Recent Reviews
Review: The Suicide by Paper Chairs
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 20, 2014
The paperchairs crew is smart, savvy, musical and literate, a combination that has consistently produced challenging and exciting theatre. With Erdman's The Suicide they reach 85 years back in theatre history to a Russian farce of breath-taking arrogance that earned its author a prison term in Siberia and wasn't staged again in his homeland until after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Directors Elizabeth Doss and Lisa Laratta cast this piece with a Loony Tunes satiric sensibility …
Review: The Suicide by Paper Chairs
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 17, 2014
Paper Chairs is an innovative company known for its boldness and vision. The company is opening the little-known but important play The Suicide by Russian playwright Nicolai Erdman, at the Off Center in east Austin. In so doing, they are solidifying their reputation for making brilliant choices. Their production comes at a time of vastly heightened interest and concern for Russian theatre of all periods, in part from the world-changing events in Ukraine and Russia. Paper Chairs …
Review: A Delicate Balance by The City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 08, 2014
City Theatre has taken on the challenge of producing Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance in this their eighth production season. Andy Berkovsky and his production team are gaining a reputation for boldness in taking on such challenges. Albee fans will flock to City’s shopping center theatre on the east side to see this one and they will be pleased with the results. In his program notes guest director Fritz Ketchum points out the mysteriousness of Albee’s dense language, …
Review: Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall by Breaking String Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 07, 2014
If hope is a smoky, fading ember in a dying world, we must search for it in the ashes of the barricades in Ukraine. The strangeness of this play may well be our guide and comforter.
“This is a strange play about hope.” That is the self- assessment of Playwright Maksym Kurochkin speaking in a video at the very end of his play Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall, A Play for the Theater of Arrhythmic Bullshit. By that point the audience cannot deny the truth of his words. The strangeness of the work is its informal structure as a black comedy, but one that offers strong drafts of surrealism and absurdism …
3 Reviews from the 2014 Fusebox Festival
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 27, 2014
Computer Simulation of the Oceanby Steve Moore, Physical Plant Theatre In an interview on the Fusebox website, playwright Steve Moore, who shovels the coal into the boilers down at the Physical Plant Theatre, said that he always thought that texting had potential to make good theatre. What? Yes, and now we’re into it, in Computer Simulation of the Ocean (CSOTO). It is a performance work entirely in text that will be running for the next six months …
Review: From the Pig Pile: the Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach by Salvage Vanguard Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 26, 2014
From the Pig Pile: the Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach is an ambitious and lavish work supported by the National Performance Network (NPN). It is also difficult to categorize in any theatre textbook way, but that shouldn’t keep anyone away from its table of delights. The company tells us that they developed the show over three years with many rehearsals and creative help from nonresident artists. Written by Sibyl Kempson in collaboration with the Austin 'pig pile,' …