Reviews for Austin Shakespeare Performances
Review: An Ideal Husband by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 14, 2009
Wilde has a message -- approximately, "We men adore women for their imperfections but you women will insist on putting your men on a pedestal, obliged to perfection."
The conventional staging of Oscar Wilde, within the frame of a proscenium, gives us a bright window into the highly mannered scene of London's Victorian upper classes.For Austin Shakespeare's An Ideal Husband in the Long Center's Rollins Theatre, the audience surrounds the stage. This staging in-the-square gives us a visual kaleidoscope of witty epigrams, paradoxes, brilliant costumes and exquisitely good manners. There's a technical challenge here, since at any given moment an actor will be …
Review: The World's Fastest Hamlet by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 04, 2009
Once they’d finished, to cheers from the audience, our players over-topped themselves by doing a two-minute Hamlet, followed by a ten-second Hamlet.
Sometimes you master the venue and other times the venue masters you. We went to downtown Austin on the afternoon of the First Night celebrations, particularly to check out the theatre events. The World's Fastest Hamlet by Austin Shakespeare and Heron & Crane by the DA! Theatre Collective were advertised for the HBMG Foundation stage in the park just under the south end of the First Street Bridge. Except that there was no stage there. …
Review: Macbeth by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 11, 2008
Sharron Bower as Lady Macbeth sets the intensity and speed of the play. And “speed” it is – this pill-popping, text-messaging, sex-hungry, vital woman is a scarier witch than any of the three weird sisters.
Austin Shakespeare converts the Rollins Theatre into a vast haunted playing space for its scary, hopped-up version of Macbeth, playing only this weekend and next. Shakespeare’s play of visions, equivocation and relentless, destroying time is in this production a gorgeously imagined vision, one that with its disjunct setting plays on some of America’s deepest fears.Macbeth – A Global Perspective is the tag. Dressed in contemporary combat fatigues and moving through a capacious stage space defined …