Reviews for City Theatre Company Performances
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 …
Review: Rumors by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 16, 2011
Michelle Cheney and Wendy Zavaleta are together again, this time with a Lucy-and-Ethel dynamic, Michelle as the nutsy neurotic and Wendy as the feet-on-the-ground sarcastic cynic.
The greater Austin area hasn't lacked for productions of this 1988 farce by Neil Simon. A search of AustinLiveTheatre.com brings back announcements of stagings by the Wimberley Players in September, 2009, by the Renaissance Guild in San Antonio in July, 2010, by Leander's Way Off Broadway Community Players in January of this year and even by UT's student-run Broccoli Project last March. That sequence resembles the systematic trial-and-error of artillery ranging, back and forth, close …
Review: Hair by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 02, 2011
But on the evidence of the City Theatre production, Hair reveals itself principally to be about sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, to quote Ian Drury and the Blockheads (1977). And I like it.
City Theatre's production of the 1968 musical Hair is easy to look at, lively, familiar and loud, all of which qualities I consider to be virtues. For someone who knew every note of the 1967 cast album but had never seen it on stage, City's Hair was like a binge on vanilla Oreos. Jeff Hinkle, his four choreographers and that enthusiastic cast of twenty actor-singers keep the stage full and lively almost non-stop. They out-do …
Review: The Imaginary Invalid by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 27, 2011
You won't find any solutions to current health care issues, other than the truism that laughter is the best medicine, but you will certainly lose your worries about them during the lively two hours of this performance.
The 85-seat house at the City Theatre was agreeably full on the opening Friday of Karen Sneed's staging of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. A full house of attentive spectators is always a boost to the cast. Amusement is amplified and reactions build. The natural curiosity of the audience becomes rapport with actors and characters. Comedy, by provoking shared laughter, binds the members of each evening's audience indefinably, in a fashion that differs from night to …
Review: The Little Dog Laughed by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 13, 2011
The Little Dog Laughed was an unexpected gift, a challenge to convention and a story with heart.
City Theatre Artistic Director Andy Berkovsky had wanted to do Douglas Carter Beane's four-character sex farce since at least mid-2009. The title floated out there on the City's season listings, pending availability of performance rights. When City finally got the rights and ran it for four weeks in June and July, the silence was deafening. Not a single review appeared. The City has faced controversy with equanimity -- a year ago, Paul Ruddick's gay-themed comedy …
Review: Top Dog/Underdog by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 10, 2011
Romeo is tall, tense and cerebral. McArthur Moore as his younger brother Booth is a bouncy, jivy, arrogant womanizer who dreams of dazzling the marks in the three-card-monte scam.
You have missed an extraordinary experience. Almost all of you. Lisa Jordan's staging of Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks takes place this evening and then three more times, and then it's gone forever. Yes, I didn't get to the City Theatre production until late in the run. That wasn't willful neglect but just a queueing problem. I have a season ticket to the City, but there is so much theatre in Austin, much of it unusual, …