Reviews for Austin Playhouse Performances
Review: Lady Windermere's Fan by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 13, 2013
There is so much brainy wit here that at times I regretted the director's choice to keep the dialogue rattling forward like the Schlitterbahn.
Oscar Wilde wrote and proclaimed almost to tedious extent about aestheticism in his early career as writer, lecturer and journalist, and he was so well known for his extravagance and opinions that Gilbert & Sullivan had caricatured him in their 1881 operetta Patience. Wilde wrote a couple of dramatic tragedies in the 1880s that came to nothing, and in 1891 he wrote Salomé, in French. The Lord Chamberlain put a stop to Sara Bernhardt's plan to stage it …
Review: Other Desert Cities by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 14, 2013
In an age when 'dysfunctional' all too often is appended to 'American family' in the U.S. theatre, Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities spends much of its two acts appearing to explore yet another meltdown. Lyman and Polly Wyeth are prosperous California retirees with backgrounds in Hollywood and Republican politics. Their children are several sorts of messes. The older son got into drugs and then into political violence, getting implicated in a deadly firebombing before disappearing …
Review: A Room with a View by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 06, 2012
Forster's witty and sympathetic if somewhat patronizing portrayal of Lucy Honeychurch and those around her features amusing characters caught up in the most basic dramatic dilemma of all: who best deserves to make our sweet heroine happy?
A Room with a View at Austin Playhouse in Lara Toner's graceful adaptation of Forster's novel is serene fun. An ungracious critic -- say, someone who regularly posted grumbling letters to the Times of London -- might ask why the Playhouse bothered to concoct a presentation of the style regularly served up by the BBC on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, but that imaginary critic would miss the point entirely. Another curmudgeonly observation might be that Mssrs Merchant …
Review: The Lion in Winter by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 01, 2011
You could just rent the DVD or dig it out of your collection, but Austin Playhouse is offering you a fine cast, an unusual venue, and action that should strike enough spark and fire to keep you fascinated.
Our medieval experience for Austin Playhouse's The Lion in Winter was unexpectedly complete, for last week in that almost unheated temporary tent structure on the windy plains of the Mueller Development we were wishing we had castle-appropriate fur and wool like those of the period costumes put together for the actors by Diana Huckaby. I suspect that they might have been wearing high tech underwear for the long evening during which we sat motionless watching them. …
Review: Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 18, 2011
The comedy in this piece is actor-driven, dependent on the players' sharpness in establishing the eccentrics. The range is wide.
Neil Simon's set-up for Laughter on the 23rd Floor is simple and classic, if you can abstract from the biographic aspects of it. A newcomer enthusing about his new job discovers that his work colleagues are eccentrics, each more bizarre and devastatingly verbal than the previous one. Their employer, initially unseen, has enormous stature with the public, but they all know that he is a generous, distracted borderline psycho. Set 'em ricocheting off one another, bring the …
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2011
The faces are familiar, regulars all, and the only real surprise is Rick Roemer's enchantingly starchy and autocratic dignity as Lady Bracknell.
This "Trivial Comedy for Serious People" opened in 1895 and it was the last shining moment for Wilde's career as writer and dramatist. Soon afterwards he found himself in court, accused of immoral behavior and then sentenced to gaol. Because of that scandal the original production closed after only 86 performances. Since then it has become one of the most dependable and regularly revived comic satires on the boards. Wilde's earnest young men show themselves …