Recent Reviews
Review: Arcadia by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 09, 2012
Georgia McLeland is a natural -- perfectly in mastery of her character, playful and thoughtful by turns and entirely convincing. Our hearts go out to her as we watch her quiet delight at her first and last waltz with Septimus in the final scene.
Tom Stoppard's Arcadia shines with wit and whimsicality. The dialogues between these characters are so quick and clever that sometimes you perch on the edge of your seat, breathlessly holding back your laughter so that you won't miss a single syllable. This is wit writ deep -- in the characters, their contrasting views of the world and their social positions; in dissembling, feuding and courtship; and in the juxtaposition and then the overlapping within the …
Review: Next to Normal by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 07, 2012
Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word.
Zach's staging of the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey work Next to Normal is stunning -- but not in the usual reviewer-speak meaning of the word. The intensity of the emotion, the huge volume of sound, the zig-zag of florescent lighting on the back walls of the set and above all the pitiless focus upon the mental illness of a suburban wife and mother -- all of these foster a numbness of mind that leaves you feeling …
Review: Precious Little Talent by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 06, 2012
Precious Little Talent is a charmer and would make a fine "date night."
Capital T Theatre does a graceful and unexpected waltz step with Ella Hickson's Precious Little Talent. Mark Pickell and friends at Capital T have established a strong, edgy style in their stagings, one that fits very well with the karma of their frequent host venue the Hyde Park Theatre. They've presented works by such as Tracy Letts, Sam Shepard, Mickle Maher, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, David Shinn -- stories of trailer trash, down-and-outers, eccentrics and the …
Review: Women in Search of Love by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 02, 2012
Ah, though, the women! They captured my heart.
Last Saturday's FronteraFest "Best of Week 3" brought us a lot of yin and very little yang. Of the five pieces brought forward, four were solos by actresses. Yang did hold its own. The six "Confidence Guys" who did improvised Mamet gave us that playwright's expletives, elisions, incomplete understoods and macho pushiness to the life. After a quick poll of the audience they played it as salesmen in a failing car dealership. Maybe it was …
Review: Four Square by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 02, 2012
Zarate's choice of an extremely strong and experienced cast helps the audience past those blurs. This piece is rationally irrational, one that keeps you guessing and wraps you up emotionally.
Inevitably, Manuel Zarate's one-act play Four Squarereminds one of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. There's a chance encounter in a public place with no one else around. A chat between two strangers starts with simple exchanges, courtesies, really, then progresses until we eventually see that one of them is a psychotic and the other is a victim. There's something of the bull ring to the concept, except that instead of the ceremonial squads to do …
Review: Somewhere in Utopia (A Travesty) by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 31, 2012
Face it: there's no use getting annoyed with the theatre of the absurd, no matter how confusing it may seen. Go ahead, get out of your comfort zone and stretch your mind. Maybe getting annoyed will do you good.
Face it: there's no use getting annoyed with the theatre of the absurd, no matter how confusing it may seen. Or even with the neo-theatre of the absurd such as this piece by Jared J. Stein, produced a good 50 years after the audacious thumbing-its-nose-at-the-bourgeois art style hit the European stages. In Somewhere in Utopia Stein portrays a dystopia: two principal characters are fixed unthinkingly before a television screen as the audience files into the …