Recent Reviews
Review: Murdered to Death by Sam Bass Community Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 09, 2009
You just know that in that atmosphere, once we get the house properly filled up, someone will wind up murdered. Or "murdered to death," as the dimly earnest acting Inspector Pratt later confides to his rather smarter subordinate.
Peter Gordon's script of Murdered to Death is a loving send-up of the British "whodunit" and in particular of Agatha Christie's drawing room murder mysteries. Dame Agatha's novels still sell vigorously today. Not so much in the United States, where we're more likely to encounter them at the public library or at used book sales along with discarded piles of Readers' Digest condensed books. But the French, the Germans, and -- presumably -- the British consume lots of …
Review: Man of La Mancha by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 07, 2009
The Georgetown Palace production of Man of La Manchastarts out moody, atmospheric and harsh, and it comes surging beautifully through that dark, difficult second act.
The Georgetown Palace production of Man of La Manchastarts out moody, atmospheric and harsh, and it comes surging beautifully through that dark, difficult second act. The Inquisition is awaiting in the darkness above, and Cervantes is storytelling to save his life and possessions from the thieves and murderers who surround him. In Cervantes' fantastical tale of the deranged Alonso Quijana, the Knight of the Woeful Countenance has lost it. The knight's beloved Dulcinea--Aldonza the prostitute and scullery maid--has …
Review: Frost/Nixon by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2009
These two actors give the illusion of a chemistry and a growing affinity between Frost and Nixon. The journalist out for a career-saving scoop develops an understanding and an intuition about the isolated ex-president.
Almost thirty years had gone by when British dramatist Peter Morgan wrote this piece. The Gielgud Theatre picked it up from an "off-West-End" theatre in 2006. A Broadway production ran for 137 performances in 2007. Frank Langella won both a Tony Award for best actor, as well as the corresponding Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.Thirty years is about the right lapse of time before one exorcises demons and rehabilitates felons. Pain is remembered …
Review: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 04, 2009
The slightly risqué humor might merit a PG-13 if this were a movie, but frankly, it's just the sort of grinning adolescent naughtiness appropriate to the middle-schoolers the cast is portraying here.
This show is a charmer. It has the zing of a small scale musical, the familiarity of all those school auditoriums you endured while growing up, the uncertainties of a tournament, the highs of competition, the quips and laughs of improv comedy, and -- unexpectedly -- a second act that resonates with drama and tenderness.Michael Raiford's set is bright, functional and simple, using the Kleberg Stage's thrust stage as a "cafetorium" in an anonymous middle …
Review: Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet by Southwestern University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 01, 2009
I'd much prefer to be like Connie with her wild but almost plausible notions of the theatre or like this dedicated, lively and attractive cast working under the guidance of a director who's a '98 honors alum of the same program.
Ann-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet is a lighthearted little romp that sends up both Shakespeare and the academic ivory tower with a mischievous feminist sense of humor.Our heroine Constance Ledbelly is an undistinguished worker bee in the literature department of an unidentified university, where she has worked ably without recognition for her pompous supervisor Professor Claude Night. Her devotion to him is absolute but irrational, for he's a caricature of self-centered male vanity, interested principally …
Review: The Collection by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 23, 2009
Pinter gives us a cynical meditation on trust and truthfulness. The cast plays it absolutely straight, establishing Pinter's rhythms and his merciless understatement of visceral emotion.
First of all, you are NOT going to get to see Joey Hood frolicking naked in a bathtub. That's just the way it goes. The Collection is not that kind of play. I guess that photo was just to good to pass up. Ken Webster's a Harold Pinter man. During Hyde Park Theatre's FronteraFest of short stage pieces back in January, the usual program of five thirty-minute pieces came up short when a couple …