Recent Reviews
Review: The Island of Dr. Moreau by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 09, 2014
Vigorous, brash, opinionated and witty, Charles P. Stites would be an entertainment all by himself if you had regular access to him. He posts frequently on Facebook, celebrating books, poems, actors, artists, authors, incidents of daily life, Half Price Books, his favorite coffeeshop and family and friends. Actor and director, he has appeared on Austin stages (most recently in La Bute's Fat Pig and in Shakespeare's Coriolanus but earlier for City Theatre as Tartuffe and as the odious Ricky …
Review: 45 Degrees by TILT Performance Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2014
In the course of the hour's presentation this company of nine puzzled through life's enigmas, acted out their dreams and faced their fears. Movement was quick and assured, divided into six segments corresponding to the sides of the metaphorical box.
The titles were intriguing -- both that for the performance piece 45 degrees that was presented four times in association with the 2014 FronteaFest and that of the new company's name 'TILT Performance Group.' The conventions of geometry suggested that there would be something awry here, some difference not made explicit to the general public. Perhaps you needed to know the individuals or to have had dealings with their coordinators, actor-teachers Robert Pierson and Adam …
Review: Iced Tea in Texas by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 02, 2014
Everybody loves Bernie, judging from the theatre crowd turnout for Bernadette Nason's third autobiographical one-woman show. I'm no exception. Checking the files, I find that I positively gushed when I reviewed installment no. 2, Dinner in Dubai in 2012. I missed the opener Tea in Tripoli in July 2011, but I have some vague hope that one of these days she'll provide us all a four-pack, perhaps on successive evenings serving tea in Tripoli, dinner in Dubai, iced tea …
Review: The Cowboy from Corona by The Hourglass Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 02, 2014
For her simple tale of a New Mexico incident Cindy Vining uses the metaphor of Purgatory as described by Dante in the Divine Comedy (ca. 1320). The framework is Christianity lite, without the complications of theology. We're greeted with song by a not-quite-yet-heavenly choir, all dressed in white. The recently deceased Captola, known as Cappie, is happy to arrive to the afterlife from rural New Mexico. She's looking forward to the climb up the mountain toward the …
Review: Gidion's Knot by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 01, 2014
The setting at the Salvage Vanguard's black box is that of a fifth-grade classroom. In contrast to those of many other FronteraFest presentations in this space, the room seems spacious. A long greenboard runs across the rear. Those two rows of school desks have lots of room between them. Bright images and posters carry optimistic slogans. The kids are gone -- the kids are gone at every moment in this piece, both physically and in …
Review: The Sniper's Nest by Last Act Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 31, 2014
The Corpus Christi friends who founded Last Act Theatre Company in mid-2011 have proven dab hands at locating 'found' theatre spaces in Austin, a history that in some ways is a counterweight to Elizabeth Cobbe's piece last week in the Austin Chronicle on vanishing theatre venues. For Lisa Soland's two-actor contrafactual depiction of Lee Harvey Oswald's role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, they were even more creative. They located a windowless underground room accessible …