Recent Reviews
Review: 12 Angry Men by City Theatre Company
by Jessica Helmke
Published on June 06, 2013
This is lean, stripped-down acting, theatrical work that's basically artistic commentary about a script and a world that still merits performance today.
A View Inside DecidingDecisions. We make them everyday. City Theatre's production of 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose gravely invited audience members to search for truth, as if they were jurors in the murder case. Vividly depicted characters organized around a long wooden table wore their back stories on their sleeves, and actors balanced their portrayals against one another with the guarded cordiality of an intense game of poker. This closed and sequestered group of …
Review: Avenue Q by Austin Theatre Project
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on June 06, 2013
The story’s message is as brief and penetrating as the moral of an 80’s sitcom: I’m not OK. You’re not OK and we will just put up with everyone else on the street because we don’t have a choice.
Can You Show me How to Get to Avenue Q? Long past are the days when musicals were solely the domain of prancing pirates and line dancing debutantes. The villains sang in baritone and the hero, a lilting tenor, as he won, lost and re-won the girl in different fantastical settings. There is the theme song, the hero’s lament, the song that exposes the girl’s conflicting feelings, the growling villain’s rant-song, and a choral effort …
Review: Harvey by Zach Theatre
by Christine El-Tawil
Published on May 20, 2013
Martin Burke’s subtle gestures and affably earnest conversations with Harvey have you almost seeing the giant white rabbit yourself! Burke portrays Elwood’s genuinely friendly nature without out a single false note.
Harvey by Mary Chase at the Zach Theatre, directed by Dave Steakley, is a laughter-inducing good time. It centers around Elwood P. Dowd , a charming, generous and altogether very pleasant man who happens to have an invisible six-foot rabbit named Harvey as his best friend. Martin Burke’s comic performance is flawless, once again. Burke’s subtle gestures and affably earnest conversations with Harvey have you almost seeing the giant white rabbit yourself! Burke portrays Elwood’s …
Review: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert by touring company
by Catherine Dribb
Published on May 11, 2013
Priscilla Queen of the Desert is a rambunctious montage of 80s chart-toppers and truly magnificent costuming. The national tour which pulled into Austin last week is no exception. Unlike our trailer eateries, Priscilla (a fabulously renovated old bus) supports no hipsters, cowboys or college students typical to the Austin scene, but rather a trio of performers. Two drag queens and a transvestite are traveling through the outback to perform at one of their member's, Tick's, …
Review: Same Time, Next Year by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 29, 2013
The world of the play is pretty much irrelevant to the contemporary world of instant messaging, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together without sanction of marriage and easy divorces. And to anyone born since the play was first staged in 1975.
Yes, I would be delighted to enjoy a guilt-free assignation once a year with the energetic, sweet and affectionate Virginia Keeley. Fellow actor Bill Barry has had that privilege this month at the Georgetown Palace, at least in our imaginations. Since the six scenes in Bernard Slade's play span the twenty-four years between 1951 and 1975, Barry's averaging just about one imaginary assignation a day. (And by his exuberant count in the final scene, 116 …
Review: Mad Beat Hip & Gone by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 21, 2013
The brilliant Michael Raiford and videographer/projectionist Colin Lowry must have loved the challenge to fill all that looming space, because they do an amazing job of it.
At first I was disconcerted by the time-line. Playwright-director Steven Dietz places his creations the Nebraska buddies Danny and Rich in 1949 and engineers an encounter with beat adventurers Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. We don't see it; as in ancient Greek theatre that event is reported to us, endowing it with distant mystery and epic sense. But in the opening scenes of Mad Beat Hip & Gone, suddenly Jacob Trussell as Danny is ranting …