Recent Reviews
Review: ROE by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 14, 2023
ROE is cracking good drama although subtly slanted to views shared by most Austinites. Director Jenny Lavery and her team deliver the nourishment so badly needed after the retrograde Dobbs decision and in the face of spreading authoritarianism,
Four syllables, emblematic of the hard-won right of women to bodily autonomy accorded 7-2 by the Supreme Court fifty years ago. Playwright Lisa Loomer pries the cap off that four-syllable can of worms and portrays individuals involved in and invested in that 1973 result—above all, the titular "Jane Roe." Norma McCorvey was pregnant for a third time and simply wanted not to be pregnant. Recent UT Law School graduate (one of only forty women …
Review: BIG LOVE by Charles Mee, Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 10, 2023
BIG LOVE, Charles Mee's riff on the earliest extant Greek drama, under Allison Price's direction was vibrant with the hormones, clashing views, and intensity of our own era's war between men and women—a notable achievement.
What goes around, comes around. Not only in the sense of retribution, but also as recycling and renewal. I reviewed a production of Charles Mee's Big Love when CTXLT was but a blog. Turns out that Caleb Straus's 2009 staging was at Texas State University. And now, thirteen and a half years later, director Allison Price has renewed the work at the same university—in the same locale, but in a theatre turned inside-out …
Review: Follies by Entr'acte at Parker Jazz Club, March 5, 2023
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 07, 2023
Follies was a reviewer's torment -- too much treasure, no time to signal it. Enormous talent compressed into the small space of the Parker Jazz Club was almost to much to take.
Sarah and Adam, how could you torment a theatre reviewer so? The Sunday afternoon performance of Sondheim's dense, evocative 1971 musical Follies at the atmospheric Parker Jazz Club was the first of only two, performed on a single day. What use, then, is a review, except as an expression of regret that more theatre lovers did not get to witness it? Wikipedia asserts that Follies was the first work for which Sondheim insisted on writing both …
Review: A HAIR CAN SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE, Blipswitch Dance to April 2, 2023
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 01, 2023
Thirteen women dancers of BLIPSWITCH commanded the vast outdoors of The Long Time with a mosaic of contemporary movement technique. Their smooth large-scale performance exceeds anything similar done in the region.
Blipswitch's large-scale performance A Hair Can Split the Difference exceeds anything similar by other professional dance companies in the region. That formidable production plays at the Long Time outdoor venue off FM969 in eastern Travis County. Blipswitch gave a smooth, skilled performance lacking glitches and rain, which had been forecast. Unlike other companies with growing pains when they increase in scale, Blipswitch had no miscues, errant lighting, or fractious sound systems. The performance …
Review: Dance on Film by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 29, 2023
Dance on Film 2023 provided an evening of well-made and often intriguing films of immense diversity and much good humor.
The long-running Dance on Film series of the Austin Dance Festival presented yet another strong set of dance films, not merely cameras pointed at dance stages or rehearsal floors, but dances imagined and performed for the camera. In these dances cinematography is very much a partner of choreography. That quality opens the dance world to cinema's near-infinite variety of sets and settings, lighting designs, soundtracks, and costumes. A brief interview with Ilana …
Review: The Poetry Shift by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 05, 2023
THE POETRY SHIFT is just the sort of theatre for which I glean the theatre fields of Austin -- an new, intimate, small-cast drama people with distinctive characters and new faces.
The Southwest Theatre Productions staging of Daniel Born's The Poetry Shift is just the sort of theatre for which I glean the theatre fields of Austin -- an new, intimate, small-cast drama peopled with distinctive characters and new faces. Kat Sparks did us all a service by setting up this showcase. I immediately regretted that I hadn't been to see it early in its four-week run at the Trinity Players black box on the fourth …