Reviews for Different Stages Performances
Review: Miss Lulu Bett by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 28, 2023
This vigorous three-act production of Gale's 1921 Pulitzer-Prize-winning Drama offers sharp, well-delivered dialogue. A former satire of small-town pompousness, it now snaps at the hindquarters of today's patriarchy.
Norman Blumenstaadt’s Different Stages is the only company in Austin where you can be sure of seeing new old plays. Or, to put it differently, to see plays that are new to you though they’re significant in the history of the theatre arts of the United States. Norman has included contemporary works in the company’s seasons, certainly, and he constructs all of the DIffStages seasons with care. No fluff here; he has the …
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Review: The Art of Martyrdom (a Comedy) by Rita Anderson, presented by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 24, 2023
Playwright Rita Anderson's portrait of the nun Hrosvitha, the first female playwright, muddles an important story by viewing it through 21st-century lens. A talented cast and decisive director mostly save the day.
The Art of Martyrdom (A Comedy) is a play of magical realism, hybridity, social activism, sexual freedom, creativity, and church mockery, but not much so much about conflict and resistance. Playwright Rita Anderson often employs magical realism to shoehorn a wide array of issues into the themes of her plays, but this one gets to the far reaches of magical realism. The frame of the play is the story of Hrosvitha, a cloistered nun …
Review #2 of 2: Shining City by Different Stages
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 13, 2022
This production of Conor McPherson's Shining City does prove yet again that great actors cannot be held back by poor material.
Certainly, you are familiar with the expression sucked all the air out of the room. We have all felt that moment. Now imagine feeling only that moment for nearly two hours without intermission. Conor McPherson, an Irish playwright and screenwriter from Dublin, began writing in college and went on to find success on both the West End and Broadway beginning in 1999 with his play The Weir. He is considered to be one of …
Review #1 of 2: Shining City by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 24, 2022
SHINING CITY, a therapy play, is slow-paced and too great a stretch for many adults in the theatre community—unless they're immune to scatology, misogyny, and excessive foul language poorly performed
Was Conor McPherson going through a divorce or coming out about the time he wrote Shining City? In its stories and action, the play repeatedly throws relationships that don’t work at the theatregoer, and McPherson delights in detailing how men fumble ham-handedly with women in every situation. This is the lit-crit expectation of the nihilistic McPherson, but if anyone in everyday life is going through anything similar, don’t expect Shining City to offer any …
Review: The Thanksgiving Play by Different Stages at the Vortex, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 25, 2021
The Thanksgiving Play, a waggish four-actor satire, had the opening night audience roaring with laughter and delight. Director Melissa Vogt and the quartet of fresh faces of this cast make it easy to enjoy both the holiday and this gentle comedy.
Happy conjunctions: -- For this 2021 Thanksgiving season Norman Blumensaat's Different Stages company elected to stage Larissa Fasthorse's The Thanksgiving Play, a waggish four-actor satire that had the opening night audience roaring with laughter and delight throughout its uninterrupted presentation. -- Second, the production is the normally busy Different Stages' return to live performance after the terrible COVID interruption, prepared with careful precautions for a thoroughly vaccinated and masked audience. -- And this …
Review of Cricket on the Hearth streaming production by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 09, 2021
Different Stages' imaginative, effective streaming presentation features welcome familiar faces in a a clever interpretation that's close to actual in-person performance. A fine epiphany for Epiphany!
Once again, Austin's Different Stages has found a different stage, and as with many others, has mastered it. The Cricket on the Hearth was billed as a staged reading, but turned out to be considerably more than that. The costumed actors performed very much in character as the early Victorian persons Dickens enlivened to colorful perfection. Their Zoom window backgrounds revealed props or held a few set pieces, and occasional deft touches emphasized connections despite …