Recent Reviews
Review: Frankenstein by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on November 04, 2015
In a brilliant stage presentation full of imagery, the singular Connor Hopkins' Frankenstein is a robo-articulated concatenation of images with sinuous reptilian movement.
This is not like anybody else’s version of Frankenstein, and it is not even like Trouble Puppet’s earlier adaptations of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's literary classic. It's a full, 21st century updatingin a stylish live theatre presentation. It offers new material and extends the plot with shadow puppets and other material. Not all theatergoers find puppet theatre a full and satisfying experience. Some cannot make the mental switch away from seeing puppetry as animated …
Review: La Muerte Alegre by Teatro Espacio Agua Viva
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 26, 2015
With its graceful charm and commedia dell'arte framework this 1908 Russian fantasy done in Spanish offers a sly admonitory message for the Día de los Muertos.
Most Anglos are put off by the Day of the Dead holiday. Skeletons, graves, and altars? Popular American culture has had little problem celebrating zombies, Frankenstein and Dracula, but those fantasy folk are at a comfortable distance from us. Anglo America prefers to keep death hygenic, remote and out of sight. Mexico's Catholic and indigenous traditions look both death and family square in the face. Unlike the French traditional practice of simply visiting cemetaries …
Review: The Quarry by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 24, 2015
Two luminiscent performances by women company members are remarkably different but equally striking and captivating in this serenely puzzling story.
Hyde Park Theatre's production of The Quarry by Greg Pierce offers not one but two luminiscent performances by women company members. They're remarkably different but equally striking and captivating, demonstrations of the vitality of this long running and well established theatre. The HPT is a theatre that one's almost reluctant to write about, because it's a gem, hidden in plain sight. This reviewer, like Gollum, would really prefer to keep this 'precious' for himself. The …
Review: Cloud Formations by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 21, 2015
Playwright Fontanes has a thing for strong women protagonists, and Samantha Ireland as Marlow is the forceful and articulate but existentially confused center of this piece.
Chris Fontanes' Cloud Formations sets a Zen-like entry to the world of shadows it depicts. Part of that is the venue, Sessions on Mary, a 78704 bungalow with a scrap of yard out front, and part may be unintentional, an oversight in the publicity. Cloud Formations is announced for 7:30 p.m. Fridays - Sundays. In fact, the house opens at 7:30, but the action of the play begins sometime closer to 8 p.m. As happened with …
Review: The House on Haunted Hill by Weird City Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 09, 2015
'House on Haunted Hill' is a brilliant work precisely because it doesn’t know what it wants to be—ghost story, slasher film, or crime drama/mystery.
Weird City Theatre has just opened its long-awaited new production, House on Haunted Hill, at Ground Floor Theatre on Austin’s east side. The show is something old and something new, a new stage adaptation (perhaps the only one) of the 1959 Vincent Price movie of the same name produced from the screenplay by Robb White. Today’s stage adaptation is by Robert L. Berry, a stalwart, multi-talented member of Weird City Theatre and other regional companies. Overall production …
Review: A View from the Bridge by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 07, 2015
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE at Texas State is complex, gripping and accomplished, theatre of the highest quality.
Sublimely imagined, cast and presented, Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge at Texas State is a production any commercial playhouse would dream to equal. Miller was at the top of his form and very much in the public eye when he created the revised two-act version of this piece in 1956, seven years after Death of A Salesman and three years after The Crucible and its witch-hunting theme riled the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. In …