Recent Reviews
Review: Surfin' UFO by Electronic Arts Ensemble
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 10, 2011
Electronic Planet Ensemble is surfin' big themes on comic book concepts with surfboards and hula hoops, and you have no idea what they're going to do next to your consciousness.
David Jewell's word pictures lift beyond the Vortex space, riding with the waves of music, percussion and video, and the Electronic Planet Ensemble delivers us to someplace exalted and different and yet familiar. They are surfin' big themes on comic book concepts with surfboards and hula hoops, and you have no idea what they're going to do next to your consciousness.Back in the Age of Aquarius this would have been far out, prime foodstuff for consciousness …
Review: A Christmas Carol, one-actor by Bernadette Nason
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 16, 2010
Bernadette with her expressive face and sweet, clear English accent has the unimposing charm of a gamine, a young and playful woman, a presence that makes all the more impressive the range of characters she creates.
Austin Playhouse provides an atmospheric little set for Bernadette Nason's telling of A Christmas Carol, and she's in costume when she enters primly from the single door at upstage right. Nason smiles an acknowledgment of us as she hangs up coat and scarf, then turns to address us. From that point the story takes over, for Bernadette delivers Dickens' quick-moving, vivid text with crisp assurance and deft, economical mime. No exaggerations or mugging here; a shift …
Review: The Trip to Bountiful by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2010
In performance all that light and liberty disappears, for director Toner situates these actors in the dark confines of a black box, provided with minimal props and simple furnishings. The concept is so stark and featureless that the Playhouse lists no credit for stage design.
This is a memory play, an exercise in yearning -- not only for the principal character Carrie Watts, but also for playwright Horton Foote and for the audience. Where are they, those vanished earlier times, and what were they really like? Depending entirely on her son and her daughter-in-law in their apartment somewhere in the Houston of 1953, Carrie Watts longs to return to her home, a house somewhere in rural Texas at a crossroads …
Review: La Pastorela 2010 - A Shepherdla's Story by ALTA Teatro
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 09, 2010
The cast doesn't bother with a curtain call. Instead, San Miguel with his self-assurance commands us forth to the plaza, where to the children's delight they find a devil-shaped piñata awaiting, suspended from the balcony.
La Pastorela, the tale of the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem in search of the promised newborn babe, has a lot of history behind it. That Bible story came to the New World with the Spanish troops and frailes who occupied the New World, of course, and while accepting that account, the indigenous peoples interpreted in terms of their own experience. La Pastorela tells the story of Gila, the shepherdess who receives a visitation by the Archangel Gabriel, with …
Review: Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 07, 2010
Each of the three spins gently away into fantasy dialogues with dream figures or surrogates. Only mid-way does the playwright reveal the details of the fatal accident and then start an intrigue ticking.
You know that this single mom and her eleven-year-old daughter are in deep trouble from the very start, because the building tells you so. Michael Slefinger as The Apartment is an engimatic presence, miffed by their inattention, wearing a butterfly bow tie that confirms his nostalgia for long-ago elegance. His is the first voice we hear, and he hovers in this action as something between a Greek chorus and a malevolent haunting. …
Review: Scrooge, the musical by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 02, 2010
Leslie Bricusse essentially does a Hanna-Barbera version of Charles Dickens' novella. Scrooge as Fred Flintstone -- loud mouthed, dim and aggressive in an oafish sort of way. But loveable, too, especially once he has been brought around by the visitations.
The Palace has once again put a gigantic effort into the casting, preparation and playing of its holiday musical. As with Annie last year , Scrooge the Musical by Leslie Bricusse has a big cast -- 24 bio'd players plus 23 charmers in the three children's casts (designated Nickleby, Copperfield and Pickwick, recalling characters from Dickens). Except for six principals, the roles are double- or triple-cast, a policy of sharing out that must have made coordination of the 26 performances akin to writing up …