Recent Reviews
Review: Wonder of the World by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 25, 2021
WONDER OF THE WORLD could have easily been dedicated to women as the wonders of the world. Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire makes every male character hapless, clueless, or inept, while each of the women is wonderfully focused and sure.
David Lindsay-Abaire's farce Wonder of the World echoes the proud claim of promoters of Niagara Falls, which is the desperation destination for the protagonists. They're an odd couple (think of Neil Simon's Oscar Madison and Felix Unger), two women who meet up on a Greyhound bus in route to Niagara. Cass, the exuberant blonde, has a long list of "must do" items accumulated over seven years of deeply humdrum marriage to Kip, her dully earnest, …
Review: Bluegrass Junction by Performa/Dance
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 24, 2021
Joy and Brilliance. This could have been the subtitle of Performa/Dance's BLUEGRASS JUNCTION, brilliantly expressed in ballet-structured dances choreographed by artistic director Jennifer Hart.
Joy and Brilliance. This could have been the subtitle of the show. As it is, Bluegrass Junction, simple and evocative, modestly concealed its joy and brilliance until the audience was in place and saw it for itself. Then the introductory dance with the full ensemble exploded with the handclapping, foot-stomping, live music-playing joy of an Appalachian hoedown. The flying imagery channeled any number of paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, all of it under the open …
Review: Offbeat X by BLiPSWiTCH
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 19, 2021
BLiPSWiTCH shows again that they can organize and produce top-of-the-mark dance shows as well as performing in them. Continue to watch for their productions. They seem always to inspire with their arts.
[Editor's note: a digital accident at our internet service provider deleted the photos displayed in this review. Many are available at the Blipswitch Facebook page postings for September, 2021] Offbeat X is the tenth edition of BLiPSWiTCH Movement’s presentation of invited collaborations in dance. This year’s one-day show was blessed with dead-solid perfect Austin weather on the grounds of the Curtain Theatre. The locale lies in the gallery forest of Ent-like native walnut trees on …
Review: Into The Woods by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 14, 2021
No one wants to be alone. Do yourself a favor; find an evening to spin on your axis to enjoy the music, comedy, disappointments, and tragedies. You know -- like in real life.
We've all been lost in the metaphorical woods for the last year and a half, and it's no wonder that Zach producing artistic director Dave Steakley turned to the haunting, wrenching, and perennial Into the Woods for Zach Theatre's return to live narrative performance. He's eloquent about that decision in his director's note to the intangible but nevertheless substantial program, accessible by QR code and smartphone: The idea for this production originated last year, just …
Review: Fresh Takes on Gilbert & Sullivan, Episode 3, by Gilbert & Sullivan Austin
by David Treadwell
Published on September 25, 2021
In FRESH TAKES some of your favorite cultural signposts have been moved a bit or translated to allow your neighbor to find the way through the delicious works of Gilbert and Sullivan. These bulwarks and frailties aren’t just nineteenth-century English, they are universally human.
The Fresh Takes on Gilbert & Sullivan project now streaming online offers food for thought. Opera can be a journey on which we members of a community travel together with the characters for a shared experience. Often, what keeps us as opera lovers on the journey are cultural references found in the words and music that act as road signs. Some of the most joyous moments come when we recognize the signs of shared experience, …
Review: Straitjacket: Variations on a Theme of Horror by Charles P. Stites
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 21, 2021
Charles Stites has the boundless ambitions of a sensitive, spiritual man and the grit of one with no expectation of redemption, contradictory attitudes that collide over the meaning of existence.
Okay, Charlie Stites, let’s get real. I’ve been avoiding you the way your principal character Dr. Daryl Standing tried to avoid Chin Lo, the murderous leader of the San Francisco tong wars. Not because I wanted to. No. Like Daryl Standing, I was intimidated, seeing failure and pain looming before me. Chin Lo took a month to execute an earlier offender, chopping pieces off him bit by bit, until the victim actually began to look …