Recent Reviews
Review: Kimberly Akimbo by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 09, 2025
In the title role as Kimberly, Ann Morrison Morrison, is a chameleon entertaining enough to do this production alone, but when you add in the incredible supporting cast, the resulting sum is much greater than its parts.
There are thousands of ways to tell a story and quite often the telling of the story is the story itself. Writers rely on old tropes like en media res, the hero cycle, or nonlinear narratives to tell a classic story in a new way. Sometimes this adds an extra dimension to the tale (e.g., Memento, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind), but often the storytelling style dominates the subject’s substance (looking at you ,Quentin …
Review: Much Ado About Nothing by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 06, 2025
Nothing daunted, the Baron's Men celebrate a MUCH ADO in fine style and without regret. Witty battles between Beatrice and Benedict promise that all will turn out well in the end.
No signs of woe were evident October 2 at the final production of the Baron's Men in the Elizabethan-style Curtain Theatre, their riverside home. The house was full and so were the benches for groundlings; artistic director Lindsay Palilnsky mixed with visiting high school students, jauntily chaired them in a Benedict vs. Beatrice competition onstage, and welcomed everyone to the company's now familiar semblance of classic dramatic art of the turn of the sixteenth century …
Review: Summer and Smoke by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 03, 2025
Filigree Theatre director Elizabeth V. Newman and cast render Tennessee Williams's meditation on fragility, virtue, and the heart both vividly and subtly. Stifled passion, remarkable characters; stirring and disturbing even now, 76 years after its debut.
Matters of the physical heart and the emotional heart—Tennessee Williams conflates them and then parses them out on the way to his love song to humanity, Summer and Smoke. Welcome to the first offering in Filigree Theatre’s seventh season. Like last year’s Suddenly Last Summer, director Elizabeth V. Newman and Filigree Theatre Tennessee Williams with great respect and crystalline clarity. Anyone who has seen or read even one of Wiliams’ plays knows that Summer and …
Review: ALLUVIUS by Ventana Ballet
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 27, 2025
Ventana Ballet's ALLUVIUS tears a rip in the envelope of contemporary ballet and floats through to the outer darkness of artistic innovation.
Ventana Ballet escaped its own bubble, tore a rip in the envelope of contemporary ballet, and floated through to the outer darkness of artistic innovation, darker than the lighting design and set of their current show, ALLUVIUS. Co-choreographers AJ Garcia-Rameau and Ty Graynor sought the liberation of dancing to unconventional (popular) music, and they achieved it in this show with 90s and early 2000s music, pieces from Metallica, Korn, TOOL, Disturbed, and others. Not that …
Review: Learning to Human by Sims Holland
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 26, 2025
Escape from the lost wilderness of addiction may be possible, if only we have Sims Holland's self-awareness and sense of humor.
Recalling Sims Holland's solo performance against the dark background of Austin's Hyde Park Theatre, I thought of Philippe Petit. There's no reason for you to know who he is and what he did, so I'll tell you: on August 6, 1974 aerialist/juggler/daredevil Philippe Petit spent 45 minutes dancing and performing on a 200-foot wire cable stretched between the as yet unfinished World Trade Towers. A heart-stopping set for those who watched and even for those …
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 22, 2025
Austin Playhouse serves up an entertainment light as air, delicious as those muffins disputed by Algy and Jack, and as saucy as Cecily and Gwendolyn.
What's a classic? Put quite simply and unanalytically, it's something old that simply never grows old. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be heavy and serious (viz., The Iliad, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost). Wit, fun, and froth usually disappear, but not always. Oscar Wilde's "trivial comedy for serious people" provides gentle satire, plot surprises, and a treasure chest of epigrams, observations, contradictions, and quiddities. This is the fourth time I've gotten to review the play, so …