Reviews for City Theatre Company Performances
Review: Macbeth by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 15, 2013
In the final battle to the death, in the gripping choreography of Nick Lawson with its dramatic finish, Dave Yakubik and Brian Villalobos have the audience flinching, perched on the edge of the seats.
Shakespeare's most frequently performed works have remained vivid and vital for centuries in part because he creates characters caught in life's fundamental, archetypical dilemmas. Young lovers Romeo and Juliet rebel against constraints of family and society. Hamlet, the solitary hero, disappointed and deceived, seeks justification for taking action against a sea of troubles. Lear rages against old age and arrogant indifferent children. And Macbeth is a good man undone by temptation who's headed straight to …
Review: 12 Angry Men by City Theatre Company
by Jessica Helmke
Published on June 06, 2013
This is lean, stripped-down acting, theatrical work that's basically artistic commentary about a script and a world that still merits performance today.
A View Inside DecidingDecisions. We make them everyday. City Theatre's production of 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose gravely invited audience members to search for truth, as if they were jurors in the murder case. Vividly depicted characters organized around a long wooden table wore their back stories on their sleeves, and actors balanced their portrayals against one another with the guarded cordiality of an intense game of poker. This closed and sequestered group of twelve jurors touched …
Review: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom by City Theatre Company
by Stephen Meigs
Published on October 30, 2012
A man in a dress is funny for about 30 seconds. An actor playing a Charles Busch heroine, in a dress, with the endless gags, puns, and punch lines deliciously laced together, always original, and sometimes hysterically vulgar, is funny for the length of the show while making us also feel and care.
All politics is local, they say. Is all theater local, too? And can theater be politics? Find out. Go see Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Even better, phone your right-wing conservative religious uncle and invite him to go with you to see it at the City Theater where it's now playing. Don't tell Uncle the name of the show, don't give the game away. Just say “Gee, Uncle, it's a comedy and the first scene is set in a …
Review: Cabaret by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 31, 2012
The M.C., relative newcomer to Austin Johann Robert Wood, is absolutely terrific -- an enticing guide to the hells of temptation. Charismatic, muscular, graceful and mocking, he dominates that stage even when it's filled up with quivering pink pulchritude.
It's enticingly easy to imagine yourself away to 1930's Berlin in this staging of Kander and Ebb's Cabaret, for the City Theatre's space creates exactly the right dynamic. There are rules-of-thumb for successful parties. The first involves adequate supplies of liquor, but the second one, in fact the more important, requires fitting the numbers of guests to the room. The City's 85-seat intimate space is exactly right, both as a cabaret world where performers will joke, …
Review: Wit by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 24, 2012
Edson's creation Vivian Bearing has subsisted almost entirely in the rarefaction of the mind -- a childless, essentially friendless Vestal at the altar of academia. We live with her as she belatedly discovers and experiences the failing of the body that has carried that spirit.
It helps to have someone holding your hand when you look over the edge of the precipice. Even if you've always lived alone, felt self-sufficient and devoted yourself to the life of the mind. Margaret Edson's Wit is the portrait of literature professor Vivian Bearing, a devotee of 17th century English literature renowned for her publications on the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. At the age of 50 this scholar has been discovered to be the …
Review: Wit by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 24, 2012
Edson's creation Vivian Bearing has subsisted almost entirely in the rarefaction of the mind -- a childless, essentially friendless Vestal at the altar of academia. We live with her as she belatedly discovers and experiences the failing of the body that has carried that spirit.
It helps to have someone holding your hand when you look over the edge of the precipice. Even if you've always lived alone, felt self-sufficient and devoted yourself to the life of the mind. Margaret Edson's Wit is the portrait of literature professor Vivian Bearing, a devotee of 17th century English literature renowned for her publications on the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. At the age of 50 this scholar has been discovered to be the …