Reviews for Rude Mechs Performances
Review: I've Never Been So Happy by Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 19, 2009
The story of I've Never Been So Happy is simple and silly enough to qualify as mythic, an affectionate tweaking of the tales and characters familar in tales of Western settlement. The Lynn-Stopschinski partnership is a happy one.
It's clever. It's mythic. It's melodic. It's multimedia.It's the Rude Mechanicals still-in-workshop production of I've Never Been So Happy with book and lyrics by Kirk Lynn and music by Peter Stopchinsky, who also sings the part of the mountain lion.But it's short and it's incomplete. By design, it will leave you wanting more. The Rude Mechanicals have made for themselves an enviable place in the bubbling world of Austin's young non-Equity original-works theatres. The Rudes are highly …
Review: The Method Gun by Rude Mechs
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 19, 2009
The art of acting in live theatre is dangerous and alluring, especially in a society that turns less and less frequently to the celebration of that collective and colloborate art. To venture onstage is to take a great risk. As in Russian Roulette.
So what, exactly, is the Method Gun?The short, obvious and wrong answer is that it's the loaded pistol that is secured in a birdcage by a troupe of intense, troubled actors. And like any loaded pistol that features in stage action, it will, eventually be used (cf., "the loaded gun theory").That piece of hardware is a gun, but it's not The Method Gun except in a very minor, representational way.The ensemble makes us at home for the show, …