Reviews for Austin Playhouse Performances
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 …
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 …
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 …
Review: The Turn of the Screw by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 03, 2009
Jenny Gravenstein uses her face, especially those luminiscent eyes, her posture, and carefully controlled voice and hands to draw us into the pool of flickering light that is the governess's spirit.
Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw takes you into a dark place. A brief chapter sets the scene. On Christmas Eve in an old house in the countryside a group of bourgeois friends has just listened to a ghost story. Their host, Douglas, offers them another, but they have to wait for a manuscript to be dispatched from his residence in London. That text -- "in old, faded ink, and in the most …
Review: Frost/Nixon by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2009
These two actors give the illusion of a chemistry and a growing affinity between Frost and Nixon. The journalist out for a career-saving scoop develops an understanding and an intuition about the isolated ex-president.
Almost thirty years had gone by when British dramatist Peter Morgan wrote this piece. The Gielgud Theatre picked it up from an "off-West-End" theatre in 2006. A Broadway production ran for 137 performances in 2007. Frank Langella won both a Tony Award for best actor, as well as the corresponding Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.Thirty years is about the right lapse of time before one exorcises demons and rehabilitates felons. Pain is remembered …
Review: The Fantasticks by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 29, 2009
The pretend nostalgia of this show plays well with old duffers like me, and the charm still inherent to the script plays well with spectators such as my 24-year-old daughter.
The Fantasticks at Austin Playhouse is charming. This reliable, charming low-budget winsome musical has been charming 'em since its low-budget opening off-Broadway in 1960.This is the show that smashed the records for long runs -- with a 42-year run by the original production and 17,162 performances. Then a New York City revival that ran 655 performances in 2006-2008 at the Snapple Theatre Center's Jerry Orbach Theatre on 50th Street, paused, then resumed and is still …