Recent Reviews
Review: Titus Andronicus by Last Act Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 26, 2011
The sparse opening night audience for this production was rapt, almost stunned by what they heard and saw. Amidst the intensity of action and image in that intimate outdoor space the cast's conviction, diction and projection were superb.
Austin likes its hellish Halloweens and on that score Titus Andronicus deserves standing-room-only audiences and ticket queues around the block, down there on César Chávez Avenue just a few blocks east of Interstate 35. Forget all that stuff about Shakespeare they taught you in high school and college. This one he wrote really early in his career, in 1591 or so when he had only a couple of comedies and the three-part history Henry VI …
Review: Night of the Living Dead by Weird City Theatre
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on October 24, 2011
The action is as fast-paced as the film, and before long zombies are clawing at the Laffy Taffy innards of characters we meet only briefly.
A note to the nervous: Weird City Theatre’s Night of the Living Dead will have you clenching the edge of your seats, squinting into the darkness to see if a zombie is lumbering in your direction. Director John Carroll’s arrangement of the performance space at the Dougherty Arts Center manipulates spectators to facilitate that sense of terror. A runway extends from the traditional proscenium, separating the audience down the middle and leading to a smaller …
Review: Ghosts by Penfold Theatre Company
by Hannah Bisewski
Published on October 21, 2011
This production is not for the intellectually lazy, but Ibsen's work, more than a century old, remains rewarding experience for those willing to engage with its themes.
Penfold Theatre Company and the Breaking String Theater joined forces to stage Ghosts, producing a well considered work that breathes a fresh vitality into a familiar story. Revolutionary reevaluation of old convention is precisely the theme of Ghosts. Settling into their seats in the cramped, angular space of the Hyde Park Theatre, the audience sees a dusty, dirty, though elegant, Victorian-era living room. A dim chandelier hangs from a cobweb-lined ceiling. Given the play’s title, …
Review: Marvelous Things by Lindsey Greer Sykes
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 21, 2011
This work is a trope on her character's reluctance to deal with the world presented to her. There's an adroit turn for the final scene involving Raven Fox as her child, the newest initiate in our amazing, troubling, marvelous world.
While watching Lindsey Greer Sikes' Marvelous Things at the Blue Theatre last week, I was struck by the feeling that rather than see this gentle fantasy, I'd really prefer to be in it. That's not unusual for those who haunt the dusty glitter of Austin stages; we've had a connection to theatre art at some time in the past so immediate and powerful that we've become performance junkies. Rachel Wiese in the principal role of …
Review: Ghosts by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 21, 2011
Babs George evidences depth and choked passion, a stoic clear-eyed acceptance of injustice and a devotion to the son whom she has in fact not known since his childhood. Babs George could read me the classified ads on stage for an hour and I wouldn't have enough of her.
The Penfold/Breaking String joint production of Ghosts is a moody, beautiful piece. Its honesty to Ibsen's 1881 text is almost a disadvantage, for among us twentieth-first century chrononauts will be some who find inexplicable and inherently comic the restraint of his language. How quaint not to name the evils: prostitution, syphillis, debauchery, incest, spouse abuse, addiction, wifely duty, madness, social convention, obligatory purity for women, licensed libertinism for men . . . . By retaining …
Review: Guest Artist by Paradox Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 17, 2011
The rhythm of the piece is captivating. Director Karen Jambon orchestrates the dialogue and movement with keen ear and eye. The two leads, Austin stage veterans, are singers as well as actors.
Steubenville, Ohio -- with all respect due to the inhabitants of that town of 19,000, it sounds about as far away from theatre civilization as one could get. It's in those rough hills of east Ohio, forty miles west of Pittsburgh and facing east into West Virginia. Playwright Daniels uses the Steubenville bus station as the run-down unlikely setting for the encounter of a famous playwright on his way down and an awestruck aspiring writer …