Reviews for Austin Shakespeare Performances
Translator's Notes: Austin Shakespeare's EL CID by Pierre Corneille, November 10 - 26, 2023
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 22, 2023
Sitting in the audience, the translator was enchanted, deeply immersed in the characters, hypnotized that his own words were about to be spoken, and grateful to Austin Shakespeare for the opportunity.
Ann Ciccolella’s mid-August email to me, a casual inquiry about a play script, was the beginning of a translation experience as unexpected as it was spellbinding. Her plan was for Austin Shakespeare to produce a translation of Pierre Corneille’s classic romantic drama Le Cid, written in 1636, an oeuvre still held in such reverence by the French that it’s still taught to middle schoolers. Our daughter, obliged to study it at that age, …
Review: El Cid by Austin Shakespeare, November 10 - 26, 2023
by David Glen Robinson
Published on November 13, 2023
Austin Shakespeare's EL CID provides a super-good sword flight and intense moral conflicts expressed in blank verse both in English and Spanish, performed by a hardworking cast on a starkly bare stage.
Austin Shakespeare has just premiered a new translation of Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid at the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center. Its lengthy production period heightened the theatre community’s anticipation. Austin Shakespeare’s El Cid gives us a certain innovation in language. The play, written in French, premiered in Paris in 1636. This modern translation is a bilingual English/Spanish version. The translation is by Michael Meigs, who has long advocated for more balanced contributions by …
Review: Bollywood Twelfth Night by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 08, 2021
This Ilyria of the imagination transforms with little strain into a Hindi setting. Aaron Kubacak's costumes and Evonne Paik Griffin's scenic design amplify the antics of a fine cast.
Artistic director of Austin Shakespeare Ann Ciccolella is a dab hand at relocating the settings of Shakespeare's works while preserving the coherence and vigor of the material. This, her second go at producing a Bollywood-influenced interpretation of Twelfth Night, makes me regret that I didn't see the 2012 production, presented free of charge in Zilker Park. Both have benefited from the sly wit of Prakash Mohandas's choreography, but one advantage of this production is evident from …
Review: The Seagull by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 15, 2018
Moral: Great thoughts, particularly those of Art (with a capital "A") that would make Existence meaningful sink like deadweight, leaving us with yearnings that carry us along through life like rafts of shipwrecked timber.
Entertainment site TimeOut Austin ran an interview with director Ann Ciccolella under the title "'The Seagull' Takes Flight at Austin Shakespeare." Written no doubt with the best of intentions and presumably without the advice of interviewer Andrew J. Friedenthal, that heading was one of terrible, unintended irony. Chekhov would have appreciated it. Because the titular seagull of Chekhov's first major success as a playwright doesn't fly at all. It's a dead bird, shot down …
Review: Old Times by Harold Pinter, Austin Shakespeare
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 17, 2017
At moments in Pinter's dramas the lines and words fall away, the cigarette smoke rises, and between them opens an abyss that can take you away, away. Odd how sometimes no words at all can make the play.
Old Times is about conversations among the post-imperial British ennui class of the 1960s. A couple who’ve made it well enough to live in a country home fairly close to the coast have in for a weekend an old girlfriend of the wife’s to reminisce about their old times as young and carefree Londoners. That’s it. Yes, seriously, that’s all there is of plot in this Pinter anthology play. One gathers in …
Review: Present Laughter by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 22, 2016
In Noël Coward's witty drawing-room comedy emotions swirl about ever so polite characters, and there are plenty of hungry hearts and deceits. Matinée idol protagonist Gary Essendine's unashamed indulgence is refreshing by contrast.
Most of those in Noël Coward's London audiences would have immediately caught the Shakespeare reference of the title. In Twelfth Night Feste the clown serenades Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek: O mistress mine, where are you roaming?O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,That can sing both high and low:Trip no further, pretty sweeting;Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'tis not hereafter;Present mirth hath present laughter;What's …