Recent Reviews
Review: The Crucible by Renaissance Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 04, 2010
Miller's title has resonance for our own times. A "crucible" is a receptacle used for mixing materials at extremely high temperatures, as in a smelting furnace. In simplest terms, a "melting pot," for a nation in which that metaphor is more and more in question.
Arthur Miller's play The Crucible deals with dark and frightening times. Though the setting is 1692 Salem, Massachusetts during the wide-ranging hunt for witches, this 1953 piece is equally an evocation of America's sudden dark fear of enemies in its midst. Just years earlier, in World War II the Soviet Union had been considered a valiant ally; with the division of Europe, the threat of the atom bomb and the populist hectoring of politicians such as Senator …
Review: A Most Unsettling and Possibly Haunted Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 03, 2010
That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds.
We had a lovely evening at the Hidden Room last weekend in the company of some of Austin's more whimsical and talented theatre artists. That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds. Sweet enough to make you giddy …
Review: The Servant Girl Annihilator by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 02, 2010
'Servant Girl Annihilator' evokes grim true history of horror and victimization, and as a technique, the tour on the stage is halfway between conventional theatre and spook house.
For Halloween and for the following weekend your friends at the Weird City Theatre Company take you on a ghost tour. In the program they express special thanks to Monica Ballard and the Austin Ghost Tours for help with research on the late night attacks and rapes of 1884-1885 recalled in the piece. The title is taken from a comment in a letter written by the 23-year-old William Sydney Porter -- O. Henry -- who had …
Review: The 39 Steps by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 29, 2010
The theatrical spoof has actions and effects going comically wrong, reminding us that we are spectators, watching real people. Players play actors playing characters, and they'll drop out of character to mug, heave a sigh or remonstrate.
Austin Playhouse scheduled Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps for a run of almost two months, but I didn't manage to use my season tickets until the penultimate weekend of the run. Not that I expected to be disappointed; The 39 Steps won an Olivier award for best comedy in 2007 and the Broadway version, with the added tag tying it to Hitchcock, ran for two years before moving off-Broadway. And not too far off Broadway -- to New World Stages at …
Review: Hamlet (at Boggy Creek Cemetary) by Black Swan Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 28, 2010
You have to earn your trip to Shakespeare's imagined world by mentally surpressing the insistent, incessant sounds of Texas on the go. These players make that possible, always.
Justin Scalise as Hamlet is intent and impressive. AustinLiveTheatre had that to say and more in the September 25 ALT review of essentially this same production as presented downtown at the Scottish Rite Theatre -- in all too short a run and with a curtailed final week. This staging is by Black Swan Events. The swan is new hatched and because of the surprisingly poorly attendance at the Scottish Rite staging, it's new fledged, as well. Perhaps to …
Review: Siyavash by Philip Kreyche, Wit's End Theatre Project
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 26, 2010
Playwright-manager-director-actor Kreyche fashioned a script in vigorous blank verse and took the central role of Siyâvash. Combining all those responsibilities for a staging is rare these days and somewhat risky, but the declamatory form provided a reassuring framework.
That Philip Kreyche is a dab hand at theatre, a young man with imagination and a taste for the exotic. His earlier piece Love Me was an expressionist treatment of incidents in the life of the Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. He staged it first at a summer workshop at Austin Community College and then brought it back for FronteraFest. I hadn't heard of Kokoschka. Kreyche's piece prompted me to do some research -- which means, these days, …