Recent Reviews
Review: Anything Goes by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 12, 2014
Kaitlyn Hopkins' staging of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes is as big, bright and shining as the 1930's trans-Atlantic cruise ship that's the setting for this carefree romp. The large talented cast of Texas State students and that 13-piece orchestra in the pit of the brand spanking new Performing Arts Center fill the stage and hall with joyful energy. Cassie Abate's choreography ranges from clever duets (think Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) to happy tapping, …
Review: Merrily We Roll Along by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 07, 2014
If you present a tragedy backwards, does it become a comedy? That's the gimmick used by Kaufmann and Hart in 1934, updated by George Furth and Stephen Sondheim and turned into a musical in 1981. Our protagonist Frank Shepard, played with quiet insensitivity and great courtesy by Scott Shipman, appears in the opening scene set in 1976, surrounded by the busy adulation of Hollywood phonies. If you're not expecting the gimmick, you might be confused …
Review: Romeo and Juliet by The Baron's Men
by Casey Weed
Published on April 06, 2014
The Baron's Men finally put up Romeo and Juliet and I was in the rare position last evening of being in the audience with no other stake in the show than simply hoping for an entertaining performance. I was rewarded with much more than that. So often in Austin we're subjected to fussified Shakespeare tarted up with gimmick props and political or social agendas that cloud up the plot and characters and make the pure play indiscernible …
Review: Breaking the Silence of the South Texas Border: Teatro Chicano de Laredo
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 05, 2014
"We're from the badlands," producing artistic director Carlos Nicolás Flores told us after company members had presented a fifteen-minute scene from Isaura and the Virgin. "I mean it." With a grim-faced apology he then put an image up on the screen. Taken from a distance -- across the border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico -- it showed two lifeless bodies hanging from lamp posts, hands tied behind them. In contrast, he said, "Austin is the Paris of …
Review: Assassins by Soubrette Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 04, 2014
Assassins has perhaps one of the most bizarre premises in musical theatre, the conjuration of the elite class of American assassins, those who attempted the lives of American presidents, successfully or not. Steven Sondheim and John Weidman brought together this scurvy crew and gave them songs to sing to explain and justify themselves and the climactic actions of their lives. Thus we gained an ensemble of characters including Leon Czolgosz (killed McKinley), Charles Guiteau (killed Garfield), …
Review: The Drawer Boy by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 02, 2014
Let's talk about 'dark humor' for a moment, since that is the label that, faute de mieux, has been applied to this production and more generally to the art offered at the Hyde Park Theatre's curious space at 43rd and Guadalupe. The Statesman in its finite wisdom offers the following capsule description: Hyde Park Theatre mounts its second production of Michael Healey’s darkly humorous play that 10 years ago netted the company a string of local awards. …