Recent Reviews
Review: Crimes of the Heart by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 30, 2017
Beth Henley's gentle comedy is at heart a celebration that provides gifts to each of the sisters, along with the day-late birthday cake for Lenny that probably marks an end to her spinsterhood.
I generally resist comparing stage productions to film versions. That's on principle, since a theatre piece must stand on its own concerning casting, directing, acting, technical support and -- not least -- the charisma of folks on and off stage. For City Theatre's Crimes of the Heart I was comfortably placed to follow my convictions, since not only had I not seen the 1984 film but I had never before seen the play. All I …
Review #1 of 2: Cages by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 25, 2017
CAGES is didactic, the application of the power of imagination and acting to teach and admonish. It's not a comfortable evening, and that's to the credit of all at Southwest Theatre Productions.
The overwhelming impressions are dark and stark. 'Stark' both in the sense of sharply contrasted in color and outcome, and 'stark' in the etymological sense of 'strong' and 'powerful.' Leonard Manzella's Cages is not entertainment; it is an orientation to a hell that few of us know but all too many of us suffer. Playwright Manzella will step out on stage after the performance. He wants you to understand what he has done and seen …
Review #2 of 2: A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick, Vortex Repertory, January 19 - February 5, 2017
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on January 25, 2017
A PERFECT ROBOT offers stories and concepts on so many levels that you can spend hours contemplating the nature of the soul and the principal theme: whether love can indeed be replicated by a machine that is willing to listen to and argue with you.
Her robot work is uncanny. Please define. Uncanny, as in strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way. Synonyms include eerie, unnatural, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, abnormal, bizarre and surreal. You mean it was unbelievable? No, exactly the opposite, in fact. First sentence does not compute, please begin again. Amelia Turner plays the robot, Mollybot, in the Vortex Theatre’s production of Sarah Saltwick’s new play A Perfect Robot and turns in an amazingly realistic performance. This …
Review: Matt & Ben by Penny Dime Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 24, 2017
Much of the funny comes from watching the women represent male bonding behavior. Guy slovenliness rules, and happy dreams of success without discernible pathways to them dominate their talk.
What happens when a buddy story about a brainy jock and a happy jerk in Massachusetts is performed by a pair of sopranos at the Institution Theatre, a hang-out for aspiring improv artists? And say, how's that for an opening paragraph of a review? Probably just about as surprising as the opening scene of Matt & Ben when a fully written and brilliantly crafted movie script falls out of the ceiling and lands in the …
Review: Bloomsday by Steven Dietz, Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2017
Compounded of equal parts of nostagia, romance and whimsy, BLOOMSDAY is a clever tale that takes the classic romantic comedy into the fourth dimension and multiple beyonds.
If you're one of the legions who have started to read James Joyce's Ulysses and eventually abandoned it, take heart: Steven Dietz's Bloomsday is tied to that massive novel only by the lightest of gossamer threads. Compounded of equal parts of nostagia, romance and whimsy, it's a clever tale that takes the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-finds-girl into the fourth dimension and multiple beyonds. Following theatrical convention, we're introduced to a trip down memory lane by …
Review #1 of 2: A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick, Vortex Repertory, January 19 - February 11, 2017
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 22, 2017
Sarah Saltwick's A PERFECT ROBOT is multi-layered and gives us robots, yes, but also a love story. Mollybot senses the world anew, imperfect in her highest functions and full of naïveté.
Anticipating Sarah Saltwick’s A Perfect Robot, we wonder what direction the play will take. Will it move toward robots and artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world imperfectly, as in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? Or will it take the deeper, heart-wrenching approach of that moral diamond in the rough, 1983’s Bladerunner, the film by Ridley Scott? The latter, especially, poses the question of what it means to have self-aware consciousness, what it means to be human. …