Recent Reviews
Review: Lost Land by Wogglebug Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2011
Jenny Kokai's Lost Land is engaging and entertaining but unfocussed, a multifold parable in which a sunken fiberglass whale is the narrator.
Jenny Kokai's Lost Land is engaging and entertaining but unfocussed, a multifold parable in which a sunken fiberglass whale is the narrator. Four stories are anchored at one place: "Lost Land," a lake at the center of a Disney-style theme park. The stories are widely separated in time. The unseen leviathan narrator speaks either from outside time or from some date far in the future. Fred Bothwell is the voice of "Moby," a resigned, lightly …
Review: A Samuel Beckett Cabaret by FronteraFest
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 22, 2011
A Samuel Beckett Cabaret is a nerve-straining, delicious, in-your-face examination of memory, human fraility and theatre itself.
With no particular fanfare, Rick Roemer is offering you the chance to understand the stretch and diversity of the art of the professional actor. But just for a brief shining moment, so check your agenda. Roemer appears in these stark pieces by Samuel Beckett this afternoon, Tuesday evening the 25th and Sunday afternoon the 30th. As the complement, you can appreciate his appearance as the haughty, comic Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest …
Profile and Video: Trouble Puppet's RIDDLEY WALKER, a Work in Progress
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 21, 2011
Hopkins warned us that Hoban writes the tale in an imagined future jargon that initially may appear obscure. "Read it out loud," he suggested. "And after the first five pages or so, you'll have no trouble at all."
Connor Hopkins and the gang at Trouble Puppet Theatre Company invited their e-list followers over to the Salvage Vanguard Theatre studio on two Saturday nights, January 8 and 15, to get a look at their works in progress. The evening began with The Red Tree, one of several pieces developed in Caroline Reck's "Object Theatre Workshop" and moved to several scenes the company has roughed out for the production of Riddley Walker scheduled for September …
Review: Humble Boy by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 18, 2011
Playwright Jones creates vivid characters and director Jonathan Urso runs them through amusing clashes and quirky incidents, including a grimly funny series of missteps with the ashes of the late lamented James Humble.
Tom Stephan is a revelation in Different Stages' Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones, playing through the end of the month at the City Theatre. In Austin Shakespeare's production of The Tempest last September he was a dismayed and battered King Alonso of Naples, cast ashore in the opening scene and awkwardly penitent in Act V. Here, as Felix Humble, the title character of Jones' sardonic social comedy, Stephan is vividly alive, so inventive and subtle …
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 …
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 …