Recent Reviews
Review: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 04, 2015
Michael Clnkscales has the quiver and rubber-faced grimaces for Pseudolus the tricky slave, but he also has a bounding physical energy. Jeff Philips as Hysterium the major domo is a fine deliberate distrustful foil. The two work together with the familiar ease of a vaudeville duo.
City Theatre's staging of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Foreum has all the cheery exuberance and somewhat retro fun of a toga party at a frat house -- do the on-campus Greeks do that anymore, or has such innocent naughtiness disappeared in today's overload of digital ersatz sophistication? If so, too bad for them; this evening of capers led by R. Michael Clinkscales is merrily nonsensical, a Sondheim/Shevelove/Gelbart celebration of the 'tricky slave' rom-coms …
Review: Talking Pictures by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 01, 2015
If Foote can be compared to Chekhov, as director Nina Bryant suggests, then certainly the Gaslight Baker Theatre Company itself can be seen as containing and preserving all the character types and primal memories of a simpler Texas society.
Horton Foote tells quietly intimate stories set in the vast space of memory that is small-town Texas. That stretch of storytelling is nicely captured by the set and the surroundings of the Gaslight Baker Theatre in Lockhart. Talking Pictures reveals itself on a set of large plaforms standing in vast empty space, with the proscenium of the theatre-turned-movie-house-returned-to-theatre arching behind the notional outline of a house in east Texas. These stories are like a …
Review: The Year of the Rooster by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 29, 2015
Playwright Eric Dufault sinks down into the wild dim mind of a bantam rooster bred for combat and hopped up on steroids, enraged and obsessed with the glare of the sun; Jason Liebrecht incarnates the bird with ferocious sinewy movement and stacatto speech.
You generally have a pretty good idea of what you're going to see at a Capital T production at the Hyde Park Theatre. Strong emotion, blighted lives, poverty or else poverty of spirit amidst mindless materialism, misfits in an America-through-the-looking-glass. The Year of the Rooster fits that template and gives you ample reason to shiver and hug yourself and be thankful for what you've got. But -- as so often with Mark Pickell's band of mischief …
Review: Gusev by Breaking String Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 26, 2015
Graham Schmidt's adaptation and staging of Anton Chekhov's very short story 'Gusev' is a dark and haunting hour of theatre in which concept comes close to overwhelming content.
Graham Schmidt's adaptation and staging of Anton Chekhov's very short story Gusev is a dark and haunting hour of theatre in which concept comes close to overwhelming content. Schmidt and talented collaborators take the ten-page story written by Chekhov in 1890 on his voyage back from Sakhalin Island in Russia's far east and endow it with rich layers of detail, remaining generally faithful to the text and sequence of the original. That overlay distracts …
Review: Tender Rough Rough Tender by Sarah Saltwick, groundswell at the Off Center
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 23, 2015
The actors are intense and spot-on in their characterizations. Joseph Garlock plays Mike with a sweet center appropriate to the character, when he could have played it all muscle. Hannah Burkhauser definitely has a huge emotional range.
The Fourth of July, 2011, in Austin was incredibly hot, fireworks were banned, the Bastrop Lost Pines burned down that summer, and restaurants charged for ice water, but only if patrons requested it. This is the atmosphere of the incredibly hot Tender Rough Rough Tender by Sarah Saltwick, now playing at The Off-Center in east Austin. The sit-com joke of taking cold drinks by throwing them in one’s own face rather than swallowing them is …
Review: The Tree Play by Robi Polgar
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 12, 2015
A new work in the form of a stage ritual and composite documentary on rain forest and habitat destruction, Robi Polgar's THE TREE PLAY is an artful continuation of consciousness raising in Austin and the world.
The ambitious Austin-grown theatre show The Tree Play is just finishing up its premiere run at the new Ground Floor Theatre on the east side. It's a new work in the form of a stage ritual and composite documentary on rain forest and habitat destruction around the world. Robi Polgar authored the script that ties the diverse elements together in a clear narrative thread. The play is an artful continuation of consciousness raising in Austin and the world. …