Recent Reviews
Review: Monroe by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 12, 2018
Dr. Lisa Thompson's MONROE with its sharp script gives life to a dark period in our recent history, filling it with hope, struggle, drama, and humor. Monroe gives us a privileged, authentic look at lives hitherto unrevealed.
Once again, Austin is privileged to host a world premiere play, Monroe by Lisa B. Thompson. The Monroe of the title is Monroe, in northeastern Louisiana. At the time of the play, 1946, Monroe and its surrounding parish held the dubious distinction for the period 1877-1950 of suffering the fifth highest number of lynchings in the United States And yes, this play is about that. As Playwright Thompson writes in the program notes: “…my mind …
Review: Atlantis, a puppet opera by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 11, 2018
Whether loose fantasia or a tale of history before history, ATLANTIS, A PUPPET OPERA offers an evening of soaring, magnificent operatic song and spectacle, enjoyable by families and all.
Things that are unique are hard to describe because there is nothing else for comparison.The best approach to Atlantis: A Puppet Opera, now playing at The Vortex on Manor Road, is to call it a composite uniqueness and merely describe the parts. The Ethos-created show was premiered at The Vortex in 2016, and its return has been eagerly awaited. As before, the show is directed to perfection by Bonnie Cullum. In Atlantis puppets are able …
Review: Significant Other by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 09, 2018
SIGNIFICANT OTHER cycles through women friends' life stages as their companion skinny, gangly, stereotypically gay Jordan Berman seeks a measured existence with integrity and honor, with the low-stakes goal of just getting through one human life.
Significant Other is a contemporary play about downtown young professionals’ lives. This genre is perennially trending, and Jarrott Productions mines the niche to great success. The company takes full advantage of Trinity Street Playhouse’s geographic positioning in the Austin downtown business/government/ entertainment/club scene. The characters of Significant Other etch their lives into the landscapes of the East Coast, but their thoughts, successes, and epic fails connect immediately with urban Southwestern audiences. Their struggles are those …
Review: The Grapes of Wrath by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 19, 2018
Steinbeck's semi-articulate characters gain insight through loss after loss. Their lives seem as enormous as Ansel Adams’ mountains and forests, yet quaking beneath an overpowering and impersonal universe. City's production remains dreadfully true to Steinbeck's vision and sorrow.
Onstage now at City Theatre on the east side is a play about the struggle to be human. Yes, City Theatre has undertaken an adapted stage presentation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The well-known tragedy continues to offer generations of Americans sometimes-harsh lessons on the human condition. Steinbeck’s canonized 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath places uneducated regional migrants at the epicenter of the rending social upheaval of the Great Depression. …
Review: Real Women Have Curves by Teatro Vivo
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 17, 2018
The appealing humanity of this small band of sisters is an implicit appeal to audiences and to faceless society to recognize the value of their work and their very existence in U.S. society. The playwright gives Estela and her comrades a triumph in which we can all share.
The script of Josefina López’s Real Women Have Curves is swift moving and atmospheric, and it blasts along like a roller coaster doing the curves. The women aboard the ride are sharply differentiated, talky and engaged with one another. It’s not surprising that this 1990 play produced in Los Angeles was eventually turned into a successful film back in 2002. Austin’s Teatro Vivo does a good job of it, too, for director Claudia M. Chávez …
Review: Clinically Undepressed by Bastrop Opera House
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 16, 2018
Will Holcomb's CLINICALLY UNDEPRESSED is a gentle parable in which a young man's Christ-like temperament inevitably leads to desired miracles. Deklan Finley's performance is clear as water, with concealed depth.
Serenity. In our busy and often afflicted lives, perhaps that’s what we yearn for, even more than happiness. While attending Will Holcomb’s third staging of his play Clinically Undepressed I heard in my mind Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Holcomb’s premise in writing the piece was simple: imagine a child incapable of …