Reviews for Texas State University Department of Theatre, Dance and Film Performances
Review: Lady M by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2010
Smith-Rodriguez's Lady M is a serious and respectful piece, providing a credible back story. Recorded Scottish history was no great help, as the playwright notes in the program.
With the imagining of her piece Lady M Melissa Smith-Rodriguez explores the darkness of pre-history, of feudal Scots customs and of the perceived enigma of character of the leading woman in Shakespeare's Macbeth. This play is not an exculpation of Macbeth's unnamed lady but rather the creation of a fictional history explaining the woman's cold, fierce and ambitious nature.As a mantra and foreshadowing the playwright evokes the dark night of Act II, Scene 2 with Lady Macbeth's feverish comment," …
Review: Big Love by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 10, 2009
Big Love is Aeschylus super-lite, a chipper chance for the young company to act out a comic story about love, power and domination for the video generation.
Charles Mee's quirky fable Big Love is a reworking of the Greek legend of the Danaids, drawing in part on the earliest extant fragment of Western drama, The Suppliants. It's a story of the war between men and women.In that text Aeschylus presents about the first third of the story of the 50 daughters of Danaeus and the 50 sons of his twin brother Aegyptus, all of the youngsters being the great-great-grandchildren of the union of Zeus with Io, …
Review: Macbeth by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 11, 2009
We see Straus's mind at work, his hopes invested in the witches' equivocal predictions. His berating of messengers is dramatic, effective business. His soliloquies late in the play are measured, beaten-down but defiant. His Macbeth reaches grim awareness.
One of the challenges of Macbeth is that we all know the text. Not by heart but, thanks to the hard work of generations of English teachers, just about anyone who is sitting in the theatre when the lights go down will have the elements of the plot.That's good, and familiar, and comforting. The downside of that familiarity is that the actors don't fear losing us. They have a text to deliver, and they make sure that …
Review: Company by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 17, 2008
Furth and Sondheim were certainly enamored of the ladies, though. Each of the eight women actors of the piece is striking, talented, and has at least one juicy scene.
Academics have labeled Stephen Sondheim’s Company a “conceptual musical,” an exploration of the dilemmas and discontents of urban marriage and of unattached bachelorhood.When it opened in 1970, Broadway audiences were used to plot, plot and character, reflected and stitched together in song. Company, with a book by actor George Furth and words & music by Sondheim, is instead a series of vignettes around the unattached bachelor Robert, living in New York City and facing his 35th …