Reviews for Georgetown Palace Theatre Performances
Review: Evita by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 03, 2011
The voices are superb, the leads are very well cast both for appearance and for presence, and as usual the Palace fills the stage up with action, spectacle and dance. Movement is swift and convincing, and the director and cast make very good use of the turntable at center stage.
Evita offers not only the Georgetown Palace's usual high standards of performance, but also something more: a deglamorization of the Lloyd Webber/Rice tragic fairy tale. Eva Duarte de Perón came from almost literally nowhere -- from a provincial Argentine town where she was one of several illegitimate children of a wealthy rancher. She became leading lady, first lady and "Spiritual Leader of the Nation." Lloyd Webber's score and Tim Rice's libretto have furnished us …
Review: Scrooge, the musical by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 02, 2010
Leslie Bricusse essentially does a Hanna-Barbera version of Charles Dickens' novella. Scrooge as Fred Flintstone -- loud mouthed, dim and aggressive in an oafish sort of way. But loveable, too, especially once he has been brought around by the visitations.
The Palace has once again put a gigantic effort into the casting, preparation and playing of its holiday musical. As with Annie last year , Scrooge the Musical by Leslie Bricusse has a big cast -- 24 bio'd players plus 23 charmers in the three children's casts (designated Nickleby, Copperfield and Pickwick, recalling characters from Dickens). Except for six principals, the roles are double- or triple-cast, a policy of sharing out that must have made coordination of the 26 performances akin to writing up …
Review: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 17, 2010
Stephen Jack in the title role sings with simplicity, dignity and feeling. His brothers are a fine assortment of shapes and sizes, constituting a rogue's gallery and men's chorus of singers and dancers of remarkable power.
With Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the Georgetown Palace Theatre demonstrates once again the blend of professional standards and excitement of community theatre that makes it the premiere venue in the greater Austin area for musical theatre. Webber wrote this piece well before his hit Jesus Christ Superstar, for a school performance in London. The structure hints at that, for when the lights go down, cheery Patty Rowell comes …
Review: Harvey by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 05, 2010
The Palace gives this old stuff a vigorous production, including its signature attention to sets and detail. Michael Rhea comfortably nudges Jimmy Stewart out of our minds with his interpretation of Elwood P. Dowd.
If it weren't for Jimmy Stewart, Mary Chase's gentle comedy Harveywould probably have been forgotten long ago. It's a pretty broad farce about a hysterically pretentious small town woman desperate to avoid the social opprobrium of her unmarried brother's mental delusions. The local mental clinic Chumley's Rest is one locus of the fun, where blinkered psychiatrists and a muscle-guy attendant think Veta Louise is the nut-case. Brother Elwood P. Dowd serenely accepts their diagnoses …
Review: A Little Night Music by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 28, 2010
There's little of Ingmar Bergman's darkness about this glittering tale. Ah, the flesh, its delights and temptations, and the keen edge of time!
A Little Night Music at the Georgetown Palace theatre is a giddy delight. Stephen Sondheim’s elegant fable has the magic of a midsummer night in Sweden. The sun never fully disappears, time is in suspension and the world hums with yearning and expectation. In this gentle world of lovers and fools the story is attractively simple. Sondheim’s music and lyrics lift in subtle fashion the sentimental dilemmas of the cast of vivid, idle upper class characters, transmuting a Feydeau-style farce …
Review: Annie, the musical by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 01, 2010
Seeing Annie for a second time I was struck by the imagination and flair of its design elements.
For the performance of December 23, 2009: I brought six family members to see Annie on December 23 and all were delighted. This wasn't the same show that ALT reviewed on November 28. Director Mary Ellen Butler and the Georgetown Palace team chose to maximize participation and presentation for their end-of-2009 holiday production. Leading roles were double- or triple-cast and ensemble roles were double-cast, resulting in a complicated mosaic for the 106 actors and the 40+ support staff. …