Recent Reviews
Review: Three Days of Rain by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 22, 2009
Had we but world enough and time, Three Days of Rain would be one of those rare theatre pieces to attend several times. Both script and performances offer nuance, detail and revelations to deepen meanings upon each viewing.
This play by Penfold Theatre is a gem. Coming after their play The Last Five Years in January of this year, it confirms that the Penfold company has a vision and a talent for choosing and staging pieces that fit it.Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain might just as well have been titled Two Generations or Hopes and Enigmas, because those three days are mentioned only in a scribbled note in a diary. They become …
Review: Sherlock Holmes by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 20, 2009
John Carroll is magnificent as Sherlock Holmes. Restless of spirit, articulate with riveting speech and gesture, subject to ennui and spleen, contemptuous of danger, he is most emphatically larger than life.
William Gillette introduced a new naturalism to the theatre of the late 19th century, exercising an influence that helped convert the broad, artificial acting styles of the day into something more more natural. With his impressive charisma, he used silent stage business to carry part of the story; as a playwright and director he pioneered the use of fades and blackouts. He was hugely, hugely successful, earning enough to buy himself a river steamer and …
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: 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: 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: 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 …