Recent Reviews
Review: The World's Fastest Hamlet by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 04, 2009
Once they’d finished, to cheers from the audience, our players over-topped themselves by doing a two-minute Hamlet, followed by a ten-second Hamlet.
Sometimes you master the venue and other times the venue masters you. We went to downtown Austin on the afternoon of the First Night celebrations, particularly to check out the theatre events. The World's Fastest Hamlet by Austin Shakespeare and Heron & Crane by the DA! Theatre Collective were advertised for the HBMG Foundation stage in the park just under the south end of the First Street Bridge. Except that there was no stage there. …
Review: Christmas Belles by multiple (Sam Bass, Wimberley Players, City Theatre)
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 18, 2008
There you are – three successful productions, shaped by director and cast for specific audiences, very similar and yet in some ways very different.
The goofy holiday comedy Christmas Belles has closed at the Sam Bass Theatre in Round Rock and at the Wimberly Players, but you can still catch it through this weekend at the City Theatre in Austin, one of my favorite venues in town. Three local versions? Four, in fact, if you’re willing to extend your area of coverage to San Antonio, where the show closed this past weekend at the Harlequin Dinner Theatre. I reviewed …
Review: Abuelita's Christmas Carol by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 15, 2008
Doña Rosita is a nutty, distracted, exuberant woman who hosts a televised cooking show in which she rambles along with remarks about her life and family and rarely gets around actually to demonstrating the promised cooking techniques or recipes.
UPDATE: Alex Garza brings Abuelita back to the City Theatre, December 20-22, 2010 Alex Garza’s photo for this funny, charming tribute might suggest to you a cross-dressing version of elfin Espy Randolph in Zach Theatre’s annual Santaland Diaries. Not so. For Abuelita's Christmas Carol Alex does use a prop or two, including those wonderful fly-away glasses and a Christmas apron, but for almost all of the presentation he dresses as himself.He's a bald-shaven, short, rounded …
Review: Relative Space by DA! Theatre Collective
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 13, 2008
There’s lots of back and forth among members of the company, all of whom get serenely happy grins and enjoy banter both verbal and physical among them
Like an extra gift crammed down into the toe of your Christmas stocking, Relative Space is deftly tucked into the off-hours at Hyde Park Theatre on 43rd street. It’s rare that you can get to enjoy theatre or dance on a Sunday-to-Wednesday cycle, unless some touring company cruises through town in that usually “dark” period. This short frolic rolls at 5 p.m. on Sunday and 8 p.m. each following evening, time-sharing the playing space with …
Review: Still Fountains by Michael Mitchell
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 08, 2008
Michael Mitchell successfully creates movement, rhythm, and conflict for this odd bunch. Dialogue is spotty but at times very punchy. Far too often, the writing and plot devices are far too precious.
Glum and dreary exercises in male homosexual misery, these two plays by Michael Mitchell now playing at the Salvage Vanguard seem curiously dated. Maybe early Tennessee Williams? The first play, Highway Home, brings together two brothers, each probably a homosexual frustrated in his own way, with their nephew Blake (Jude Hickey) and his new wife Alison, an African-American attorney (Gina Houston). The occasion is the long-delayed death of their mother.Sourly garrulous Shannon stayed and wiped …
Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 08, 2008
You’ll grin when J. Ben Wolfe morphs from quavering Angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody to the exuberant immigrant Mr. Martini to George’s youngest son. Wolfe has twelve assigned roles plus participation in crowd scenes
Here’s a warm, vivid and imaginative presentation that’s a time machine back to simpler pleasures.As part of the audience for a 1946 radio presentation of It’s A Wonderful Life, you enjoy the magic of radio drama. Five actors do double duty – as multivoiced interpreters for that imaginary radio audience out there, and as an ensemble of 5 radio pros working a script in front of you. Yes, they're holding scripts -- but under Lara …