Recent Reviews
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 …
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, …
Review: Dividing the Estate by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 04, 2012
Eugene Lee's monologue is at once a distilled narrative, sermon and symbol; and it is decidedly Faulknerian. Its meanings are layered on at several levels, all in relatively few words.
The Zach Theatre is a great showcase for local and regional art and talent, claiming as it does all the advantages of location, etc. It seems to hold court over Lady Bird Lake, with hill country scenery upstream and the shining, multi-colored towers of Austin across the lake. I visited Zach to see Dividing the Estate, Horton Foote’s 1989 play about a Texas family falling apart over estate inheritance. To cut to the chase, the …
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Palindrome Theatre (2010-2013)
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 13, 2012
If you are considering going to live theatre as the antidote to the many unsatisfying and expensive pastimes out there, Palindrome’s The Accidental Death of an Anarchist is the first choice. Please find it and go.
The Up Collective is in one of my favorite places, in East Austin, specifically at 2326 E. Cesar Chavez St. The name is easy to get—one has to walk upstairs to a second floor gallery where the play is performed. The art on the walls is really, seriously good and is priced like it, too. Palindrome Theatre's set is simple, designed for mobility. It has two standing door frames with no doors, a table and …
Review: Sundown Town by Wimberley Players
by anonymous reviewer
Published on May 03, 2012
A thoughtful look backward a hundred years at the sharp contrast between the obligations of Christian charity and the racist attitudes common in the smalltown South.
Sundown Town by Kevin Cohea as staged by the Wimberley Players is a thoughtful look backward a hundred years at the sharp contrast between the obligations of Christian charity and the racist attitudes common in the smalltown South. The plot unfolds in rural Arkansas but these events or others very like them could just as well have occurred almost anywhere in the United States of that day and in fact throughout the twentieth century. With …
Review: The Laramie Project Ten Years Later by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 02, 2012
This second Laramie play is less effective because in face of the forgetting, the writer/investigator/players are necessarily presented as driven by a thesis. It's a thesis with which I agree as patently do those who attend this production.
You know these people; you're comfortable with them. Most likely because you attended their portrayal in March and April of The Laramie Project, but possibly also because you recognize them as the Zach regulars who have appeared before you so many times. The Laramie Project 10 Years Later has the reassuring buzz of a class reunion, which is something like the way it must have been for the Tectonic Theatre Project as they undertook the …