Recent Reviews
Review: World of Horrorcraft by Scare for a Cure
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 23, 2008
Audience members acting as “beta testers” signed formal releases of liability that were pretty scary in themselves (what’s this about “you may be subjected to flying insects”???).
Last night I was in one of the first uninformed groups to pass through the haunted house set up by Scare for A Cure at the Elk’s Lodge near the downtown arts venues. The premise is that the Dunstan Interactive Corporation, flush with its success in video games, has recruited you as a “beta tester.” Their new product is a step forward - - instead of sitting glassy eyed at a monitor with a keyboard or …
Review: Night of the Living Dead by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 23, 2008
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” And by gosh, they are. That figure, tottering across the grass and between the headstones, attacks them. Barbara flees and takes refuge in an isolated house. Why do we love this stuff so much?
Why do we enjoy this stuff so much? A brother and sister arrive at an isolated cemetery to leave a wreath on their father’s grave. He scoffs and complains. She reproaches his irreverence. He recalls the childhood fright he gave her, long ago, in this same place, and intones in sepulchral cadence, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”And by gosh, they are. That figure, tottering across the grass and between the headstones, attacks them. Barbara flees. …
Review: The Taming of the Shrew by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 20, 2008
From her first spat with sister Bianca, Katarina O'keefe comes across as more put upon and neglected, hungry for attention, than really curs’d. Her father Baptista dismisses her rather than cringing from her.
This show was a lot of fun.First, for the setting - - a Sunday afternoon in mild fall weather in Texas, in the park-like setting near the sweep of the river. The Curtain Theatre is a Globe-type construction with an Elizabethan thrust stage and gallery seating. The host, unfortunately, was absent, because he was visiting the international space station. Thanks to Richard Garriott for his generosity to Shakespeare and to Shakespearians! Producer Pam Martin …
Review: Company by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 17, 2008
Furth and Sondheim were certainly enamored of the ladies, though. Each of the eight women actors of the piece is striking, talented, and has at least one juicy scene.
Academics have labeled Stephen Sondheim’s Company a “conceptual musical,” an exploration of the dilemmas and discontents of urban marriage and of unattached bachelorhood.When it opened in 1970, Broadway audiences were used to plot, plot and character, reflected and stitched together in song. Company, with a book by actor George Furth and words & music by Sondheim, is instead a series of vignettes around the unattached bachelor Robert, living in New York City and facing his 35th …
Review: Dug Up by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 13, 2008
A negligée-clad long-stay tourist Marci (Liz Fisher), may have murdered her husband. Mix in a storm that may or may not be a hurricane, various clean-picked skeletons of small animals, and a larger bone that looks disturbingly like a human femur.
This show will fill the bill if you are looking for spooky entertainment for this Halloween season.Director Laura Toner and Austin playwright Cyndi Williams tell us, “Dug Up was inspired by the stories of post-Katrina New Orleans, her personal experience driving through the Louisiana bayou, the idea of Tennessee Williams writing a ghost story, and stories from her own childhood. Dug Up exists though in its own world, slightly out of time and reality. The stories and lies that …
Review: Always, Patsy Cline, by Tex-Arts Lakeway
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 11, 2008
Playwright Ted Swindley weaves two very different strands for this presentation. The manic Louise, a clown of little insight, provides the narrative and the jokes. And Patsy sings.
Selena Rosanbalm is a great big bundle of vocal talent.She delivered again and again in the TexArts’ production of Always, Patsy Cline, blending with our memories of Patsy’s joy, melancholy, honky-tonk and hokum from the late 1950s and early 1960s.That was the time when that plucky little singer with the vibrant voice traveled from town to dusty town, earning her coins with a different band every night instead of staying in Nashville and watching the royalties …