Recent Reviews
Review: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom by City Theatre Company
by Stephen Meigs
Published on October 30, 2012
A man in a dress is funny for about 30 seconds. An actor playing a Charles Busch heroine, in a dress, with the endless gags, puns, and punch lines deliciously laced together, always original, and sometimes hysterically vulgar, is funny for the length of the show while making us also feel and care.
All politics is local, they say. Is all theater local, too? And can theater be politics? Find out. Go see Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Even better, phone your right-wing conservative religious uncle and invite him to go with you to see it at the City Theater where it's now playing. Don't tell Uncle the name of the show, don't give the game away. Just say “Gee, Uncle, it's a comedy and the first scene is set in a …
Review: Mariachi Girl by Teatro Vivo
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 28, 2012
a charming, very Tejano experience, a fable about a young girl who dreams of performing with her father's mariachi band, even though he insists that the musical tradition must continue to be exclusively masculine.
At the Zach Theatre Teatro Vivo, the University of Texas and the Zach 'Theatre for Schools' program have been presenting Roxanne Schroeder-Arce's play to schoolchildren during the week and to the public on weekends. It's a charming, very Tejano experience, a fable about a young girl who dreams of performing with her father's mariachi band, even though he insists that the musical tradition must continue to be exclusively masculine. The performance is accompanied and supported by a real …
Review: A Playground Superhero by Pollyanna Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 28, 2012
Pollyanna has a patent pedagogic purpose: showing audience members the positive effects of inclusive play and showing that a bully may not be inherently bad. His behavior may be caused by stress and unhappiness.
Pollyanna's script by Andrew Perry, a regular collaborator, presents primary school audiences with Aaron Alexander as a gleefully imaginative young boy arriving at a new school. He and Griçelda Silva as his mother are a plucky pair, moving to a new town without the boy's father, who is absent on assignment somewhere -- perhaps with the military. The boy has a sunny disposition and makes friends easily. His games and his masquerades as cowboy, pirate, …
Review: Doctor Faustus by Last Act Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 24, 2012
This is a morality play in which the protagonist stands between the stark absolutes of God and the Devil, heaven and hell, the throne of God and the fiery pit. McLemore's Faustus does not appear to pause to reflect seriously on any of this and comes across as a young man throughout.
Faustus, why do you torment me so? This production of the work of the mercurial Christopher Marlowe, an exact contemporary of Shakespeare, stabbed to death in a tavern at the age of 29, held me at an uneasy distance despite its robust verse and stark dilemma. Austin's Last Act Theatre Company, just over a year old, demonstrates its art and vaunting ambition in daring to take on this text. Their productions for love of …
Review: Baby, the musical by Austin Theatre Project
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 22, 2012
Those of us who've navigated all three stages of life portrayed here will be fully vulnerable to all three, and may well recognize a dynamic typical to devoted couples: often one is the optimistic emotional plunger while the other is more aware of consequences.
No, it's not really about babies at all. Baby the musical is about anticipation, apprehension and the enormous changes that loom when a couple faces the prospect of having -- or not having -- a child. With their cheerily pulsating opening numbers Baby Baby Baby and I Want It All , David Shire and Richard Maltby suggest a merry adventure, but -- as in real life -- elation gives way to uncertainty in face of the enormity of life changes. After …
Review: This - Uh - Body by Austin Mime Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 19, 2012
As one absorbed these contrasts and pondered the message, an entirely different theme inevitably echoed, silent but loud: when does mime become ballet?
The Austin Mime Theatre is Michael Lee, a talented, craggily handsome, full-fledged and fully diploma-ed mime. Yes, he studied with Marcel Marceau, the genius whose grace, dexterity and striking appearance became the essence of mime -- the "art of silence" -- for the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century. Marceau died in 2007 at the age of 84, and Michael Lee is justifiably proud to list in the program that he worked with …