Recent Reviews
Review: August: Osage County by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 12, 2011
Tennessee Williams was a dour idealist. Letts, in contrast, is a nihilist whose message is that our American culture is rotting at its heart. He's a man of black humors entertaining us in a wasteland.
Director Dave Steakley proves that with a first-rate cast and a gifted scenic designer he can turn Tracey Letts' savage misanthropy into a mesmerizing long evening in the theatre. That's no modest achievement. The last -- and first -- Letts work I saw was Capital T Theatre's Killer Joe, which I found violent and obscene. Not in the sexual sense, but because Letts took such evident pleasure in degrading his working-class characters. Perhaps Letts is …
Review: Incident at Vichy by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 10, 2011
The reluctant accessory to the murder machine, the fully human and aware victim, the despairing exponent of German-speaking decency and moral feeling. . . Miller's accomplishment is to make them characters of dimension and prototypes of millions involved in the still incomprehensible atrocities.
The black box on the fourth floor has a claustrophobic feel. The central space is stark and looks more like a basement than an attic -- a couple of benches, neutral gray walls, a narrow high window, a couple of empty beer bottles left on the sill. As you gather and settle into the ranks of seats around that central space, the theatre serenades you with recordings of French music -- Jacques Brel, an anachronism, …
Review: Ain't Misbehavin' by Tex-Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 06, 2011
The performers could have dropped out of a 1930's movie reel. Your atention will be captured by the mini-dramas of Waller's songs, staged in various combinations of performers and in fact accumulating a greater sense and even a narrative.
Ain't Misbehavin' is a lively and exciting all-music evening at Tex-Arts, Lakeway, a Fats Waller "musical show" as promised in the subtitle. You might for one brief moment think that you were in a welcoming dive in Harlem, east St. Louis or the South Side of Chicago, as those five attractive and energetic performers and four-piece band sing, dance and blast away in the close quarters of the Kam and James Morris theatre out in …
Review: The Story Seekers by Exchange Artists
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 04, 2011
The grove of shelter has features of death, of memory, of limbo and of simple mythos or story telling -- perhaps those children exist only because we imagine them.
The Elizabeth Ney museum on E. 44th Street in Hyde Park is already haunted. A crowd of stark white plaster figures and busts stand in the shabby shaddows of the odd small Austin-stone castle that was Ney's final residence and studio from 1902 to 1907. Among them is a bust of German writer and philologist Jacob Grimm that she sculpted of the old man in Berlin in the 1850's. Grimm would have approved of Kattherine …
Review: Alvida and the Airship Pirates by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 30, 2011
Our Alvida is a princess betrothed against her will to a vain and clueless prince from a nearby realm; Chris Romani as Mommy the queen is a sourpuss and Daddy the king is a timorous wimp. The needs of high politics and allilance must be served at all costs.
I was on the last airship with Alvida out of Weird City on March 12 and as sometimes happens with scribes errant, I got too busy and distracted to send her, author John Carroll and their band of adventurers a proper bread-and-butter note. Your mother may have admonished you about good manners, as does the mother of my children. It’s never too late, although sometimes it’s too late to do much good. I prefer the …
Review: West Side Story by touring company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 30, 2011
No film can give the scope and the dazzle of Robbins' large dance scenes, and the choreography reproduced by Joey McKneely for this staging delivers excitement, humor and far more action than your eye can follow.
A stage jammed with more than 30 trim, talented dancers, a 15-piece orchestra doing Leonard Bernstein's instantly recognizable score, a couple of memorable scenic pieces and a respectful interpretation of the 1957 reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet, tweaked only very slightly, if at all -- the touring company of West Side Story delivers exactly what the American public expects. The enterprise also provides an enlightening illustration of the difference between a film -- who hasn't …