Recent Reviews
Review: To Kill a Mockingbird by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 15, 2015
To Kill A Mockingbird maintains Harper Lee's condemnation of petty, malevolent and racist small-town Alabama while holding out hope for the future.
Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is a comfortable and familiar story, an immediate success when it was published in 1960. My cousins in a small town in south Alabama were about the same age as Scout, the protagonist. They embraced the story and Harper Lee's sensitive portrait of small town life and the appalling effects of know-nothing racism. It took me a bit longer. First, because I didn't read the novel or see the 1962 …
Review: The Dumbwaiter by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 12, 2015
The Capital T production capitalizes on the acumen and presence of Webster and Phelps, who with director/set designer Mark Pickell constitute a sort of Three Musketeers of edgy comedy.
Thin and yet deep, apparently superficial but disturbingly suggestive, Harold Pinter's The Dumbwaiter was his second play, a one-act written in 1957. The production by Capital T Theatre is accomplished, eerie and aggravating -- all of which are qualities that marked Pinter's works throughout a fifty-year career recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. Ill at the time and unable to travel, Pinter videotaped his Nobel lecture. In the opening passage he said, …
Review: The History of King Lear, Nahum Tate adaptation by Hidden Room Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on November 11, 2015
Beth Burns' version of Nahum Tate's reworked KING LEAR could be subtitled 'Restoration Cinematic Kabuki.' Strongly recommended!
The English Restoration was made in 1660, and 21 years into Charles II’s reign Nahum Tate premiered his History of King Lear in London. The play was a strong rewriting of Shakespeare’s King Lear, much to Restoration tastes. Tate’s tale of the mad, storm-crawling king with two treacherous daughters held sway on stages for 150 years, it is said, until there was something of a Shakespearean restoration. Thereafter, Tate’s version was effectively lost. …
Review: Into The Woods by Austin Jewish Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 07, 2015
The AJRT/TSP production of Into The Woods sparkles. This beautifully spare and animated production will be an award contender as an ensemble work.
What remains to be said about Into The Woods by Steven Sondheim and James Lapine? Musical theatre buffs marked the 28th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of their slightly subversive treatment of four fairytales from the Brothers Grimm this past week, the day following the opening of the production jointly sponsored by Trinity Street Players and the Austin Jewish Repertory Company. Last year Disney produced a relatively well received film with an all-star cast, …
Review: Naked as a Gaybird by Salvage Vanguard Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on November 07, 2015
Many of Jay Byrd's stories are tinged with tragedy or are outright tragedies; this reviewer often wondered if he should be laughing at them at all.
Jay Byrd's autobiographical one-man show Naked as a Gaybird is strong in content and themes. It's a demonstration of skill and fortitude, as any one-actor show must be. Byrd is well up to the task, with the aid of director Jenny Larson. His show is also a work of penis adoration, the visuals mostly presented in cartoon animation videos by Ray Ray Mitrano and Aron Taylor. In hilarious presentation Byrd tells about growing up gay and how …
Review: Marisol by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 05, 2015
This production of Marisol missed its time slot by a week, for its serious weirdness would have been appropriate for Halloween.
José Rivera's 1993 phantasmagorical play Marisol was awarded an Off-Broadway (Obie) award for playwriting. It must have gotten attention for the deranged excesses of his picture of New York City and a world gone wrong. Rivera imagines a dark, dark world -- morally, ethically and literally, for the sun hasn't been seen for months and there's every indication that the laws of physics have warped beyond predictability. The sun rises in the north and sets in …