Recent Reviews
Review: The Trip to Bountiful by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2010
In performance all that light and liberty disappears, for director Toner situates these actors in the dark confines of a black box, provided with minimal props and simple furnishings. The concept is so stark and featureless that the Playhouse lists no credit for stage design.
This is a memory play, an exercise in yearning -- not only for the principal character Carrie Watts, but also for playwright Horton Foote and for the audience. Where are they, those vanished earlier times, and what were they really like? Depending entirely on her son and her daughter-in-law in their apartment somewhere in the Houston of 1953, Carrie Watts longs to return to her home, a house somewhere in rural Texas at a crossroads …
Review: La Pastorela 2010 - A Shepherdla's Story by ALTA Teatro
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 09, 2010
The cast doesn't bother with a curtain call. Instead, San Miguel with his self-assurance commands us forth to the plaza, where to the children's delight they find a devil-shaped piñata awaiting, suspended from the balcony.
La Pastorela, the tale of the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem in search of the promised newborn babe, has a lot of history behind it. That Bible story came to the New World with the Spanish troops and frailes who occupied the New World, of course, and while accepting that account, the indigenous peoples interpreted in terms of their own experience. La Pastorela tells the story of Gila, the shepherdess who receives a visitation …
Review: Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 07, 2010
Each of the three spins gently away into fantasy dialogues with dream figures or surrogates. Only mid-way does the playwright reveal the details of the fatal accident and then start an intrigue ticking.
You know that this single mom and her eleven-year-old daughter are in deep trouble from the very start, because the building tells you so. Michael Slefinger as The Apartment is an engimatic presence, miffed by their inattention, wearing a butterfly bow tie that confirms his nostalgia for long-ago elegance. His is the first voice we hear, and he hovers in this action as something between a Greek chorus and a malevolent haunting. Playwright Sheila Callaghan …
Review: Scrooge, the musical by Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 02, 2010
Leslie Bricusse essentially does a Hanna-Barbera version of Charles Dickens' novella. Scrooge as Fred Flintstone -- loud mouthed, dim and aggressive in an oafish sort of way. But loveable, too, especially once he has been brought around by the visitations.
The Palace has once again put a gigantic effort into the casting, preparation and playing of its holiday musical. As with Annie last year , Scrooge the Musical by Leslie Bricusse has a big cast -- 24 bio'd players plus 23 charmers in the three children's casts (designated Nickleby, Copperfield and Pickwick, recalling characters from Dickens). Except for six principals, the roles are double- or triple-cast, a policy of sharing out that must have made …
Review: Morning's at Seven by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 26, 2010
Five strong, distinctive women actors play against four equally vivid men, and not a one of them is in years of the ardent twenty-somethings so familiar in this town.
Different Stages lives up to its name with this affectionate recreation of a vanished America. Paul Osborn created for his 1930's audiences a comforting family portrait, set in a small town. All three acts of Morning's at Seven take place in a back yard shared by two wooden frame houses. All except one of the nine characters are related. This gentle comedy was a quirky oldies play. All four of the Boulton sisters are in …
Review: Wait Until Dark by Way Off Broadway Community Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 17, 2010
I did have a woman seated somewhere behind me who probably had the habit of talking to her television at home, but others were kind enough to shush her into mostly silent attention to the action on stage.
Community theatre folks are glad that you came, and they make no pretense about that. They've worked for weeks, mostly after hours and on weekends, in an undertaking that doesn't pay the grocery bills or even the transportation expenses. I'm always touched and honored when players and staff position themselves to greet audience members as they come out of the theatre. Over decades of diplomatic assignments I regularly shook hands of officials receiving guests at …