Recent Reviews
Review: Orestes by Cambiare Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 03, 2009
The director has pushed Gabriel Luna as Orestes to such energy and desperate volume that the character becomes tiresome well before he resorts to the expedient of kidnapping Aunt Helen and holding her hostage (sic).
Hidden Treasures from Afghanistan's National Museum are now on exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the last of several stops in a 15-month tour of the United States. I caught the exhibit in Washington DC last year, but you may have seen it this spring in Houston.A haunting diorama of a barren Afghan plain shows how the unimaginable golden treasures were preserved in hidden subterranean vaults for thousands of years, even as the fabulous …
Review: Sweeney Todd, by SummerStock Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 02, 2009
The complexity of the music, the pace, the color and the assurance of this cast were dazzling. This is as good as any keen professional production. They re-established my opinion of the show.
The demon barber who slits his clients' throats is an urban myth celebrated in print first as a "penny dreadful," or serialized story of scandal and murder, in London in 1845. The razor and the strop continued to hold a fascination, at least until the technological advance of Mr. Gillette's safety razor put them at some remove. That wicked barber had figured in 13 earlier versions on radio stage and screen before this 1979 piece …
Review: The Rivals by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 31, 2009
John Carroll and the Weird City Theatre Company have a sense of fun that's irreverent and modern, but they take their drama seriously.
Here's what I like about John Carroll and the Weird City Theatre Company: they have a sense of fun that's irreverent and modern, but they take their drama seriously. Necessarily low-rent but not sloppy, the company performs with energy, confidence, and an appreciation for the text, whatever it might be. They have a taste for pop -- we've seen an adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, a faithful production of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, and around Halloween we'll …
Review: Tartuffe by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 29, 2009
Why the slow start, overcome so smartly by the successive revelations of the second half? In my view, it's a question of language, prose vs. verse, and different acting styles.
Molière was appalled and distressed when he learned that although Louis XIV had enjoyed the court performance of Tartuffe on May 12, 1664 the "Sun King" had listened to pious advisers and had forbidden any further presentations of the play. This great comic tale of religious hypocrisy was in trouble from the start. The dramatist had produced a farce in elegant verse featuring a "holy man" intent on seduction, theft and exploitation, an adroit manipulator of religious concepts …
Review: A Life in the Theatre by Tongue and Groove Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 29, 2009
There's a duff sentimentality in much of this, and it arises from the cluelessness that Michael Stuart gives to the gradually failing older actor.
With David Mamet's name on the playbill, one expects edgy situations and sharp language, but this production of A Life in the Theatre was one of gentle comedy and smooth edges. It's a two-man show in which we see two male actors in an unnamed fifth-rate theatrical company sharing a dressing room. Michael Stuart is the mature actor and Zeb West is the newcomer. Mamet gives us vignettes of them over the stretch of a season or …
Review: The Men from Mars AND Clever as Mice by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 28, 2009
But seriously, folks, as the stand-up comedians used to say in vaudeville. . . Manning has an idea here, but his script is too slow, too long, and too unexplained. We in the audience were ready to play along, if only we could have understood the motivation.
Ryan Manning provided a lot of the energy for the Austin Community College Experimental Student Performance Lab. This summer 2009 enterprise put on four pieces, all student-written and student-directed, all performed by ACC students. Manning wrote three of them and performed in three. Whatever ESPL show was up there, Manning was an important part of it.Bravo for that energy and engagement. Austin Live Theatre published a review of Manning's "Beckett" piece An Empty Stage on July 25. The Manning …