Recent Reviews
Review: I Hate Hamlet by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 17, 2012
I Hate Hamlet moves quickly, has a touch of wisdom, only a whiff of pathos, a good deal of tolerance for the acting profession, and plenty of laughs along the way.
You don't have to hate Shakespeare's Hamlet in order to enjoy this lighthearted romp, but it does help to have an appreciation for ghosts. We're not talking about the grim visaged former king of Shakespeare's imagined Denmark, but about the much friendlier shade of the great tragedian John Barrymore. Once he appears after the obligatory set-up scenes of the television actor and his girlfriend moving into an ancient and remarkable old apartment in New York …
Review: Conversations While Dining Alone by Ken Johnson
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on January 16, 2012
Conversations While Dining Alone is an exercise in humanity, in stepping into the shoes of another person, probably someone less fortunate than yourself, and trying on that plight for size.
An evening at the Dougherty Arts Center for Ken Johnson’s Conversations While Dining Alone is a voyage into the brooding, lonely thoughts of the saddest people we know. Or maybe into those of just about everyone we know. These original monologues capture some of the ideas we have when we’re alone, the frustrations and the very ugliest thoughts that haunt our quieter moments. Chuck Merlo enters and seats himself at a desk, places a McDonalds …
Review: The Children's Hour by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 09, 2012
There's a lot of Lillian Hellman herself in the determined and dangerous Mary Tilford. In part, The Children's Hour is the writer's savage revenge on conventional morality.
One must understand Lillilan Hellman's 1934 melodrama The Children's Hour as a vision seen through a glass, darkly. So much separates us from this play, its imagined world, and Hellman's provocative portrait of middle-class morality that we risk imposing on it our own twenty-first-century sensibilities. That's inevitable, but by becoming aware of our own mindsets, perhaps we can stretch them a bit. Two women friends have worked in collegial partnership for eight years to purchase …
Review: The Children's Hour by Different Stages
by Catherine Dribb
Published on January 09, 2012
Zook’s character is strong and compelling. These dramatic performances were accented by the school children’s caricaturistic performances providing necessary comic relief against the evil of a conniving child’s web of lies
Having attended the performance with a friend who, while a fan of theater, nevertheless believes that scripts written after 1950 that don’t take into consideration the average attention span of adults will reduce their art to inconsiderate babbling, I became concerned when the greeter at the box office said, “The show runs over two hours but has two intermissions.” My pragmatic thespian friend, while relenting since The Children’s Hour was written in 1934 (before writers …
Review: Cuento Navideno, or Bah Humbug in the Barrio by Rupert Reyes
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 03, 2012
The irony is that the dead Teodora as played by Yvonne Cortez Flores is far more lively and life-loving than the living Evangelina. Teodora has a big laugh, a sarcastic sense of humor and a inclination to tipple, to the point that she wakes up with new tatoos.
Rupert Reyes puts "home-made" theatre onstage. And I mean that as high praise. He and JoAnn Carreon-Reyes founded Austin's Teatro Vivo ("Live Theatre") in 2000, and the program notes for his Cuento Navideño which closed just before Christmas at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, record that it was their 27th full-length production. Rupert is friendly, serene and gently humorous, as is JoAnn. This pair stood before the audience at the December 18 closing performance at …
Review: A Christmas Carol, the musical by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 30, 2011
A Christmas Carol demonstrated once again the extraordinary strengths of the Palace as a center for community arts, and this version of the redemption of irascible Ebeneezer preserved the message of the much beloved story.
Spirit, I have not been the man I ought to have been for this holiday season; caught up with the visit of family -- my brother from Tennessee for two weeks, then for Christmastide and for two birthday celebrations my venerable in-laws, my wife's brother and our two children with their respective significant others -- I did not reserve the time and space for thought and writing. To my discomfort, I deliver this review of …