Recent Reviews
Review: The Children's Hour by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 09, 2012
There's a lot of Lillian Hellman herself in the determined and dangerous Mary Tilford. In part, The Children's Hour is the writer's savage revenge on conventional morality.
One must understand Lillilan Hellman's 1934 melodrama The Children's Hour as a vision seen through a glass, darkly. So much separates us from this play, its imagined world, and Hellman's provocative portrait of middle-class morality that we risk imposing on it our own twenty-first-century sensibilities. That's inevitable, but by becoming aware of our own mindsets, perhaps we can stretch them a bit. Two women friends have worked in collegial partnership for eight years to …
Review: The Children's Hour by Different Stages
by Catherine Dribb
Published on January 09, 2012
Zook’s character is strong and compelling. These dramatic performances were accented by the school children’s caricaturistic performances providing necessary comic relief against the evil of a conniving child’s web of lies
Having attended the performance with a friend who, while a fan of theater, nevertheless believes that scripts written after 1950 that don’t take into consideration the average attention span of adults will reduce their art to inconsiderate babbling, I became concerned when the greeter at the box office said, “The show runs over two hours but has two intermissions.” My pragmatic thespian friend, while relenting since The Children’s Hour was written in 1934 (before writers could be …
Review: Cuento Navideno, or Bah Humbug in the Barrio by Rupert Reyes
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 03, 2012
The irony is that the dead Teodora as played by Yvonne Cortez Flores is far more lively and life-loving than the living Evangelina. Teodora has a big laugh, a sarcastic sense of humor and a inclination to tipple, to the point that she wakes up with new tatoos.
Rupert Reyes puts "home-made" theatre onstage. And I mean that as high praise. He and JoAnn Carreon-Reyes founded Austin's Teatro Vivo ("Live Theatre") in 2000, and the program notes for his Cuento Navideño which closed just before Christmas at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, record that it was their 27th full-length production. Rupert is friendly, serene and gently humorous, as is JoAnn. This pair stood before the audience at the December 18 closing performance at the Rollins, …
Review: A Christmas Carol, the musical by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 30, 2011
A Christmas Carol demonstrated once again the extraordinary strengths of the Palace as a center for community arts, and this version of the redemption of irascible Ebeneezer preserved the message of the much beloved story.
Spirit, I have not been the man I ought to have been for this holiday season; caught up with the visit of family -- my brother from Tennessee for two weeks, then for Christmastide and for two birthday celebrations my venerable in-laws, my wife's brother and our two children with their respective significant others -- I did not reserve the time and space for thought and writing. To my discomfort, I deliver this review …
Review: Austin Puppet Incident 2011 by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on December 11, 2011
Glass Half Full Theater and Trouble Puppet Theater Company are very Austin. Forget your notions of puppetry as entertainment for kids. These folks have serious, dramatic things to say.
Trouble Puppet Theatre Company's brand of inventive, challenging entertainment is so strong here in Austin that the company can fill up the Salvage Vanguard Theatre for two weekend nights with a miscellany from students at their puppetry workshop. Artistic Director Connor Hopkins shared his workshop for a month with collaborator Caroline Reck of Glass Half Full Productions and her students. Mind you, there were few novices among them -- performers at the Austin Puppet Incident included …
Review: Poste Restante by The Secret Agents
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2011
There are many messages in their post office of the mind. But they're largely wordless, expressed in an ever-surprising modulation of mime, physical comedy, contortion, ballet, puppetry, music and video projection.
I went up to Tim Gallagher after the Secret Agents' first run-through at the Salvage Vanguard on Thursday, congratulated him and asked, "What's the hidden message?" I know: wrong question. But I couldn't help myself. I'm a narrative theatre guy, analyst, reporter, decipherer of mysteries. And I'd known a fair number of secret agents in my former career, even though I was in the overt diplomatic service, not the covert service. Tim gave me a grin. "We …