Recent Reviews
Review: The Crapstall Street Boys by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on January 27, 2012
The sheer morbidity of The Crapstall Street Boys may remind you of how dark the fairytales of your childhood really were. Maybe this particular fairytale isn’t much of a parody after all.
As part of Austin’s 2012 Fronterafest Trouble Puppet Theatre Company stages performs a haunting and unapologetically macabre piece at their home venue the Salvage Vanguard Theatre. The Crapstall Street Boys by TP leader Connor Hopkins tells the story of a factory employing boys, located in the heart of a town overrun by monsters. YouLad’s parents sell him to the factory in exchange for the money that will buy them a “monster masher” to protect themselves, …
Review: The Crapstall Street Boys by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 27, 2012
The table action is quick and menacing, presenting a grim dog-eat-dog story -- almost literally -- as YouLad is cast into subhuman circumstances.
Perhaps it's inherent to the art form, but I did have a moment of wondering whether we ought to be concerned about our Connor. The Crapstall Street Boys is captivating puppetry and story telling, as is always the case with the Trouble Puppet Theatre Company, a crew of talented and devoted colleagues and acolytes who've gathered around Connor Hopkins. This time the approach is announced as "Czech puppetry" -- small articulated figures at the end …
Review: Wicked by touring company
by Thaïs Hinton
Published on January 27, 2012
Wicked is a sympathetic tale of an underdog (after all, as Kermit sang, "It's not easy being green!"), diversity and profiling -- an examination of what it means to be good inside if you happen to look bad on the outside.
Everyone knows how Dorothy Gale came to Oz and killed the Wicked Witch of the West. Judy Garland and pals in the 1939 film by MGM dwell deep in American cultural consciousness, none of them more so than Margaret Hamilton as the vengeful Wicked Witch of the West. In the Oz depicted by the touring company of Wicked currently at UT's Bass Concert Hall we get to hear another side of the story, adapted from …
Review: The Alien Baby Play by Tutto Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 26, 2012
In this production Kathleen Fletcher will make you believe in the impossible, no matter how the script was produced.
Bethany appeared first to the Austin public and to friends of Tutto Theatre in the warm and supporting setting of a private home in Westlake, last weekend. About twenty persons gathered in a living room comfortably furnished with artwork, masks and handicraft from across the world. Bethany was pleased to see all these friends at her "mom's house." She hurried about, offered us cookies, disappeared momentarily and then came back, rubbing the arc of her …
Review: The Cinderella Waltz by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 25, 2012
Despite Samantha Melomo's stepmother readiness to trim feet with an axe as necessary to get 'em into that magic slipper, pretty much everyone comes out pleased at the end
The mischievous Don Nigro puts the Cinderella fairy tale into a humorous trailer-park context and sends it spinning around so unpredictably that you're never quite sure whether the sweet, mistreated Rosie Snow is going to turn up roses or not. Shannon Tipton directed a one-act version of the story last week as her inaugural outing with the Austin High School Red Dragons with their 401st stage production. It was a "novice" production with a cast …
Review: Viper Vixens of 2012 by Electronic Planet Ensemble
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 23, 2012
The video runs out before the music does, reverting to more abstract visualizations, and only then, in the last three numbers, does the EPE exert its real talent and reach beyond cheap vaudeville.
The Electronic Planet Ensemble are magic men -- I can say that since percussionist Rachel Fuhrer apparently has disappeared this year, leaving poet David Jewell, keyboardist Chad Salvata and bassist/video artist Sergio R. Samayoa to deliver this piece assisted by drummer Doug Marcis. I had to identify Marcis from the poster legend, since there was no program available at the Vortex this year. Their January offering for 2012, Viper Vixens, falls far short of earlier …