Recent Reviews
Review: Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean by The Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 17, 2014
Reunions are some of the most exquisite torture to which we ordinary folk submit ourselves. They offer the chance to click the button on the stopwatch of time and to discover how lives have diverged -- or not. It's the shock of the transformed familiar, perhaps, or it's a moment to flaunt or at least assess ourselves. One of my classmates assiduously dieted away twenty pounds to present herself renewed at a high school reunion. …
Review: Marvin's Room by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 16, 2014
The title of Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room appeared to me at first recollection to be puzzling or simply misleading. After all, we never do see Marvin, the father felled twenty years earlier by a stroke. That character lives in the dim light of an adjacent bedroom and we glimpse scarcely any of the space he inhabits. We're drawn instead into a different space, the room that is defined by family connections. It's a space that …
Review: Roaring by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 14, 2014
Austin Playhouse is producing the premiere run of Cyndi Williams’ Roaring at their Highland Mall theatre in central Austin. Balancing their recent trend of producing contemporary plays by international playwrights (David Ives’ Venus in Fur and The Liar), Austin Playhouse has given an impressive opportunity to a long-time Austin theatre playwright, Cyndi Williams. The multi-talented Williams is most often seen on stage or gaining laudable credits in the design fields. Her play Roaring is now …
Review: Much Ado About Nothing by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 14, 2014
Stephanie Carll's Beatrice is full of spirit and intelligence, qualities that unfortunately have disadvantaged many a woman's matrimonial prospects since time immemorial, while Grimes is a bit of a dry stick. His Benedick is just as bright as Beatrice but he's the perennial bachelor.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, once they've seen Par-ee? -- Young, Lewis and Donaldson, 1919 Present Company has been celebrating Shakespeare out in east Austin since 2011, performing to audiences sprawled comfortably picnic-style on the premises of Rain Lily Farm. This year they've brought their style right downtown. Whole Foods Market has made available its broad, comfortable rooftop garden for the current run of Much Ado About Nothing. Admission is free …
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 …
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 …