Recent Reviews
Review: Ghosts by Penfold Theatre Company
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on October 21, 2011
This production is not for the intellectually lazy, but Ibsen's work, more than a century old, remains rewarding experience for those willing to engage with its themes.
Penfold Theatre Company and the Breaking String Theater joined forces to stage Ghosts, producing a well considered work that breathes a fresh vitality into a familiar story. Revolutionary reevaluation of old convention is precisely the theme of Ghosts. Settling into their seats in the cramped, angular space of the Hyde Park Theatre, the audience sees a dusty, dirty, though elegant, Victorian-era living room. A dim chandelier hangs from a cobweb-lined ceiling. Given the play’s title, an …
Review: Ghosts by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 21, 2011
Babs George evidences depth and choked passion, a stoic clear-eyed acceptance of injustice and a devotion to the son whom she has in fact not known since his childhood. Babs George could read me the classified ads on stage for an hour and I wouldn't have enough of her.
The Penfold/Breaking String joint production of Ghosts is a moody, beautiful piece. Its honesty to Ibsen's 1881 text is almost a disadvantage, for among us twentieth-first century chrononauts will be some who find inexplicable and inherently comic the restraint of his language. How quaint not to name the evils: prostitution, syphillis, debauchery, incest, spouse abuse, addiction, wifely duty, madness, social convention, obligatory purity for women, licensed libertinism for men . . . . By retaining Ibsen's …
Review: Marvelous Things by Lindsey Greer Sykes
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 21, 2011
This work is a trope on her character's reluctance to deal with the world presented to her. There's an adroit turn for the final scene involving Raven Fox as her child, the newest initiate in our amazing, troubling, marvelous world.
While watching Lindsey Greer Sikes' Marvelous Things at the Blue Theatre last week, I was struck by the feeling that rather than see this gentle fantasy, I'd really prefer to be in it. That's not unusual for those who haunt the dusty glitter of Austin stages; we've had a connection to theatre art at some time in the past so immediate and powerful that we've become performance junkies. Rachel Wiese in the principal role of "Girl" and the rest …
Review: Guest Artist by Paradox Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 17, 2011
The rhythm of the piece is captivating. Director Karen Jambon orchestrates the dialogue and movement with keen ear and eye. The two leads, Austin stage veterans, are singers as well as actors.
Steubenville, Ohio -- with all respect due to the inhabitants of that town of 19,000, it sounds about as far away from theatre civilization as one could get. It's in those rough hills of east Ohio, forty miles west of Pittsburgh and facing east into West Virginia. Playwright Daniels uses the Steubenville bus station as the run-down unlikely setting for the encounter of a famous playwright on his way down and an awestruck aspiring writer …
Review: Rumors by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 16, 2011
Michelle Cheney and Wendy Zavaleta are together again, this time with a Lucy-and-Ethel dynamic, Michelle as the nutsy neurotic and Wendy as the feet-on-the-ground sarcastic cynic.
The greater Austin area hasn't lacked for productions of this 1988 farce by Neil Simon. A search of AustinLiveTheatre.com brings back announcements of stagings by the Wimberley Players in September, 2009, by the Renaissance Guild in San Antonio in July, 2010, by Leander's Way Off Broadway Community Players in January of this year and even by UT's student-run Broccoli Project last March. That sequence resembles the systematic trial-and-error of artillery ranging, back and forth, close and far, …
Review: The Magic Fire by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 13, 2011
The Magic Fire covers ground that has been covered elsewhere -- in many a play or film about life in wartime Europe, for example -- and it does so with a rewarding wealth of character and detail.
The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School consistently perform at levels considerably above those of their peers, a fact confirmed once again last year when their Over The Tavern was judged the winner among the one-act plays presented by the largest high schools in Texas. There's some good fortune and serendipity involved there, as well as healthy geographic/demographic input, but a good deal of the credit must go to Billy Dragoo, head of the theatre …