Recent Reviews
Review: The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 12, 2011
Playwright Whitty starts with an intriguing hypothetical: what happens to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler after she so famously commits suicide in the last scene of the 1890 play of the same name?
The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler by Jeff Whitty has an abundance of clever and not much of depth or heart. Director David M. Long does a bang-up job of making it a whizzing entertainment, having recruited three gifted Equity professionals to work with the six St. Ed's Equity-candidate actors relegated to secondary roles. Playwright Whitty starts with an intriguing hypothetical: what happens to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler after she so famously commits suicide in the …
Review: Henry V by Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 08, 2011
Brian Martin in the title role has the self confidence, presence and the big articulate voice of a fighting king.
This Henry V by The Baron's Men is a feast for the eyes. The elaborate Elizabethan wardrobe of the company goes well with the gratifying outdoor setting of the Curtain Theatre, Richard Garriott's lakeside replica in miniature of the Globe. Costume designers Pam Martin and Dawn Allee are current nominees along with Jennifer Davis for Austin's B. Iden Payne stage award for outstanding costume design, for this company's 2010 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. For Henry V they've outdone even that …
Review: Cloud 9 by Southwestern University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 04, 2011
Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine is a gender bender and a time twister, a sly comic look at sex and sexual roles in the Victorian British Empire and in the contemporary United Kingdom.
Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine is a gender bender and a time twister, a sly comic look at sex and sexual roles in the Victorian British Empire and in the contemporary United Kingdom. One of the many clever twists of the piece, the fruit of some intensive workshopping with actors, is that seventy-five years pass between the two acts but the characters age only thirty years. Churchill explained that that arose from the fact that her 1970's contemporaries …
Review: Arsenic and Old Lace by Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 02, 2011
My favorite moment in the play came when the jig appeared to be up; Ben-Moshe stepped forward, extending his hands to be handcuffed and instead received a hearty handshake from the droll, diminutive Marvin Carson as the thick headed Lt. Rooney of the police.
Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play Arsenic and Old Lace is a "golden oldie" kept alive for American culture by Frank Capra's 1944 film with Cary Grant and by community theatre productions such as the charming one currently at the playhouse in Wimberley. Theatre critic Mortimer Brewster has been brought up his maiden aunts Abby and Martha, and one wonders how he escaped noticing the fact that they're nuttier than fruitcakes. Mortimer's brother Teddy stalks about the place, …
Review: Hamlet by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 02, 2011
Austin Shakespeare's Hamlet is a riveting evening, despite the questions and issues that this staging raises.
The question that must be addressed when discussing this Hamlet staged by Austin Shakespeare is not "Why cast Helen Merino for the title role?" but rather "What does casting Helen Merino as Hamlet do to the play?" Merino played Hamlet ten years ago for the same organization, then known as the Austin Shakespeare Festival, at free performances in Zilker Park downtown. She was an Austin favorite at that time; a 2001 article in the weekly Austin Chronicle identified …
Review: The Tempest by Actors From The London Stage
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on October 01, 2011
Even when an actor donned and then doffed an article of clothing to change characters every other line—and in spite of the humor of such a scenario—the mood of exotic mystery never diminished.
In the midst of the whirlwind of Shakespeare that is the current Austin theatre scene, audiences of this week's performance of The Tempest, put on by the intrepid Actors from the London Stage, were in for an exceptional and wildly successful rendition at the B. Iden Payne Theatre on UT's campus. For the past two years, a small troupe of AFLS actors has taken up a short fall residency at UT Austin, each time performing a …