Recent Reviews
Review: Sophisticated Ladies, the Duke Ellington musical by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 21, 2015
Talent, thy name is Jennifer Holliday, brought to Austin for this production and all by herself the guarantor of the success of the show.
Zach Theatre's production of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies in the Topfer Theatre is spectacular. The Topfer is gaining a reputation for high-tech productions that dazzle large audiences. Sophisticated Ladies bodes well to enhance that reputation and with its production values to grant some sophistication to its design aestheticsl, although some more work remains to be done. This evening is a song cycle of Duke Ellington’s songs and music, tied in non-narrative fashion to Ellington’s …
Review: When The Rain Stops Falling by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 08, 2015
The playwright, director and cast achieve something beyond mere storytelling. They touch our emotions deeply and evoke the biggest questions and mysterious interconnections of human life.
Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling is an extraordinary piece of writing. Norman Blumensaadt's staging of it at the Vortex is an astonishing feat of theatre. This is a far journey into a mystery and into unknowing: there's a puzzle to be unravelled at the core of it, but the real puzzle is the arbitrary and capricious nature of our very existence. Does that sound obscure? These interconnected stories of four generations span …
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 …