Recent Reviews
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 …
Review: Alice in Wonderland, musical by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 30, 2008
The City Theatre compensates with sight gags, vivid costumes, song, dance and a hilarious klatch of creatures certain to keep everyone entertained
The City Theatre gives us a rollicking musical good time with Alice in Wonderland and at the same time avoids the deadliest sin of adaptations – dumbifying (cf., the discussion between the Gryphon and Alice concerning “uglifying”). Those of us who met our most cherished heroes of childhood not in cartoons but rather in words on the page or in tales read aloud have strong feelings about them. Certain precious books of childhood stand to …
Review: The Positively Serene Death of Sir Ritter Hans von Wittenstein zu Wittenstein by Aggressive Muse
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 29, 2008
There’s lots of imagination on display here. Some of the actors are superb, while others offer us characters that are engagingly grotesque. Some, including some of the principals, don’t really understand theatrical diction.
Aggressive Muse productions lives up to its name with this disturbing production of The Positively Serene Death of Sir Ritter Hans von Wittenstein zu Wittenstein. Under the direction of playwright/adapter Josie Collier, assisted by Kate Meehan, the company transforms a translation of Jean Giraudoux’s piece of 1939 Ondine, turning it into a far darker and more confused tale than the original. Collier and Meehan first adapted Ondine in 2004. This further adapation, according to the …
Review: Nunsense by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 25, 2008
Imagine the sight of these sober-clad ladies grinning, wearing bright-colored tap shoes and stomping up a storm, and you’ll get an idea of the absurdly wonderful entertainment they provide.
How do you make holy water?” “I don’t know, how DO you make holy water?”“You boil the hell out of it!” Cornball, right? But funny, especially when the dialogue is between a couple of wisecracking nuns on either side of the audience. Nunsense, a (very) musical (very goofy) comedy at the Georgetown Palace Theatre in Georgetown, Texas is playing to packed houses of very amused Georgetownians. And Austinites will have a helluva a good time …
Review: Brass Ring by A Chick and A Dude Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 24, 2008
The major problem undermining all that really brilliant, character-revealing dialogue is the series of “gotcha” plot revelations in the concluding minutes.
Okay, we’ve been here before. The small house at the Hyde Park Theatre wraps around a set that could represent an anonymous, nearly vacant apartment in a half-demolished tenement building. Tom Waits is growling “Dead and Lovely” on the sound system in full derelict mode, followed by some country music phantasmagoria about facing the electric chair. Down-market Harold Pinter, maybe, or Sam Shepard. Danger, barren stage and threat.In Brass Ring, playwright Shanon Weaver of “A …