Recent Reviews
Review: Sacred Space by Exchange Artists
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 30, 2015
The cast danced and shared ideas on the prospects of an afterlife, and then the Flight Attendant appeared, played by Bridget Farr. She dragged away the focal pilgrim, Anne Hulsman, on magical realist travels around the world.
Exchange Artists have brought another highly creative, original production to Austin. Sacred Space has just finished up its single weekend in performance at the Little Pink Monster Gallery in the Canopy arts complex in East Austin. The show, very much under the radar, offers a showcase for devised and improvised work. At the same time, the show is partly scripted, the credit going to Rachel Weise and Katherine Craft, the co-artistic directors of the company. …
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 28, 2015
Kara Bliss's Lady Bracknell has just the right no-nonsense insistence along with the humorlessness that makes the character so comic.
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is so exquisitely written that it will probably never fall out of fashion. Wilde mocks fashion and the fashionable; he presents us with chaps who are guileful but goodhearted deceivers and young ladies dizzy with self importance and good manners. And of course there's Aunt Agatha, the ultimate dragon lady, arbiter of all that's good taste and acceptable in polite society. The script is balanced, well plotted, …
Review: The Sorcerer by Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 28, 2015
Gilbert and Sullivan stand up very well indeed in the face of “progress.” Heartfelt thanks goes to GSSA for polishing this gem from the G&S trove.
The Sorcerer by Gilbert and Sullivan is finishing up its current run in Austin at the Brentwood Christian School on North Lamar.The show offers up more lapidary work by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Austin (GSSA) doing what it does best: historically faithful renditions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s work. Fans of English light opera will be thrilled by the show, as will theatergoers of any type. The Sorcerer is one of the early …
Review: Heathers, musical by Doctuh Mistuh Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 23, 2015
The ultimate curse is on everyone, sung in one line in one song that flew by too fast for most to catch: “You can never really leave high school.” You take your damage with you, along with your diploma.
Heathers is the musical theatre interpretation of the highly successful 1988 movie of the same name. Doctuh Mistuh Productions prides itself on bringing to Austin plays and productions not commonly produced here, and they win again with Heathers. The stage musical premiered officially in New York in 2014, and this production is certainly its Austin premiere. The stage musical is if anything darker than the movie, which gained cult status and is still …
Review: The Great American Trailer Park Musical by Austin Theatre Project
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 21, 2015
Rather than condescending to the white trash stereotypes the show universalizes the unfortunate condition of trailer park existence and finds keen adult humor living there.
Ground Floor Theatre on the east side of Austin is making a specialty of musicals and has become the official home base of the Austin Theatre Project (ATP). The latest offering from this impressive team is The Great American Trailer Park Musical, music by David Nehls, book by Betsy Kelso. The show premiered in New York in 2004. The ATP production impresses with the first glimpse of the set, the exteriors …
Review: The Strangerer by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 14, 2015
Now, six years further down the road and here in the heart of Texas, Robert Pierson and Capital T turn this piece into an exploration of man's incapacity to understand. The focus is far less on the missteps of an administration than on our plight when faced with random catastrophe and evil.
Mickle Maher's The Strangerer is profoundly witty. But it's not comical. You may go into the agreeably conspiratorial Hyde Park Theatre with the expectation of laughing it up on the dark side, making fun of politicians in general and Bushes in particular, but you're going to get a short sharp shock. Capital T Theatre, Mark Pickell's comfortable co-conspirator with Ken Webster's Hyde Park Theatre, is going to get up your nose with some serious …