Recent Reviews
Review: The Liberty Belles
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 30, 2014
Carolyn Kennedy's script was still in its workshop phase, producer Peter C. Graupner advised the expectant audience. Musical numbers would be presented a capella because the company's accompanist had dropped out late in rehearsals. That loss didn't seem to faze this cast of troopers, every one of them portraying a character whose name began with "B": Aunt Bebe, sisters Billie and Bobby, sidekick Bridget, ingenue songstress Betsy, extroverted empresario Buddy, tender young male lead Benny and soldier's-gal-disguised-as-a-bellhop …
Review: The Relentless Pursuit of Ice by Punchkin Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 28, 2014
In theatre world, a space bounded only by the imagination, the playwright and company can take us almost anywhere. The battlements at Elsinore; Osage County; the humble Loman household; or eerie reaches that seem beyond space and time. Samuel Beckett did it best, at least for me when I was reading in, a long time ago. Vladimir and Estragon, Hamm and Clov in Endgame, Krapp and his last tape. Nowadays apocalypses are as common as …
Review: The Wedding or the Rebellion by Reckless Youth Theatre Collective
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 27, 2014
Becca Plunkett's romp The Wedding, or The Rebellion is a Punch and Judy show for young adults. The identities have been shuffled to emphasize how grotesque the culprits are. Here's a text that glories in vulgar, coarse and offensive language, and a writer who marshals those many and inventive epithets for intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus, genitalia, sexual orientation and subjugation into a sideshow that delights a hormone-infused audience, many of them her contemporaries from Southwestern University. She both …
Review: Mocha
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 25, 2014
In her earnest drama about international adoption Eleanor Burgess tries to do too much. Adoption is a topic that offers all sorts of dramatic possibilities. Suspecting and then confirming infertility, efforts to conceive; reluctant and then increasingly determined efforts to discover ways to create or come into possession of a life that will irrevocably change one's own; and dealing with all those involved in the process, revealing one's psyche and circumstances in order to qualify …
Review: Hazards
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 24, 2014
The dusty stage at the Salvage Vanguard is dressed in black and so is Mina Samuels. The rear backdrop quivers, and Samuels emerges from beneath it, crawling -- squirming forward, really, because she's on her belly, embracing the grimy floor and working her way forward as if she were on a live fire range at army boot camp. Keep your head down is the implied message. She works her way around a couple of wooden posts bound …
Review: People Will Talk About You Sometimes by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 23, 2014
"And then they'll be sorry. . . ." That's a typical mind game of adolescents hurting from bruised egos and sunk in self pity. It's a no-win game in which they're always victorious. No boundaries; no opposition; and the only players are imaginary others who regret every slight or offense they've ever caused you. Sarah Matusek's script takes the concept seriously. She removes the protagonist entirely and explores the consternation of four persons who knew …