Reviews for Austin Community College Performances
Review: Well by Austin Community College
by Amanda Paz
Published on March 09, 2019
Austin Community College’s vividly abstract play added to the Theatre Department’s strong season. Leads Holly Parmer and Remy Joslin portrayed characters different from those of their previous work.
edited by Michael Meigs Imagine you’re thinking about writing a play but you have a very noisy mom. Lisa Kron’s play Well about illness and mothers is structured as a work in process with Lisa herself as the character onstage addressing the audience. Kron focuses on her family medical history and the Lansing, Michigan neighborhood where she grew up. She knits together issues of health and illness both in the individual and …
Review: The Lucky Spot by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 11, 2011
These pralines come in a very handsome box. It's just before Christmas, but you can almost smell the Louisiana marshes when those doors at deep center stage swing open.
These pralines come in a very handsome box. Peter Sukovaty's design for the interior of the Lucky Spot dance hall in rural 1930's Lousiana is graceful and meticulously detailed, the lighting is rich and subtle, and the music that accompanies and accentuates the action includes dance music and even a couple of Hank Williams numbers. It's just before Christmas, but you can almost smell the Louisiana marshes when those doors at deep center stage swing open. …
Review: Putting It Together by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 28, 2011
Putting It Together has the polish and sharpness of cabaret, transforming the unadorned utilitarian lecture hall at the ACC Northridge campus at least temporarily into a window on a New York state of mind.
This is Sondheim song season. Not just because 81-year-old master incarnates the tunesmanship of Broadway of the last 50 years, but because his tunes and music so deftly capture the dreams of those sophisticates who have populated his audiences. Yes, his breakthrough was as the lyricist for West Side Story, but as this compendium song performance illustrates, Stephen Sondheim portrayed with wit and acumen the sentimental lives of Americans. Dr. Jimmy Shepherd of Austin Community …
Review: Mauritius by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 18, 2010
ACC's Mauritius stays firmly on the rails, with more than one sudden twist. Director Shelby Brammer keeps her cast at speed and they deliver that satisfying dénouement. There's a reason that the form of the well-made play has lasted so long.
Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius is in many aspects a well-made play, fitting neatly into the 19th- and early-20th century tradition in the United Kingdom and in France (there, as une pièce bien faite). Cribbing quickly from Wikipedia, that Cliff's Notes of the Internet, one gets the reminder that the well-made play has a strong neoclassical flavour, involving a very tight plot and a climax that takes place very close to the end of the story, with most of the story taking place …
Review: The 1940s Radio Hour by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 23, 2009
At the very top of this game is Katie Walther playing "bad girl" Ginger Brooks. 'Blues in the Night,' that Peggy Lee favorite, is the shining moment of the show -- all the more so because she has the confidence to do it straight and then with the backing of all the male players.
I knew that The 1940s Radio Hour done last week at the One World Theatre by the Austin Community College Choir would provide us a time machine to amusement. The surprise for me was the dipsy-doodle movement of that flight through time.I went to the 11:30 a.m. performance, enjoying the novel sensation of driving in daylight to a theatre performance. I got there half an hour early, picked up my ticket, hiked upstairs to the theatre and …
Review: Under the Gaslight by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 04, 2009
Ever wonder about the melodrama scene where the dastardly villain ties his victim to the railroad tracks?Iit didn't originate with Snidley Whiplash and Dudley Dooright, though that may be where you first saw it.
Ever wonder about the melodrama scene where the dastardly villain ties his victim to the railroad tracks? No, it didn't originate with Snidley Whiplash and Dudley Dooright, though that may be where you first saw it. Jay Ward was copying it out of a long tradition of silent movie serials that drew on saloon theatricals. Credit for the notion goes to New York theatre empresario Augustin Daly, in his 1867 production of this play, Under The …