Recent Reviews
Review: Well by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 18, 2011
Jennifer Underwood is that rare bird, the experienced actress who radiates such wisdom and warmth that she makes you long for a big hug, a cup of herbal tea and a long afternoon chat in the homey mess that's her living room.
This mischievous comedy deserves a better title. By calling it Well, Lisa Kron implies that it's about exactly the opposite: about illness. That subliminal message is reinforced in Different Stages' press releases. Even an impish twist of punctuation would have done it. Call it Well? so as to capture the mother-daughter dialogue at the heart of the play, in which monologist Lisa Kron pushes beyond the strictures of stand-up comedy and tale-telling, confiding to the …
Review: A Lie of the Mind by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 15, 2011
A Lie of the Mind is a hard evening with a bunch of no-hopers who might just be hybrids of The Stupids and The Nastys -- 'Deliverance'-style degenerates, except that they're out somewhere in the great American West.
Sam Shepard wrote and directed A Lie of The Mind off Broadway in 1985. It won awards as best play then and the 2010 New York production won the Lucille Lortel award as best revival. Musing over the claustrophobic evening with these characters, I recalled Harry Allard's picture book collaboration with James Marshall in the 1970's featuring a charmingly inept cartoon family named The Stupids. A Lie of the Mind is a hard evening with …
Review: The Lucky Spot by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 11, 2011
These pralines come in a very handsome box. It's just before Christmas, but you can almost smell the Louisiana marshes when those doors at deep center stage swing open.
These pralines come in a very handsome box. Peter Sukovaty's design for the interior of the Lucky Spot dance hall in rural 1930's Lousiana is graceful and meticulously detailed, the lighting is rich and subtle, and the music that accompanies and accentuates the action includes dance music and even a couple of Hank Williams numbers. It's just before Christmas, but you can almost smell the Louisiana marshes when those doors at deep center stage swing …
Review: Girls' Night by touring company
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on November 08, 2011
The production does achieve the goal announced in that opening announcement: those in the audience -- almost entirely women -- are on their feet, singing their hearts out along with the women on stage.
A booming, exuberant voice blasts a too-casual introduction, announcing what will be a romping performance and warning that more than a few theatre conventions will be broken over the course of the evening. Flashing lights in gaudy colors frame an elevated platform with a lone microphone, suggesting we’re in for a selection of glitzy show tunes. Given that all this is set in the Long Center’s cavernous Michael and Susan Dell Hall, one wonders how …
Review: Guest by Courtesy by Salvage Vanguard Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 08, 2011
The point of these shenanigans is that these modern ladies are flinging that big fat etiquette book right out the window. And they're having a fine time doing it.
On their opening night Hannah Kenah and Jenny Larson attracted an audience with lots of youngish faces more often lit by footlights, spots and stage lighting than by house lights. Those audience members were happily anticipating an entertainment that had been in gestation for two years. The two well known and well liked Austin actresses had presented workshop versions of Guest by Courtesy in May and November 2009 as part of the SVT's Works Progress …
Review: Three Viewings by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 27, 2011
These stories start in the dark of tenuously mastered emotion and they grow toward the light. Bob Beare and his cast make us care about every second of that progress.
Those who attend Trinity Street Players' Three Viewings by Jeffrey Hatcher will be spending some time in the dark with these faces. Each will feature in a solo act, navigating the fragile thread of human emotion like a tightrope walker. Or, to use the German expression for it, like a 'rope dancer,' because these narratives are not as predicable as a taut line. These characters inhabit the same world and speak to us from the …