywall digs in, with sharp fangs.
The vividly bald guy in a white t-shirt and carrying tools has just walked onstage, grimaced, and there's a chuckle of appreciative amusement from the speakers. He shrugs, as if annoyed, and there's another rumble from the audience on the speakers. Then he stalks off, to more recorded merriment. Canned laughter? What's going on here? Lights go down, then up again on two buddies, Doug and Peter. They're brainstorming ideas for a play, or at …
Review: Our Angle in Heaven by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2009
Diana's funeral becomes a tourist event, replacing the temporarily closed wax museum at Madame Tussaud's -- and a family from the north of England leaves the bouquet and poster meant to celebrate "our angel in heaven."
The title of Maggie Gallant's solo show is an apt understatement, suggestive of the portraits she offers us. What angle do we take on heaven and the richness of its offerings for us? And where is that heaven? Who goes there? That's a lot of message for a simple misspelling. Maggie gives us eight characters in the twelve monologues she presents in about 45 minutes at the Salvage Vortex. It is perhaps telling that the …