Recent Reviews
Review: Wanna Play by Christine Hoang, Color Arc Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 12, 2025
Christine Hoang's impishly cheerful story is fun and funny but also deep. Her characters face the puzzles each of us must confront if we are to search for connection.
Okay, an admission from a linguist and literary tanslator: I lack the context and historical references to identify precisely the primitive but extremely fetile ground from which Christine Hoang's Wanna Play? springs. Her medittion opens with the projection onto the Hyde Park Theatre's blank back wall of lumbering, crudely depicted adversaries in combat. Their snarling challenges to one another pop up in boxy speech bubbles before we hear the blurry voices. In video game world, …
Review: Dial M for Murder by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 12, 2025
Jeffrey Hatcher's canny contemporization of the 1952 play and 1954 Hitchcock film will keep you guessing. A fine cast is supported by superb design work.
Dial M for Murder is for fans of crime dramas. It's not at all a whodunit, but rather a think-heavy chess puzzle of crime and sexual and emotional entanglements, leaving audience members who don’t know each other comparing notes on clues at intermission. How could it be otherwise with Natalie D. Garcia as lead actor? And with a plot-tumbling surprise? And with Dave Jarrott directing? Frederick Knot's classic murder thriller was first staged in …
Review: Walden (Remix) by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 10, 2025
Anyone who longs to be understood as a hero and yet suffers from self-doubt—in other words, most of us—will appreciate the reassuring message of Walden [remixed] that friendship remains essential.
First, take a deep breath. Then plunge into an imaginary world where an eighteen-year-old science whiz has been sent solo to the moon for a year to test moondust for a substance that may retard or entirely reverse the disastrous effects of climate change. Her only companion in the living module is an AI presence titled "Larry Bird" or "L.B." Unlike HAL2000, imagined by Stanley Kubrick 57 years ago in 2001, A Space Odyssey, Larry …
Review: Self Portraits 5 by Bottle Alley Theatre Company, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 08, 2025
Intimate, intense, anonymous -- nine vigorous ensemble members presented self portraits in random order. You never knew what was about to hit, but you found out it was always vivid.
Self Portraits produces anonymous eternal ephemera in intense interactive staging. Bottle Alley Theatre's founder Chris Fontanes began the series in 2014. He was inspired by the late-night theatre of Chicago's Neo-Futurists, who originated the notion of thirty plays in sixty minutes back in 1988. The Neo-Futurists have run the show—or, more precisely, the technique—continuously since then; it's currently under the title The Infinite Wrench. The concept is simple but irresistible: members of an ensemble prepare …
Review: Dance on Film by the Austin Dance Festival
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 10, 2025
The annual ADF Dance on Film delivered us not only around the world but into subcultures, relationships, and colorful, surprising imaginings.
Once again, Dance on Film (DOF), an annual feature of the Austin Dance Festival,presented a sampler of new, largely contemporary, dance from around the world. Work from as far away as the UK, Canada, and Hong Kong was shown to the delight of Austin’s dance community. The 2025 edition, presented Thursday, February 27th, at the Galaxy Theatres, central Austin, did not disappoint. Ilana Wolanow, Jennifer Williams, and Lisa Kobdish co-produced Dance on Film for …
Review: Les Misérables by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on February 20, 2025
For those who pine for the older days or start many a sentence with ‘"It was better back when . . .’" the current national tour is a complete counterstrike. LES MISÉRABLES is as enjoyable and resonant as it ever was.
A debatable but fun subject: what makes a musical different from an opera? New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini has pointed out that the most common argument of what separates the twain is that opera is highbrow with complex music while musicals are not, a contention that's completely unsubstantiated. In his opinion, the difference lies in the fact that in operas the music comes first while in musicals the words come first. Broadway’s …