Reviews for Hyde Park Theatre Performances
Review: Waiting for Godot by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 21, 2024
Hyde Park Theatre proves once again that it's not obligatory for drama to entertain or distract. It's vital, sufficient and salutory for theatre art to look straight into the abyss.
It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That was Winston Churchill in an October, 1939 radiocast discussing the newly announced pact between Germany and Russia, but his cryptic formulation could be applied as well to Samuel Beckett's 1948-1949 En attendant Godot, written in French and produced in Paris in 1953. Beckett's English-language translation of his own work was staged in London …
Review: A Doll's House, Part 2 by Hyde Park Theatre
by Samantha Hendel
Published on March 02, 2019
Hyde Park Theatre’s production directed by Ken Webster brings up questions regarding gender equality and marriage, while providing good laughs throughout.
As the sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s controversial play, written in 1879, A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath brings us even further into the 21st century feminist movement. Hyde Park Theatre’s production directed by Ken Webster brings up questions regarding gender equality and marriage, while mixing in good laughs throughout. In her show-stopping performance, Katherine Catmull brings the leading character to life with her mannerisms and truthful monologues. Catmull …
Review: The Antipodes by Hyde Park Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 06, 2018
Annie Baker's experiment of setting down eight characters in a conference room and inviting their stories is bulletproof and allows her to experiment further with imaginative story contexts.
Annie Baker seems to be family friends with Hyde Park Theatre. Her The Antipodes is brand-new, and Hyde Park Theatre gives us only the second production of it in the country. The anticipation of this play has been keen among Austin audiences who loved Baker’s Circle, Mirror, Transformation,The Aliens, The Flick, and John. The premiere Thursday night, under the direction of Ken Webster, satisfied most in the audience. It was worth the wait. The Austin production takes its place in the front rank of …
Review: The Wolves by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2017
Sarah Delappe's THE WOLVES replaces the familiar HPT aesthetic with a fast-moving, fast-talking earnest and boisterously naïve discovery of life's possibilities. These wolves are a girls' indoor soccer team dedicated to the sport and the exuberance of their own physical movement.
The Hyde Park Theatre has new contents these days, and the vitality of the Wolves soccer team comes close to blasting the roof off the building. We're used to a different brand from HPT's Ken Webster and allied Austin theatre companies, more along the lines of quiet unflinching examination of the quirks and dark corners of middleclass life in these United States. The Wolves by Sarah Delappe replaces that aesthetic with a fast-moving, fast-talking …
Review: The Realistic Joneses by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 27, 2016
Incongruities, socially unacceptable outbursts, surprising changes and confessions -- Eno's baffling characters show courage, stoic or reluctant, in facing adversities of shared existence.
Will Eno writes funny characters. And they're not funny ha-ha; they're funny strange. Disconnected. Earnest, inept and trapped in cold joyless individual worlds that bounce off one another as if they're walking around inside invisible force fields. I was baffled when Ken Webster and Hyde Park Theatre regulars presented Eno's Tragedy: A Tragedy in 2013, and it's just as well that I had another CTXLiveTheatre reviewer to cover it. I told myself then that …
Review: The Quarry by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 24, 2015
Two luminiscent performances by women company members are remarkably different but equally striking and captivating in this serenely puzzling story.
Hyde Park Theatre's production of The Quarry by Greg Pierce offers not one but two luminiscent performances by women company members. They're remarkably different but equally striking and captivating, demonstrations of the vitality of this long running and well established theatre. The HPT is a theatre that one's almost reluctant to write about, because it's a gem, hidden in plain sight. This reviewer, like Gollum, would really prefer to keep this 'precious' for himself. The …