Reviews for Zach Theatre Performances
Review: Dividing the Estate by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 04, 2012
Eugene Lee's monologue is at once a distilled narrative, sermon and symbol; and it is decidedly Faulknerian. Its meanings are layered on at several levels, all in relatively few words.
The Zach Theatre is a great showcase for local and regional art and talent, claiming as it does all the advantages of location, etc. It seems to hold court over Lady Bird Lake, with hill country scenery upstream and the shining, multi-colored towers of Austin across the lake. I visited Zach to see Dividing the Estate, Horton Foote’s 1989 play about a Texas family falling apart over estate inheritance. To cut to the chase, the …
Review: The Laramie Project Ten Years Later by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 02, 2012
This second Laramie play is less effective because in face of the forgetting, the writer/investigator/players are necessarily presented as driven by a thesis. It's a thesis with which I agree as patently do those who attend this production.
You know these people; you're comfortable with them. Most likely because you attended their portrayal in March and April of The Laramie Project, but possibly also because you recognize them as the Zach regulars who have appeared before you so many times. The Laramie Project 10 Years Later has the reassuring buzz of a class reunion, which is something like the way it must have been for the Tectonic Theatre Project as they undertook the …
Review: Next to Normal by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2012
Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word.
Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word. The intensity of the emotion, the huge volume of sound, the zig-zag of florescent lighting on the back walls of the set and above all the pitiless focus upon the mental illness of a suburban wife and mother -- all of these foster a numbness of mind that leaves you feeling …
Review: God of Carnage by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 10, 2011
There's plenty of clash in God of Carnage and there are unexpected turns, including destruction of precious items, self-control and self-esteem. Sometimes it's quite comic and other times it's closer to appalling.
Zach Theatre's God of Carnage is a beautiful mess. That's intentional. The set by Michael Raiford is sleekly contemporary with a bold abstract mural inspired by Cy Twombly spread across the back wall. This living room has a stark leather sofa, a Barcelona chair and large pillows in African-style fabrics, all positioned over a striking red floor so highly polished that the characters can probably see themselves in it. Somebody in this family has got …
Review: Spring Awakening by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 27, 2011
The story's message --warning of the dangers of moral tyranny -- is sobering and predictable but ever-applicable, the dizzying, tongue-in-cheek music sending up the misguided adults throughout will leave audiences wondering whether the events were tragic or comic.
Spring Awakening won eight of the 2007 Tony awards, including that for best musical, and the powerful production opened by the Zach Theatre last Saturday shows you why. This very contemporary musical adaptation of Franz Wedekind's Spring Awakening has played across Europe, and the U.S. national touring company fielded by Broadway Across America visited Bass Hall for a week in October, 2009. Awakening has now settled in to the Kleberg Stage until November 13 playing …
Review: The Book of Grace by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 24, 2011
I glimpsed an on-line comment that The Book of Grace "delivers a punch in the gut." Hmm. Maybe. What I recall is the subdued ironic comment heard behind me as I exited the theatre: "Well, that was certainly an uplifting evening, wasn't it?"
The marketing strategy of putting the playwright on the poster bothers me. It's a feeling made all the sharper by the Zach Theatre's importing of MacArthur 'Genius Grantee' Suzan-Lori Parks twice over the past six months for sessions entitled "Watch Me Work." The public was invited to watch Parks write -- at a desk? on a computer? on a yellow legal pad? -- for most of an hour, following which she had an exchange with …