Reviews for Austin Playhouse Performances
Review: The Trip to Bountiful by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2010
In performance all that light and liberty disappears, for director Toner situates these actors in the dark confines of a black box, provided with minimal props and simple furnishings. The concept is so stark and featureless that the Playhouse lists no credit for stage design.
This is a memory play, an exercise in yearning -- not only for the principal character Carrie Watts, but also for playwright Horton Foote and for the audience. Where are they, those vanished earlier times, and what were they really like? Depending entirely on her son and her daughter-in-law in their apartment somewhere in the Houston of 1953, Carrie Watts longs to return to her home, a house somewhere in rural Texas at a crossroads …
Review: The 39 Steps by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 29, 2010
The theatrical spoof has actions and effects going comically wrong, reminding us that we are spectators, watching real people. Players play actors playing characters, and they'll drop out of character to mug, heave a sigh or remonstrate.
Austin Playhouse scheduled Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps for a run of almost two months, but I didn't manage to use my season tickets until the penultimate weekend of the run. Not that I expected to be disappointed; The 39 Steps won an Olivier award for best comedy in 2007 and the Broadway version, with the added tag tying it to Hitchcock, ran for two years before moving off-Broadway. And not too far off Broadway -- to New World Stages at …
Review: Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 02, 2010
If you concentrate on the words, you may get a pale and distant impression of the genius who was Jacques Brel.
This is a pleasant and inconsequential little evening of cabaret. Go and listen to the Austin Playhouse staging of Blau and Shuman's 1968 compendium Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. If you concentrate on the words, you may get a pale and distant impression of the genius who was Jacques Brel. These are the problems of translation. The music stands outside language, but Brel's stories and lyrics are deeply embedded in …
Review: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 22, 2010
On viewing this Austin Playhouse staging, the thrill was gone, It seemed to me that Steve Martin, like his character Picasso, was seeking too hard to amaze.
Kimberly Barrow as the enamored Suzanne comes to the "Lapin Agile" -- the "Nimble Rabbit" -- bar-bistro, looking for Pablo Picasso, the man who enraptured her by drawing a dove on the back of her hand and then having his way with her. She learns, eventually, that maybe the second time is not as good as the first. I can share that feeling. I reviewed Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile last year as done by the …
Review: Misalliance by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 03, 2010
Shaw sends a grand surprise into the middle of the long weekend : a two-passenger aeroplane that crash lands onto the nearby greenhouse. What a machina ex deos!
Is it only coincidence that Austin theatre is staging a rolling centenary celebration of George Bernard Shaw? Not of his birth or death -- we'd have to wait another forty or so years for either of those, since the man lived well into his 90's --but of his plays exploring matrimony.In late 2008 Different Stages gave us a twinkling production of Shaw's 1908 comedy Getting Married and now Austin Playhouse is offering Misalliance, first staged in 1910. Despite their …
Review: The Mousetrap by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 29, 2009
The treat is David Gallagher as the young perhaps-architect Christopher Wren.a walking nervous breakdown, a continuously recaptured cloud of italic exclamation points (!!!!!), parentheses and blurted thoughts. His performance, sets zinging the cords of this apparently predicable plot.
Theatre journalism has a half-life of perhaps two weeks, a fact that prompts me to strive to see a production as soon as possible. After all, a theatre review published only 48 hours before closing has not much more than archival interest. One would prefer to deliver the report and comments hot off the first-night griddle, particularly when the show's an interesting or engaging one. Perhaps, just perhaps, the review might contribute to increasing the turnout …