Recent Reviews
Review: The Twelfth Labor by Tutto Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 22, 2012
Stevens' script is densely conceptual, a virtual Cirque de Soleil of intellectual performance, but the story is much less complicated than his working and reworking of it.
If you arrive at the MacTheatre Black Box with happy memories of Leegrid Stevens' The Dudleys as staged last year by Tutto Theatre -- winner of eight of Austin's B. Iden Payne theatre awards -- you may well be disconcerted. The Twelfth Labor, behind its enigmatic title, is as far from the hectic world of 8-bit video games as, say, Eugene O'Neil or William Faulkner. Tutto has mounted a gorgeously moody, intellectually challenging piece, comprised of Stevens' …
Review: Rose Rage by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 04, 2012
This Rose Rage was a fast-moving, thumping good time with lots of fight choreography, a full team of confident Austin Shakespearians and a couple of superb ringers brought in from the UK on an actor exchange program.
This is Shakespeare that you've never seen before, staged in an "original practices" style and at a court hall venue that the company couldn't possibly duplicate as a commercial production. You're in Austin, Texas, people, the through-the-looking-glass home of theatre practice, and this gem disappeared after a run of only three weeks It walked away with Austin's B. Iden Payne 2011-2012 theatre award for outstanding production of a drama, and director Beth Burns got the …
Review: Tigers Be Still by Hyde Park Theatre
by Catherine Dribb
Published on July 27, 2012
Tigers Be Still will have you falling out of those new comfy chairs at the Hyde Park Theater. It's that good. Wow. Raunchy and redemptive.
Kim Rosenstock’s play Tigers Be Still is a well-woven, touching narrative about family triumph (thread that needle!), tragedy (Bette Midler karaoke is never okay) and of course, tigers. And it will have you falling out of those new comfy chairs at the Hyde Park Theater. It’s that good. With a sick mother upstairs and two sisters trying to get their sh*t together, Tigers Be Still seemed an unusual pick for Hyde Park Theatre after Marion Bridge (a play about …
Review: Dinner in Dubai by Bernadette Nason
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 11, 2012
Unexpectedly and with a flourish, Nason brings all this learning together and tells us just how this chipper English adventuress wound up in Austin. It's an eminently satisfying account and an outcome for which we can all be grateful.
Bernadette Nason is one of those unexpected treasures who make Austin theatre such a pleasure to explore. I first saw her at the Austin Playhouse in Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward shortly after we arrived in Austin almost five years ago -- before, in fact, the notion of writing about Austin theatre even occurred to me. Bernadette played Madame Arcati, the loony medium who unleashes the spirit world upon the wealthy but hapless author Charles Condamine. She …
Review: 'Tis Pity She's A Whore by 7 Towers Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 09, 2012
Travis Bedard is almost ridiculously good at creating multiple characters -- but then, he has three characters so vastly different from one another that if he wasn't obliged to keep his abundant beard and shining pate you just might not recognize him from one to another.
At the intermission beneath the giant writhing oak tree behind the Cathedral of Junk my wife leaned over and whispered. "These actors are really good."John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore is a tangled skein, for sure, and it builds inexorably from a canter to a gallop to a thundering bloody finish that's if anything bloodier and more devastating than that of Shakespeare's Hamlet, staged some thirty years earlier. 'Tis Pity does not reach Shakespeare's heights but the thump of its meaty …
Review: DayBoyNightGirl by DA! Theatre Collective
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 11, 2012
Kirk German is a gifted playwright; the language never lapses into mere functional storytelling, but at times the words in the mouths of the actors seem to vault into iambic hexameter, giving an Elizabethan lilt to many of the text passages. The thing sparkles.
I walked two blocks to reach the Long Center, with its blackbox Rollins Studio Theatre, where DayBoyNightGirl played. Without a doubt, the spectacular 21st century cityscape of downtown Austin upstages every performance staged there. After all, the downtown view is the first thing one sees upon arriving at the Long Center. DayBoyNightGirl pushed back admirably against the sensory overload. The show was spectacular at every level. If you’re tired of small plays in small theatres, I offer you my …