Reviews for Different Stages Performances
Review: Mrs. Mannerly by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 04, 2017
Jennifer Underwood and Suzanne Balling combine to produce theatre to transform the Santa Cruz Center not only into Steubenville, Ohio, in the 1960s but also into a magic lantern of memory.
Jennifer Underwood and Suzanne Balling have worked together on stage before, perhaps most memorably in the 2009 Different Stages production of Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon which brought Balling a B. Iden Payne award as supporting actor in a comedy. That production, like the current staging of Mrs. Mannerly by Jeffrey Hatcher, was directed by Karen Jambon. Both works are lightly ironic comedies; both show these two very familiar and much applauded Austin actresses to great advantage. …
Review: The Noisy Neighbors, or The Square (Il Campiello) by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 11, 2017
Each of the dozen actors in Goldoni's exuberant comedy fits snugly into a stereotype and charms us with it. You never quite know which combination of characters is going to plunge onstage.
Indeed, they are noisy, and they can come at you from just about anywhere, since there are six entrances and three windows in Ann Marie Gordon's intentionally rickety set plus the black box theatre aisles left and right. The adaptation by Richard Nelson of Yale is faithful to the spirit of Goldoni's commedia dell'arte piece for Carnival in Venice in 1756, although you'll immediately recognize the tunes sung by the ensemble with lyrics completely …
Review: John Gabriel Borkman by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 26, 2016
In an end-of-career play better read than produced, King Henrik gives us a series of brilliant dialogues that are delivered lyrically by Ev Lunning, Jr.
John Gabriel Borkman is a legacy play about legacy. Ibsen wrote it in 1896, and it was his penultimate play, penned long after his reputation was established with such plays as A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People. His entire artistic work, or oeuvre, may be thought of as prefiguring 20th century modernism with its emphasis in theatre on realism. Plays explored psychological and social issues with characters speaking directly of them in dialogues with …
Review: 4000 Miles by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 16, 2016
Our attention is held by the exposition of the protagonists old and young, but Herzog's work is essentially a Bildungsroman that runs a jumpy young Leo through life lessons, particularly concerning the opposite sex.
Amy Herog's 4000 Miles starts off pretty clunky and she deliberately withholds important chunks of background. It's 3 a.m and we're in a rent-controlled apartment in lower Manhattan, assuming that such accomodations still exist. Leo has just turned up in full biking gear and roused his grandmother Vera, evidently because he has nowhere else to go. In opening scenes the story is doled out: Leo's been incommunicado on a cross-country bike trip that started in Seattle. …
Review by Dr. David Glen Robinson (#3 of 3): FALLEN ANGELS by Noël Coward, Different Stages, January 8 - 30, 2016
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 17, 2016
The design credit to Paul Gilbert as cook for the champagne-splashed supper in Act II seemed highly appropriate and very well deserved.
Different Stages, one of Austin’s longest running theatre companies, presents Fallen Angels by Noel Coward, at Trinity Street Theater inside the First Baptist Church of Austin on Trinity Street. The play dates to 1924, and it is one of several Coward plays that remains in the regular theatre repertoire. Different Stages takes a fresh and lively approach to all its productions, and Fallen Angels is no exception to the rule. For those newly exploring theatre, the …
Review by Michael Meigs (#2 of 3): FALLEN ANGELS by Noël Coward, Different Stages, January 8 - 30, 2016
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 13, 2016
The lightheadedness and the lightheartedness of these women friends is charming. Director Norman Blumensaadt moves them smartly and cleverly about the stage.
Comedy is fundamental to the human condition. We laugh at the unexpected if it's pleasurable, and we laugh at the incongruous. Often the comic moment in art depends upon a certain distancing: it's funny when a clown slips on a banana peel but it's not funny when we do the same thing. And comedy can be cruel. Satire exposes and intensifies that which we find ridiculous. We poke fun at the pretentious, those who think …