Recent Reviews
Review: Becky's New Car by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 04, 2010
Preview night was not an adventure for Becky -- at least, not beyond the intermission -- and we walked away with the uneasy feeling that our heroine Becky Foster was stuck a long way from happiness with no towing service to call.
Zach's post card calls it "A Revved-up Comic Adventure!" The website is even more breathless, promising "[a] life-affirming comedy about an eccentric millionaire who offers Becky the keys to a brand new life [in][. . . . ] a fantastically funny exploration about class, wealth and selling out during Becky's wild ride through a clever twist of events. Huge laughs, hairpin plot turns and a story with the pedal to the metal. Buckle up!" …
Review: Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 02, 2010
If you concentrate on the words, you may get a pale and distant impression of the genius who was Jacques Brel.
This is a pleasant and inconsequential little evening of cabaret. Go and listen to the Austin Playhouse staging of Blau and Shuman's 1968 compendium Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. If you concentrate on the words, you may get a pale and distant impression of the genius who was Jacques Brel. These are the problems of translation. The music stands outside language, but Brel's stories and lyrics are deeply embedded in …
Review: American Volunteers by Johnny Meyers
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 26, 2010
American Volunteers has the feeling of authenticity in the details -- the guy talk, the stress, the confusion of war, and the yearning for home. I just wish it were a better play.
The hero's aura that trails after the 27-year-old John Meyer looks to be authentic. The man was an Army ranger -- no small accomplishment. Only the toughest and most apt--men only--finish the 60-day training course at Ft. Benning, in the Georgia mountains and in the Florida swamps. They are in constant physical training and in simulated combat operations, often functioning 20 hours a day. The lore is that the stresses age these men prematurely. Candidates …
Review: The Red Balloon by Tongue and Groove Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 24, 2010
The only real kid in sight, it seems, is the lead -- Gricelda Silva, the bright-eyed young woman playing the bright-eyed boy befriended by the faithful balloon. With her slight figure, fresh face and utter concentration, she is like a sylph, one of Paracelsus' elemental beings of the air.
In 1956 the 34-year-old French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse wrote and filmed the slim, imaginative, 34-minute fantasy The Red Balloon. His son Pascal played the central role, that of a quiet, lonely schoolboy who discovers a magical red balloon -- one that recognizes him, follows him with the simplicity and loyalty of a pet dog, and provides an escape from the emptiness of barren city life. Lamorisse's daughter Sabine played the little girl who appears with a similar …
Review: Sexual Perversity in Chicago by Paladin Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 20, 2010
Oh, God, it's as if they are arrested forever in the hell of a fourteen-year-old's hormones. Perhaps it explains the survival of the species, but it says damn little for the culture or the civilization.
Charles Stites fits so entirely and comfortably into the horrible male characters of David Mamet that one has to wonder if the man is, in fact, acting. Mind you, he is a performer of great presence and élan vital, as anyone could see when he was onstage in City Theatre's Glengarry, Glen Ross by Mamet and in the title role of its Tartuffe by Molière. It's just that for this new theatre grouping Stites chose Mamet's 1974 one-act, he directed …
Review: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 17, 2010
Stephen Jack in the title role sings with simplicity, dignity and feeling. His brothers are a fine assortment of shapes and sizes, constituting a rogue's gallery and men's chorus of singers and dancers of remarkable power.
With Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the Georgetown Palace Theatre demonstrates once again the blend of professional standards and excitement of community theatre that makes it the premiere venue in the greater Austin area for musical theatre. Webber wrote this piece well before his hit Jesus Christ Superstar, for a school performance in London. The structure hints at that, for when the lights go down, cheery Patty Rowell comes …