Recent Reviews
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Review: Hamilton by touring company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 04, 2019
Lin-Manuel Miranda gifted us an opera of great stature that retells our own story, a complex work, written in a challenging idiom, one worthy of study and attention. And -- why not? -- reverence.
Hamilton is epic; there’s no gainsaying that fact. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagining of key events and personalities of the American revolution has a savage, electrifying impact, and by comparison it leaves the venerable musical 1776 looking like — well, a bunch of old white guys standing around in funny breeches. Manuel blows up the traditional narrative and mercilessly rips away the bandage of stale conventions, but at the same time the playwright embraces the moral aspirations …
Review: Screaming at the Apocalypse: Three Austin stage Works Looking at the Worst of the Near Future
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 12, 2019
Hats off to the Austin theatre community for their warnings of apocalypse; they encourage us to stay true, so that the ember of hope may harden into a shining gem.
Austin’s theatre industry is a well-knit community of fairly like-minded folks. They share ideas, coffee, work, and life. It's no surprise that common themes and concerns enter their stagework regularly. In this politically charged present, however, one theme seems pre-eminent. That theme is climate change and its effects. At one point in the spring of 2019, three productions overlapped one other in at least one weekend of the standard three-weekend run of stage productions. Each …
Review: Cats by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 10, 2019
The disco sensibility that permeates this production is all sound, flash, and fury, providing a night of great entertainment requiring nothing from the viewers but a willingness to smile.
Like many, I’m sure, I recall the exuberant review of “I laughed! I cried! It was better than Cats!” that became a ubiquitous catchphrase, even becoming a Saturday Night Live skit. This phrase became a common way to express one’s admiration for a new Broadway play (and then eventually anything: "How was that coffee?" "It was better than Cats!"). The rub here is that for a long time Cats was the standard bearer of what …
Review: The Children by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 01, 2019
THE CHILDREN offers, once again, evidence of Jarrott's discerning taste in contemporary drama. By taking us away into these characters' isolation, this production brings us very much back into the human fold.
Darkness hovers over the plot, the set, and the concept of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, mounted appropriately in the Trinity Street Players’ black box theatre on the fourth floor of First Austin, a Baptist church. Jarrott Productions’ choices for this space have consistently taken the moral focus of those hosting institutions. No, not the theology. Kirkwood’s script, like many other productions in this space, examines the human condition and difficult choices facing responsible individuals as …
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Review: Severe Weather Warning, A Wild Comedy by Theatre en Bloc
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 30, 2019
With the heart-to-heart exchanges, partying, group dynamics and discoveries, Elizabeth Doss's SEVERE WEATHER WARNING entertains but at the same time examines the dilemmas in this society of being a grown but not yet middle-aged woman.
Elizabeth Doss's Severe Weather Warning uses the trope of friends meeting for an annual reunion to plant us at a decisive date in the friendships of these four women, a decade and a half after they attended school together. It's a familiar plot device -- used, for example, by Hope, Jones and Wooten in their 2008 The Dixie Swim Club, a community theatre favorite, or in the 1978 Same Time, Next Year by Bernard Slade, …
Review: The Ballad of Klook and Vinette by Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on April 29, 2019
A continuous song interspersed with plot, this BALLAD has writing that's incredibly on point, and these characters are like two meteors colliding in the vast, dark emptiness of space.
The Ballad of Klook and Vinette tells the tale of a modern love story of “lost souls” trying to find happiness after trying times. The story is regaled through a well-balanced mix of dialogue and original R and B tunes that run the emotional gamut from breezy, to seductive, to playful, to heart-wrenching. It begins with a solid dose of comedy as two strangers banter back and forth, slowly realizing that though they do not …