Recent Reviews
Review: Hedda Gabler by Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 20, 2011
Asia Ciaravino is haunting in the title role. That quiet, watchful oval face is almost unblinking, She has the unconscious beauty of a woman who little cares whether others look at her or not.
Mr. and Mrs. George Tesman return to Norway after six months of honeymoon in Europe. In their absence family friend Judge Brack has arranged the purchase of a city mansion at great expense and furnished it lavishly. Ibsen's Hedda Gabler opens on the morning after their arrival at the new residence and a new domestic life. Allan S. Ross designed this set with meticulous detail. The audience has the time to study the heavy furniture, carpets, …
Review: Love's Labor's Lost by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 16, 2011
This is a fine evening of theatre and a gift to Austin. It's colorful, funny, accomplished and Shakespeare, all together.
Robert Faires' imaginative staging of Love's Labor's Lost takes place at the Sheffield Hillside Theatre in Zilker Park, literally a stone's throw away from Barton Springs pool. Spectators spread out blankets or set up lawn chairs in the sloped meadow above the playing area and settle in for the pleasures of free entertainment for a Texas evening in May. Love's Labor's Lost is one of Shakespeare's earliest comedies and not one of the world's favorites. The language …
Review: Clybourne Park by University of Texas Theatre & Dance
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 11, 2011
Clybourne Park is horrible and funny and deadly accurate about the psychological transformation of America.
Clybourne Park was here and then gone, a self-combusting event that deserved a far longer run in this town -- or anywhere else, for that matter. The UT Department of Theatre and Dance had seized upon plays by Bruce Norris of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre for MFA end-of-term showcase productions at the Lab Theatre. Norris' 1994 The Pain and the Itch directed by Lee Abraham played five times in the last week of April in that modest, …
Review: Chesapeake by Paladin Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 30, 2011
Stites' delivery of Lee Blessing's Chesapeake was the most gripping act of theatre imagination I've ever seen in Austin. Take that with as many grains of salt as you like.
Sometimes the miracle happens. Theatre is a collusion between actors and the audiences: You pretend to be somebody and I'll pretend to believe you. In the subtitle to his 2010 book-length essay The Necessity of Theatre, UT philosophy professor Paul Woodroof calls it "the art of watching and being watching." Writing for a rationalist public in 1817 Coleridge defended the use of the fantastical in poetry by invoking "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, …
Review: Austin Latino New Play Festival 2011 by Teatro Vivo
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 27, 2011
Garza's Dos Pocitos posits a hypothetical future in which the United States has de-accessioned an area of southern Texas, leaving it to drug runners, roving bands and the few stubborn Tejanos who refused to move to safer areas in Texas.
The three Austin playwrights showcased at the Autin Latino New Play Festival last week could not have had a gentler or more supportive audience. Organizers Rupert Reyes and JoAnn Carreon-Reyes founded their Teatro Vivo about ten years ago, producing appealing, comic pieces, usually written by Rupert and featuring him. Just the way that Austin has branded itself as the home of "live music," the Reyes' theatre group is known for its "live theatre." "Teatro vivo" can …
Review: As You Like It by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 19, 2011
Chuck Ney's As You Like It served both as showcase and a satisfying entertainment. We left the theatre cheered and refreshed, exiting the cool blue ot that imaginary birch forest back out into the warm Texas night.
Marketa Fantova's designs for As You Like It at Texas State University establish at a glance the intentions of director Chuck Ney. The action opens at Duke Frederick's court, a bare space at the front of the wide thrust stage, bounded to the rear by a high, chill wall with a blue metallic sheen. That wall initially appears featureless, except for the edifice of steel tubing and dark metal treads parked against it -- the sort of …