Recent Reviews
Review: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers by Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 30, 2010
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has a simple message with an indulgent wink. Men are real men, except when they're really just boys; girls want to be won and whirled away.
The charming musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers now playing on weekends at the Wimberley Players' stage makes me think of the waggish definition of a "theatre classic": something that's really good but that no one does any more. Director Lee Colée Atnip has been working since February with members of this cast of 37, and that preparation pays off. Both the players and the members of the preview audience last week were having a tremendous …
Review: Hamlet by Black Swan Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 25, 2010
See what this focused, well-spoken, taut player does with the character who has haunted him. They jointly inhabit a swift and moving performance.
Those lustrous eyes, that bony frame, that complexion sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought -- many of us believe that Justin Scalise was born to play Hamlet. He has certainly trained for Shakespeare and for this role, in New Orleans, in England, and for the past three years in Austin. We have seen him as Bottom, Feste, Adam & Silvius, Don John, Mercutio and Lucio. And even Hamlet, freeze-dried, for Austin Shakespeare's …
Review: Rent by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2010
The show roars -- literally. The band dimly visible behind the chain link fence at center stage has got its amps turned all the way up under the direction of Allen Robertson. Microphones on the singers are not sufficient to protect them or us.
Rent is the sort of production the Zach theatre uses to pay the rent: the staging of a familiar rock and roll work with appeal for the young, for the young professionals, for the creatives and for the club goers. Seen as daring at its 1996 debut, Rent has become sufficiently mainstream that it can be staged in community theatres, summer theatres, and, this past February, even by the kidsActing studio here in Austin. Director Dave Steakley gets …
Review: The Imaginary Invalid by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 22, 2010
Diminutive sophomore Sophia Franzella is one to watch. She has this single scene in which her papa Argan interrogates her about the love antics of her sister, but it's a cajoling, beguiling knock-about success, greeted by spontaneous applause.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin would not have objected at all to this re-do of his 1673 farce. He wrote The Imaginary Invalid in rapid-fire prose, using verse only for comic ballets at the intervals (omitted in this staging). David Chambers' translation/interpretation of the piece follows the action faithfully, although often with slangy word choices. Between them, Chambers and director David Long apply a clownification of the characters and a Borscht Belt leer not obvious in the original texts. David …
Review: The Tempest by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 17, 2010
The real entertainers of this piece are Michael Amendola as Caliban, elastic, resentful and credulous; Nathan Jerkins who creates a joyfully inebriated Stephano,; and Michael Dalmon's not-too-bright but terribly earnest Trinculo the jester. Every moment these fellows are on stage is a delight.
Prospero's kingdom is an enchanted isle, suggested by the wide circle marked out on the floor of the Rollins Theatre. As did Shakespeare, Ann Ciccolella invites the audience to create that world by participating with their imaginations. The scenery is minimal -- little more than towering dark blue flats at the back of the playing area, an unassuming balcony or elevation at stage right, rear, and a couple of rickety bushes on platforms pushed onstage …
Review: Dead White Males by Sustainable Theatre Project
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 14, 2010
Saving the piece from its forced absurdities are the performances of two in the cast: Suzanne Balling with the obligatory role for anti-fascist drama of the common man (here, woman) driven to question hollow authority, and Dennis Kelleher Bailey as the pedophile principal, flawed and aware of it.
Fascism isn't funny but it offers huge targets for satire. The premise is familiar: an eager novice takes up a new calling, infused with idealism, and finds that not only is the actual day-to-day work grueling but the authorities are self-serving, hypocritical and exploitative. Dead White Males is a valentine to those teacher-victims and a savage attack on administrators of educational systems. The Sustainable Theatre Project stretches a bit by linking the play to …