Recent Reviews
Review: I'm Not Rappaport by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2015
It's a heart-warming tale, no matter how much you may be aware that your sympathies are being manipulated. As in the Quijote, the man's great disasters have an endearing nobility.
Lifetime New Yorker Herb Gardner hit the theatrical jackpot twice, with A Thousand Clowns in 1962 and I'm Not Rappaport in 1984. I didn't see the first of those on any stage, but my kids wondered why I would periodically proclaim, "All right, everybody out for volleyball!" That's Jason Robards summoning the neighborhood at 6 a.m. in the film version. In both plays Gardner portrays an oddball New Yorker down on his luck but …
Review: The Great God Pan by Street Corner Arts
by Thomas Hallen
Published on April 16, 2015
There's great connection that happens in spite of the real and fabricated social barriers of the story. But there's something about the rhythm of the piece that kept me from settling in.
Contemporary realism is tough in several ways. There's no immediate recognition of author or title by the typical audience member, issues are often of the moment and touchy, and centuries of dramatic refinement leaves good dialogue a slippery fish to grab. So kudos to any theatre willing to take the risk and perform pieces which are not tried-and-true. This alone should get you in the door. Street Corner Arts has tackled a very contemporary piece, …
Review: The Great God Pan by Amy Herzog, Street Corner Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 11, 2015
The Great God Pan absorbs you in the silent everyday dilemmas of seeking a healthy, fulfilled life. Characters' failures could be seen as second-best solutions; some of their successes look like disasters.
The Hyde Park Theatre's a fine and private place, an intimate space to show the quirks and dreams of our contemporary imaginings. Amy Herzog's The Great God Pan, now in production there until April 18, takes that intimacy even further, into the recesses of the psychology and emotional lives of friends and a family that could have been our own. The set-up is stark and simple. Jamie is a 30-something writer who's just gotten …
Review: Jacob's Ladder by Theatre en Bloc
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 04, 2015
If you can pull back from that disturbing central theme you can enjoy solidly entertaining characters, the accomplished actors who inhabit them and the enchanting visual design of Jacob's Ladder.
Blake Addyson's sound design for Jacob's Ladder uses big band dance music to paint the sound picture of the wartime home front in 1944. Those Glenn Miller recordings are a fine sound hook for the audience. But while reflecting on this new play by Dennis Bailey and David Mixner, I happened to hear some Sinatra recordings from that period. Perhaps the cheerful romanticism of Sinatra's early vocal work would have corresponded a bit better …
Review: 1000 Forest Gorillas in Kansas by Salvage Vanguard Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 02, 2015
They're a striking pair from the first moment they appear: Natalie George the sturdy, graceful caramel blonde and slim, quick Heloise Gold, a head shorter and a number of years more senior.
This short evening with Heloise Gold and Natalie George was an Easter egg basket of surprises. You'd hardly have expected less, given advance word that these two clever collaborators holed up in Kansas for four days with former Austinites Josh Meyer and Matt Hislope of the Rubber Repertory. Unpredictable and sometimes puzzling, the scenes that popped out of those notional Easter eggs may or may not have constituted an explicit story but they were …
Review: Charley's Aunt by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 31, 2015
Farces about courting and deception have a fine long history, for what's more amusing that the earnest efforts of the young to wriggle around the constraining conventions of society?
Norman Blumensaadt, artistic director of Different Stages, has over the past 34 years provided a continuing anthology of the theatre, the living equivalent of that imposing row of books in public libraries, The Best Plays of [year]. The series on American dramas ran from the 1930's to 1993 as founding editor John Gasner was replaced by Clive Barnes. Blumensaadt's reach is wider and, if anything, more determined. The Different Stages programs list them all, …