Recent Reviews
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Review: Little Mother by Twin Alchemy Collective
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 02, 2014
Katie Green's gently melancholy creation is a surprise, less an entertainment or a didactic presentation on injustice and exploitation than a quiet contemplation of desperation. There is a story, and it's simple and desperately sad, but Green and her Twin Alchemy Collective apply techniques to engage our emotions and our minds. The distancing effect somewhat resembles Brecht's use of alienation, the deliberate interruption of narrative in order to engage the moral sentiments of the audience. …
Review: Ordinary Days by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 26, 2014
Ordinary Days is a vigorous, sharp and entertaining ninety minutes of uninterrupted entertainment, a clever piece that touches the heart.
Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days is a fairytale, and an appealing one, set firmly in the city that O. Henry once called "Baghdad-on-the-Hudson." He gives us the portraits of four yearning young folk in their late 20s or early 30s, all unattached, all working to sort out their own identities and places in the world (or in the City). A couple of them are lonely singles who'll eventually meet one another; the other two characters, a …