Recent Reviews
Review: A Streetcar Named Desire, Texas State
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 23, 2015
Regan Goins captured Blanche DuBois's loony desperation and mute appeal. And Tennessee Williams does give her a lot of loony to deal with.
Musical theatre can fill up a space like the theatre of the new Patti Strickel Harrison Performing Arts Center with bounce, noise and spectacle, but I was concerned that the venue would be too cavernous for drama. Especially for drama as challenging as that of Tennessee Williams, that wicked old trafficker in souls in pain and search of redemption. And there was also the simple question of age: in the glitter world of musical comedy, …
Misalliance, by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 18, 2015
Misalliance is a wickedly comic send-up of men's pretensions, particularly the older generation that's ever eager to court fetching young women. Shaw hasn't left these womenfolk defenseless, however.
GBS is at his best when he's throwing characters at one another, and this unexpected weekend in the country does just that. He pits the prosperous, self-satisfied merchant class against the drone-like aristocrats, petulant daughter against parents, the lasciviousness of the old against the real derring-do of a Polish adventuress, a practical wife against her straying but generous husband, and a desperate, impoverished clerk with a pistol against the whole edifice of money and class. …
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Everything Is Established, by Physical Plant Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 15, 2015
Two masterless servants and a mail-order bride: a strong cast with immense comedic skills delivers Hannah Kenah's absurdism with high comedy and memorable energy.
Physical Plant Theater presents Everything is Established in its premiere run at the Off Center, east Austin. The play was written and directed by Hannah Kenah, more familiar in her acting roles, notably with Physical Plant Theater and The Rude Mechanicals. Kenah has given us something bold and creatively uncategorizable; it would be unfair to slap a label on it. Ticket buyers who prefer to create their own labels will agree that the show is …
Peter and the Starcatcher, by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 12, 2015
Direction and conception evoke the sort of rowdy play-making one might imagine if a dozen pre-teens spent the night at a lock-in after watching Disney's film of Peter Pan.
Professional fan-drama has gotten to be a thing in recent years. Wicked, the dreamy adolescent take on The Wizard of Oz, has been the most successful, and the Marvel Comics franchise leaped past the stage right to the big screen. In 2004 Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson wrote their Peter and the Starcatcher prequel to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and followed it with three additional post-prequel/pre-Peter Pan children's books. This theatre adaptation by Rick Elice was done in …
Stars of David, by Austin Jewish Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 06, 2015
Aaron Harnick's lively musicalized monologues go back to an ancient and honorable tradition. No, probably not the one that you're thinking of.
Aaron Harnick's lively musicalized monologues go back to an ancient and honorable tradition. No, probably not the one that you're thinking of: I'm referring to the Catskills resorts of the 'Borscht Belt,' refuges from New York City's non-air-conditioned summer heat frequented by middle-class Jewish families from the 1920's through the 1950's. Families on summer vacation love to be entertained, and the venues there in the 'Jewish Alps' featured many small-cast musical comedies, as well as …
Review: Jesus Christ Superstar
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 05, 2015
The full houses at the Georgetown Palace offer evidence that this rock opera about the gentle man from Nazareth still affects us deeply today -- for some, perhaps even more deeply than the Book and history that it's based upon.
Jesus Christ Superstar, first an LP, was recorded 45 years ago. Shortly after that it was up on Broadway and running hard, talking to the United States and later the world.That 1970 creation was, in its day, closer to the great era of Broadway musicals than it is to us now. The full houses at the Georgetown Palace offer evidence that this rock opera about the gentle man from Nazareth still affects us …