Recent Reviews
Review: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 by City Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 10, 2023
A treat for those familiar with 1930's movies, THE MUSICAL COMEDY MURDERS OF 1940 was stuffed with odd characters and over-the-top dialogue. Deft casting rewarded by evoking giggles and guffaws.
The time: December 1940. The city: Chappaqua, New York. The scene: The Library. The characters: Helsa Wenzel, Elsa Von Grossenknueten, Michael Kelly, Patrick O'Reilly, Ken De La Maize, Nikki Crandall, Eddie McCuen, Marjorie Baverstock, Roger Hopewell, and Bernice Roth. Or, put another way, a maid, an eccentric mansion-owner, a cop, a singer, a director, a chorus-girl, a comedian, a Broadway producer, a composer, and a lyricist walk into the room . . . If this …
Review: Indecent by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 09, 2023
Austin Playhouse's astonishingly accomplished production of INDECENT is a fully mermerizing experience that one wants never to end.
Director Lara Toner and the many artists of Austin Playhouse bring their audience into a fully mermerizing experience with their astonishingly accomplished production of Paula Vogel's Indecent - the True Story of a Little Jewish Play. In their hands and hearts, the work transcends theatrical experience; they create a multilayered emotional, intellectual, and historical experience peopled with vividly convincing characters and set within a world that no longer exists. The world of Yiddish-language theatre is …
Review: The Pearl Fishers by Austin Opera
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 03, 2023
The audience for the lyrical THE PEARL FISHERS floats on the inebriating rush of Bizet's music. The production's send-up of the libretto's orientalism is subtle, clever, and kind. Will Liverman stands out among the four immensely talented leads.
Georges Bizet's 1836 Pearl Fishers (Les pecheurs de perles) is as good an illustration as opera scoffers will ever get of the fantastical irreality of the art form. Having received the Prix de Rome, a sort of one-year fellowship to study in the Eternal City, because of some quirky funding stipulations, Bizet received an offer from the Théâtre Lyrique of Paris to compose the score for a bizarre script set in virtually unknown Ceylon (modern …
Review: We're in your Future by Alyson Dolan
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 03, 2023
We’re in Your Future encourages us to support and savor the transitory magnificence of high art born of talent, sweat, and training. We hope that Alyson Dolan and friends remain regularly present in our futures.
Just when this reviewer thought he’d seen every possible move in modern/contemporary dance, along comes We’re in Your Future by Alyson Dolan. Dolan produces shows calling on the talents of her friends, students, and colleagues. And the dances are invariably sublime, not to be missed. A major plus point for her dance shows is the Café Dance venue in west Austin, a small, warm, truly intimate space with a marley dance floor from wall to …
Review: Mother of the Maid by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 29, 2023
Jeanne d'Arc's mother Isabelle faces the extreme test of faith of losing her child due to events she cannot understand. Isabelle's is a tale of strength, survival, perseverance, and searching for the transcendent.
You already know how it ends. Here it is, no spoiler: Joan of Arc, teenager, war leader, visionary, sheep herder, innocent, über feminist, and pivot of history, suffered execution by burning at the stake by the French and the English, May 30, 1431. The high drama of her story in Mother of the Maid by Jane Anderson is foregrounded by the story of Joan’s mother Isabelle d’Arc. Anderson’s play focuses upon Isabelle in the extreme …
Review: Luchadora by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 20, 2023
LUCHADORA is a charming and useful fable, a tale about growing up cross-cultural and embracing the heroic. Compliments to Becca Jimenez, who played the protagonist Vanessa on opening night,.
Parents have their secrets, even responsible and affectionate parents, and children don't often discover them. Especially not when the offspring is still a child; single children—those without siblings—probably even less often. But there's a magic at work as one approaches adulthood and develops into a person uncannily like one or the other parent. Or both. "Coming of age" and "quest" stories have always resounded, whether told beside a campfire, in a novel or movie, or …