Recent Reviews
Review: Emma When You Need Her by Shrewd Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 15, 2015
There’s a protean churning in the cast, for these twelve actors gather as crowds, audiences, workforces and hounded dissident conspirators.
The immersive experience of an ensemble piece like Emma When You Need Her can be disconcerting. You walk into the black box of the Vortex Rep to find people milling around, and someone — who was it, now? — offers you a chunk of chalk and invites you to write on the unadorned walls. Well, why not? Chalk thoughts and images bloom as the seats fill. The cheerful troupe of actors in ragtag attire swirls …
Review 2: The Wars of Heaven, Pt. 1 by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 12, 2015
Noel Gaulin’s shadow dance as The Almighty is exquisite. He sets forth the facts of Creation and Eternity and then withdraws to His throne in the Empyrean.
The Salvage Vanguard Theater, one of east Austin’s premier warehouse theaters, lends itself to darkness. An intentional, cultivated sense of gloom prefaces Trouble Puppet Theater’s vast imaginative updating of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. For the 21st century, the work is reentitled The Wars of Heaven, Part 1. The production is ambitious in taking on this monument of world literature, but Trouble Puppet has climbed monuments before and knows how to do it. Milton’s visionary 1667 epic …
Review: An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Kara Bliss McGregor
Published on May 11, 2015
The plot is frothy and the characters broadly drawn, a satisfying blend of tragicomedy and slapstick, plus food for thought about life, sex and long goodbyes.
At center, Michael Hollinger’s An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf celebrates the joys of appetite, the mysteries of attraction, and what makes a manly man, with a generous helping of the absurd and homage to Ernest Hemingway. The opening night production at the Gaslight-Baker Theater was a feast, served by a nimble cast under the direction of Robyn Gammill. The story unfolds in 1961 in a Paris restaurant owned by an …
Review 1: The Wars of Heaven, Pt. 1 by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 11, 2015
Puppets and death. Puppets and injustice. People and puppets. There's a transitivity there that haunts Trouble Puppetmaster Connor Hopkins.
Puppets and death. Puppets and injustice. People and puppets. There's a transitivity there that haunts Trouble Puppetmaster Connor Hopkins, a brooding concern about a world out of kilter that informs his choice of subjects -- Frankenstein, Sinclair's The Jungle, Riddley Walker -- and his treatment of them. His original juvenile adventure story The Crapstall Street Boys takes us through a world of exploitation and cannibalism far worse than that depicted by Dickens. Now Hopkins is reaching for …
Review: Krapp's Last Tape AND Hughie by Actors Theatre Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 10, 2015
Performed on the near-empty black box stage with a short intermission these two pieces complement one another, each opening the shadowy doors of memory and self-delusion.
There are few things more disturbing and moving than the sight of a mild-mannered funnyman in despair. Michael Stuart's always a welcome presence on Austin stages. A tall man with a large frame, gently balding pate and subtle smile, he's always turning up in reassuringly comic or quirky roles, particularly at the Austin Playhouse. The tut-tutting Lord Summerhayes in Shaw's Misalliance; Angus the dreamy mentally handicapped Canadian farmer in Hyde Park Theatre's The Drawer Boy; …
Review: Love's Labor's Lost by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 04, 2015
Love’s Labor’s Lost has long lingered in unlovéd obscurity, and not just for its alliterations. Present Company has organized a fine party for you up there on the rooftop and all you have to do is kick back, admire and enjoy.
What better time than spring — even a Texas spring — for a play about the foolishness of courting? And who better to present it than Present Company, the players who’ve left Rain Lily Farm again this year for the rooftop terrace at Whole Foods Market in downtown Austin? Love’s Labor’s Lost has long lingered in unlovéd obscurity, and not just for its alliterations. Shakespeare probably wrote this court entertainment in the …