Recent Reviews
Review: I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change by North by Northwest Production Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 21, 2008
The show has the bright, derisive flash of New York – it is fun poked by sophisticate singles and the New York artist community at the dilemmas of the love life of bourgeois middle America.
This cheery cabaret production is a strawberry parfait, a delicious concocoction highly appealing to the eye with lots of sugar and self-confident sophistication. The North by Northwest Theatre Company has enlisted four attractive and highly talented actor/singers to create in Austin the first presentation of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, a piece that played for 12 years off Broadway. Its 5000+ performances put the run of this simple musical second only to the …
Review: Amadeus by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 20, 2008
Rick Roemer owns the stage in the Austin Playhouse presentation of 'Amadeus.' He shows extraordinary attention, precision and energy throughout his nearly three hours on stage.
Rick Roemer owns the stage in the Austin Playhouse presentation of Amadeus. In his portrayal of composer Antonio Salieri, both as a 73-year-old invalid and as a 40-ish striving court composer, he is onstage during at least 80 percent of the action.Roemer shows extraordinary attention, precision and energy throughout his nearly three hours on stage. He communicates a depth of feeling that is at times hair-raising. He is deeply convincing when the playwright puts into …
Review: Marisol by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 20, 2008
Dark, dark, dark. Think of a melding of Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali. The dark clouds of Apocalypse are fulgent with irony and savage black humor.
Dark, dark, dark. José Rivera’s 1993 piece Marisol, now in production by the Vestige Group at the Off Center, may draw on the Latin American tradition of “magical realism,” but his vision is that of a Puerto Rican author raised in the outer boroughs of New York City. Think of a melding of Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali. The dark clouds of Apocalypse are fulgent with irony and savage black humor. The final image of …
Review: Canciones for Generations by Letitia Rodriguez
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 12, 2008
A sly, funny, heart-warming gambit gives her the opportunity to outline her roots, from five generations back, to mock stereotypes (frijoles or brisket? Selma Hayek is: a), b) or c)?) and to sit listening with us as her mother and aunt recall growing up Tejana.
Leticia Rodriguez’s charming one-woman show at the Mexican American Cultural Center is really a one-woman-and-three-musicians-and-a-crowd show. She is onstage throughout, but the magic of multimedia brings us video reminiscences from her family, photos, recorded music, visual jokes and a hectoring quizmaster running a zany bilingual quiz show. The Big Question for the quiz show is “Eres tejana o coco?” Are you a Texan with Mexican roots, or are you a coconut – brown on the …
Review: Macbeth by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 11, 2008
Sharron Bower as Lady Macbeth sets the intensity and speed of the play. And “speed” it is – this pill-popping, text-messaging, sex-hungry, vital woman is a scarier witch than any of the three weird sisters.
Austin Shakespeare converts the Rollins Theatre into a vast haunted playing space for its scary, hopped-up version of Macbeth, playing only this weekend and next. Shakespeare’s play of visions, equivocation and relentless, destroying time is in this production a gorgeously imagined vision, one that with its disjunct setting plays on some of America’s deepest fears.Macbeth – A Global Perspective is the tag. Dressed in contemporary combat fatigues and moving through a capacious stage space defined …
Review: Amateurs by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 06, 2008
in my secret identity as the critic from Austin Live Theatre, I was sitting in the second row, watching community theatre actors making fun of the egos and vulnerabilities of community theatre actors, play-making, and -- critics.
The premise of this neatly crafted production by the community theatre in Lockhart, Texas, only 35 miles from Austin, sets us up for a happy exercise in dramatic irony.Imagine, say author and cast, that a group of community theatre actors are gathering for a post-production party, and that a noted theatre critic has against his better judgment attended the production. Their four-character show was a musical comedy about undertakers, and opening night was so chaotic …