Recent Reviews
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: 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: 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: Love, Sex and the IRS by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2009
I enjoyed frequent chuckles at this nonsense, but overall, it just didn't work for me. I've spent some time puzzling about that, particularly since every other piece I've seen at the Palace has left me fully satisfied.
Actor/author Billy Van Zandt and his writing partner Jane Milmore banged out this comedy in 1979, backstage on the set of the first Star Trek movie. They took the principal roles in the debut performance at a dinner theatre in upper New York state. As Van Zandt tells it on their website, they were totally unprepared for the success of the piece or for the request from drama publishers Samuel French not only to publish …
Review: Spaceman Dada Robot by Electronic Planet Ensemble with David Jewell
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2009
With his verse and in his persona Jewell presents us stories with wildly deadpan humor, a narrator compounded of equal parts David Byrne and Bill Murray.
Electronic Planet Ensemble's Spaceman Dada Robot can move you out of Austin's conventional theatre and out of Austin's club-based music scene. The characters and narrative are in your mind, as in a radio play, and the music is high-energy and percussive, with clouds of chords. Add an hour of images improbable, humorous and awesome, then put David Jewell in front of it. space travelit gets you out out of the houseit gets you out of …
Review: Miss Witherspoon by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 12, 2009
Underwood herself is worth well more than the price of admission, and at times the piece becomes a one-woman show. Hovering in that unexpected afterlife, she longs for release, rest and forgetfulness.
Jennifer Underwood is larger than life. Like famous stage personalities, she captures our attention utterly with her remarkable appearance, conviction and an acting talent that amounts almost to shape-changing. In Miss Witherspoon, directed by Karen M. Jambon for Different Stages and now playing at the City Theatre, Underwood is a deeply disappointed soul in the afterlife, determined not to give in to the requirement that she be reincarnated. Sometimes, with her stubborn will, she prevails; …