Recent Reviews
Review: Lonestar, A Popcorn Throwing Rock Country Musical by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 24, 2009
Boiling it down a bit further, one could say that the actors in the drama were attempting to communicate a story, while the musicians and overridden singers were obscuring the story by raising a ruckus beyond words.
Wow, guys, this was a mess.Melodrama meets country rock band and invites beer drinkers to interrupt the whole thing at will with popcorn, catcalls, and even, on one particularly wild night, someone's shoe thrown from the audience.Dr. Dave my retired college professor friend and I paid for the Wednesday night VIP seats, only there weren't any. We were kindly removed from the high table next to the stage, which turned out to be the location …
Review: The 1940s Radio Hour by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 23, 2009
At the very top of this game is Katie Walther playing "bad girl" Ginger Brooks. 'Blues in the Night,' that Peggy Lee favorite, is the shining moment of the show -- all the more so because she has the confidence to do it straight and then with the backing of all the male players.
I knew that The 1940s Radio Hour done last week at the One World Theatre by the Austin Community College Choir would provide us a time machine to amusement. The surprise for me was the dipsy-doodle movement of that flight through time.I went to the 11:30 a.m. performance, enjoying the novel sensation of driving in daylight to a theatre performance. I got there half an hour early, picked up my ticket, hiked upstairs to the theatre and …
Review: The Skin of our Teeth by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 18, 2009
This is wild stuff -- a history of humankind as embodied by the Antrobus family, with a mad mix-up of times, epic figures, surreal settings and primal myths.
Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth is 67 years old but it plays as if it had been written and workshopped last week by one of those Austin indie arts groups of which we are so proud. It's wild stuff --a history of humankind as embodied by the Antrobus family, with a mad mix-up of times, epic figures, surreal settings and primal myths. Refract that story through the lens of a dramatic structure that the author …
Review: Pride and Prejudice by University of Texas Theatre & Dance
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 17, 2009
This Pride and Prejudice has elegance in speech, in dress, in ceremony and in setting. You'll find no surprises in the story line and no distortions or intrusive modifications.
Pride and Prejudice at UT's B. Iden Payne Theatre is a beautiful, graceful production. This is a musical text, and not only because of the jigs and reels at the balls sponsored by cheerful Mr. Bingley. Jane Austen's familiar novel about impoverished young ladies and their ultimately successful romances is written largely in dialogue, with cadence, understatement, wit, parry and riposte, quite as if it were a verbal score. No wonder it has been so successfully …
Review: The Life of Galileo by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 16, 2009
. David Stahl inhabits that personality with the tidy self congratulation of Bilbo Baggins. He is impish rather than arrogant, and he's querulous about the tedious need to take students and to devise practical applications.
A lot is going on in Brecht's The Life of Galileo, and not just onstage. The program notes at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre will help you some, with a tidy summary of the historical figures, the heliocentric Ptolemaic model of the universe, and the heretical but accurate Copernican revision of it, and some of the elements of the plot. With that crib sheet you can comfortably follow the depiction of that impatient and skeptical scientist's lifetime …
Review: The Little Mermaid by Scottish Rite Theater
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 13, 2009
SRCT keeps it simple, keeps it colorful and keeps it moving. The four actors and stage manager are funny and appealing. Characterization is broad and comic. The cast frequently speaks directly to the audience.
The excitement of theatre vibrates in the air in the classic space of the Scottish Rite Children's Theatre in central Austin. On Saturdays, Sundays, and some mid-week performance days a bubbling crew of 3-to-8-year-olds occupies the mats in the center of the auditorium, while parents and less daring children occupy the conventional theatre seats. The energy level is as high as any Broadway opening night. This is a volatile crowd, in the literal sense of …