Recent Reviews
Review: Spider's Web by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 09, 2010
We enjoy Clarissa's elaborate persuasion and pretending, as well as the cover story's eventual collapse under investigation. The cat and mouse game is not between criminal and detective but rather between a spontaneous fantasizer and the minions of the law.
You don't see much of Agatha Christie in the United States any more, except perhaps in public libraries and the occasional revival of one of her many plays. Airport newstands rarely offer murder as genteel puzzle any more, instead stacking up thick paperbacks with vibrant covers, done by Clive Custler or Sue Grafton or any of a number of other contemporary producers of blockbusters. Different Stages does us a service by providing an accomplished and …
Review: re:Psyche by Secondhand Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 06, 2010
In the closing scene, suspended and annihilated by the force of pure beauty, Verity Branco is the figure in a danse macabre, with the lovely shape of her bones absorbing her flesh.
Secondhand Theatre's re:Psyche, playing at the Blue Theatre until July 18, reminds me of a Swiss circus. In late spring and summer, medium-sized towns and villages in the Swiss mountains awaken to find a weathered Little Top has appeared on a vacant municipal lot, surrounded by a miscellany of campers and caravans. The troupe rarely numbers more than ten performers, perhaps with three or four musicians. Practised professionals, they are initiates in make-believe, gymnastics and …
Review: The Drowsy Chaperone by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 01, 2010
This cast hits every mark and lifts you into its singing, dancing world. There's a hysterical moment in Act II when we plunge momentarily into a different musical with the same stars.
When I got home, still bubbling from Zach's The Drowsy Chaperone, I was ready to write, "Run, don't walk, to the Zach box office to get your first set of tickets for this sparkling evening of music, comedy and light-hearted fooling, a clever reincarnation of Broadway at its wonderful beginnings." That's hyperbole, of course. Because you don't need to run anywhere. You just tap zachtheatre.org into your browser, click a couple of times and give …
Review: The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 25, 2010
Austin Rausch, particularly, takes impressive risks in pushing Adam into inflated caricature in the first act and then bringing him back in the second to a sympathetic portrayal. Marco Bazan is always the steadier and the more restrained of the two.
Paul Rudnick's play is cleverer and better crafted than you might suspect, given all the no-neck scandal over his playful recasting of biblical stories in goofy, unabashedly gay terms. The company plays the first act hysterically over the top, with flamingly naughty versions of the creation story and of the tale of Moses and the pharaoh, and almost -- almost -- a lesbian immaculate conception. Adam and Eve become Adam and Steve, for example. In …
Review: Bug by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 23, 2010
Kate Debuys again shows herself as an intelligent, perceptive and fearless actress. She and the contained, fierce Joey Hood court and interact throughout this piece, building to a mutually reinforcing frenzy.
Tracy Letts is hard to take. Any playwright is something of a god, sitting before that first blank page with the power to create and mold character and situation. Letts gives us the polarization of that Genesis -- evidently fascinated by the dark and the desperate, he crafts characters beaten down by one another, trapped in poverty, deprived of education and understanding, aching for meaning. He endows them with life, vivid relations and back stories …
Review: Sycorax by Weird Sisters Women's Theater Collective
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 22, 2010
Playwright Todd and director Christa French move these characters between the realm of the physical and that of the spiritual. We do not know whether Ariel is a mere fevered imagining for Sycorax or a familiar spirit with powers.
. . . . Hast thou forgotThe foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envyWas grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her? The Tempest opens with a brief scene of desperation, with sailors and passengers struggling against an overwhelming storm. Following that vivid moment, in Act I, Scene 2 Shakespeare gives us a full measure of background and exposition. He paints a huge and vivid canvas. Prospero reviews for his daughter Miranda in great …