Recent Reviews
Review: Uncle Vanya by The Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 24, 2009
John Minton gives Vanya the boisterous emotions of a delayed adolescent, driven into a froth by the arrival of Yelena.
San Antonio's Classic Theatre has opened its second season with a beautifully designed, perceptive and subtly paced production of one of my favorite works, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.That's the shorthand version of the title. It was published as Uncle Vanya - Scenes from Country Life. Although at the heart of it there sits an eternally frustrated love triangle -- Vanya and Dr. Astrov both yearning for the unhappily married Yelena -- the play contains much, much more.These scenes …
Review: Muses III: Memories of a House by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 23, 2009
We strangers carefully tramped through the house, settled on sofas as directed, slipped along the corridors and lingered out by the pool. As in a diplomatic reception, our mission was to get to get acquainted -- not with one another but with this odd collection of characters.
Pocket theatre. Home theatre; intimate theatre. Theatre for no more of you than can fit comfortably into a 12x15 room with the actors.Muses III by the Vestige Group puts you into a small group for this experience. They have concessions available on the lawn beforehand, under the tall and twisty live oaks. They suggest that you get to know the persons in your group. You probably won't, because your guide is not going to push the touchy-feely approach …
Review: Cymbeline by Shakespeare at Winedale
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 18, 2009
The crowded plot leaves little room to develop the characters. Imogen is much wronged, and Norma Balli-Borrero in that role is valiant and emotive.
Shakespeare wrote at least 36 plays over a period of about twenty years, beginning about 1591 with the histories of Henry VI and Richard III. Cymbeline, a historical fantasy about early Britons facing Roman legions, was among his last works. There's a mention of it in an account dated 1610, five years before Shakespeare's death, but it was not published until the 1623 Folio edition of collected plays. You won't get the chance to see …
Review: Steel Magnolias by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 12, 2009
The characters, women friends of long date, inhabit a sacred space in their imagined reality; the Trinity players present their story in the sacred space of theatre; and the third-floor black box theatre is one of several sacred spaces provided by the First Baptist Church.
I was invited this past weekend to attend the closing performance of Steel Magnolias, produced at the First Baptist Church, 901 Trinity Street, by the aptly named Trinity Street Players. The audience filled the black box theatre, a converted space on the upper floor of the church, in which banks of raised seating stood on three sides of the rectangular playing space.Both the venue and the disposition of the stage brought to mind one of the …
Review: Stop The World, I Want to Get Off by The Wimberley Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 12, 2009
'Stop The World, I Want To Get Off' is a sprightly entertainment, but one with references and nuances that probably puzzled younger members of the cast at first. Those of us with a few wrinkles had the opportunity to smile.
Nathan Villareal's agile clowning and appealing tenor voice are at the heart of the Wimberley Players' production of Stop The World, I Want to Get Off, playing weekends through August 23. As Littlechap, the Everyman in this circus-themed musical entertainment, Villareal gives us a cocky Cockney social climber, resembling actor/pop singer Anthony Newley, who put the show together with composer Leslie Bricusse in 1961.The show is an interesting mix of genres, part cabaret and part medieval …
Review: No Se Paga! We Won't Pay!
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 11, 2009
In Non si paga, non si paga! Fo provides us cardboard characters whose principal appeal comes from their foolishness and the upside-down values of the society around them.
On the evidence of this production alone, I would have to conclude that Rupert Reyes is a better playwright than Dario Fo, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997.Fo, a prolific and provocative theatre artist, was in the thick of Italian political debate from the 1960s through the 1990s. He and his wife Franca Rame were social activists and she was a member of the Italian Communist Party. They and others occupied an …