Recent Reviews
Review: STRIKE: I Am The Machine Gunner AND Martial Arts by Breaking String Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 11, 2013
Since the fall of the U.S.S.R. Russian playwrights have focused not on politics but on the dark side of capitalism and its new avenues for crime.
The third annual New Russian Drama Festival in Austin, organized and hosted by Breaking String Theatre Company and its artistic director, Graham Schmidt, offered a full weekend of theatre to Austin, with impressive guests, panel discussions, staged readings, a musical program and full stage presentations of two world-class one-act plays by the preeminent contemporary playwright Yury Klavdiev. My first and last impressions are that Austin is fortunate indeed simply to have access to such theatrical and artistic enrichment in …
Review: Design for Living by Austin Shakespeare
by Christine El-Tawil
Published on February 11, 2013
Despite the speed of the exchanges and the posh accents, not one joke or pun was lost on the audience. The shifts between tense drama moments to absurdly lighthearted funny ones deeply engaged us.
Kara Bliss greets you with song as you enter the Rollins Studio Theater at the Long Center for Austin Shakespeare’s production of Design for Living by Noël Coward. Jason Connor accompanies her on the upright piano. Bliss’s soulful delivery of witty and fun compositions by Coward instantly transports you to the 1920’s. The puns and clever humor set the audience laughing even before the action began, particularly with references to “gay” behavior. In Coward’s time, “gay” usually …
Review: 33 Variations by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 08, 2013
As world-class pianist Anton Nel performs those intricate, vigorous variations, the rest of the show plays out before him like music hall scenes, tear jerkers and clown numbers.
In 1819 Viennese music publisher Anton Diabelli invited many of the leading musicians of the Habsburg empire to compose a variation upon a simple waltz of his own devising. Profits from the project were to be contributed to support orphans and widows of soldiers killed in the Napoleonic wars. Ludwig von Beethoven initially declined to contribute, then changed his mind. He eventually penned 33 variations, over several years, which Diabelli published as a separate volume …
Quick Comment: Design for Living by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2013
Helen Merino, Martin Burke and Michael Miller deliver the most exuberant, mischievous and riveting ensemble work I've seen in many a day.
The songs performed by chanteuse Kara Bliss highlight Noël Coward's sly wit, but Ann Ciccolella's staging of Design for Living proves he was no mere champagne dandy. Marvelously articulate dialogue pops and snaps, and it's full of emotion. Helen Merino, Martin Burke and Michael Miller deliver the most exuberant, mischievous and riveting ensemble work I've seen in many a day. Hits as of 2015 03 01: 755
Review: Gruesome Playground Injuries by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 06, 2013
Gruesome Playground Injuries is a despondent little comedy. By the final scene, Doug's a moody man, confined to a wheelchair and half-blind; Kayleen's a psychic wreck who still doesn't understand why the two are inseparable despite the distances between them.
Rajiv Joseph's collection of two-character scenettes for Gruesome Playground Injuries appeals to the young and restless. Students at Texas State did it last semester, and Capital T confided it to Kelsey Kling via their New Directors Program for presentation at the FronteraFest Long Fringe. Many audience members at both venues can identify strongly with this pair of awkward losers. They're searching for something, but they don't know what it is. Doug and Kayleen first become aware …
Review: Tru by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2013
Jaston Williams can't shrink to Capote's diminutive dimensions, but he certainly expands to fill the man's astonishing character.
Jaston Williams and director Larry Randolph take us to another place and time with Tru, now on an extended run at the Zach's intimate theatre-in-the-round Whisenhunt stage. Michael Raiford's clever low-level set is Truman Capote's UN Plaza apartment in New York City in 1975. It's a long long way from Greater Tuna, where Williams and Joe Sears romped, mugged and portrayed a whole looney town -- or, for that matter from Thornton Wilder's Our Town in which Williams …