Recent Reviews
Review: Talking with Jane Martin, by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 18, 2010
A collection of sharp, bittersweet portraits of women, many of whom have reacted to disappointments by melting into private worlds.
Talking With is a collection of eleven monologues delivered by women characters, first staged in 1981 in Louisville, Kentucky. It played off-Broadway in 1982 to great success. The identity of playwright Jane Martin remains a mystery. All of her considerable work has first been staged at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky, by that group's artistic director John Jory. This is a collection of sharp, bittersweet portraits of women, many of whom have reacted to disappointments by melting into …
Review: Eurydice by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 14, 2010
It's disconcerting to see Ruhl the brief spark of human existence into drollery. A bit like accepting a slice of birthday cake and finding it full of shards of glass.
Sarah Ruhl's version of the Eurydice myth begins as a fable. Nicole Swahn, the childishly enthusiastic and simple-minded Eurydice, frolics at the beach with Bastion Carboni as her beau, the music geek Orpheus. They're on their way to an unreflecting storybook wedding. Little matter that she has no comprehension of the music in his head and apparently no head for her own history. In part, because she's not getting the mail. We learn that Eurydice's father, …
Review: World's Fastest Hamlet 2009 by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 09, 2010
This show was the ridiculous happily distilled from the sublime. In a sense, Austin Shakespeare company members were parodying themselves and the whole enterprise of acting.
Austin Shakespeare winked at the bard and happily laughed at itself with The World's Fastest Hamlet, a twenty-minute show given its second (annual?) staging at First Night Austin, the December 31 downtown festival.Last year the same four-actor cast performed twice under the First Street Bridge during a bright, mild afternoon. This year they briefly took the music stage at City Hall Plaza at 6:15 p.m. as dark fell and the First Night parade unwound behind them along the …
Review: Annie, the musical by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 01, 2010
Seeing Annie for a second time I was struck by the imagination and flair of its design elements.
For the performance of December 23, 2009: I brought six family members to see Annie on December 23 and all were delighted. This wasn't the same show that ALT reviewed on November 28. Director Mary Ellen Butler and the Georgetown Palace team chose to maximize participation and presentation for their end-of-2009 holiday production. Leading roles were double- or triple-cast and ensemble roles were double-cast, resulting in a complicated mosaic for the 106 actors and the 40+ support staff. …
Review: The Mousetrap by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 29, 2009
The treat is David Gallagher as the young perhaps-architect Christopher Wren.a walking nervous breakdown, a continuously recaptured cloud of italic exclamation points (!!!!!), parentheses and blurted thoughts. His performance, sets zinging the cords of this apparently predicable plot.
Theatre journalism has a half-life of perhaps two weeks, a fact that prompts me to strive to see a production as soon as possible. After all, a theatre review published only 48 hours before closing has not much more than archival interest. One would prefer to deliver the report and comments hot off the first-night griddle, particularly when the show's an interesting or engaging one. Perhaps, just perhaps, the review might contribute to increasing the turnout …
Review: Hamlet by Austin Drama Club
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 20, 2009
Japhy and Ellen Fernandes and friends are more of a cult, one that is dedicated to dark and somewhat deranged productions of the classics, each done on half a shoestring. Their output is impressive.
Going to an Austin Drama Club production is like Alice's falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Their venue is a house just off E. 7th Street in Austin, Texas, and you enter through a scruffy back yard surrounded by a chain link fence. When my son and I arrived, Jennifer Fielding was standing by the gate on back yard duty. Her question was, "Have you been here before?"It wasn't a speakeasy challenge question, but …