Recent Reviews
Review of Proof, by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 11, 2008
Tuck softens Catherine, giving her at times the self-absorbed lassitude of the truly lost. We never share her expressed apprehension that she might be tipping over into madness, as her father did.
This is a beautifully engineered production with a high level of acting, and it deserves to be seen beyond the purely internal circuit of Austin Community College.It plays this weekend and next at the tiny third-floor Gallery Theatre at ACC’s Rio Grande campus, in the building that once upon a time was Stephen F. Austin High School.It occurred to me as I watched the play unfold on opening night that I was probably the only …
Review: The Nauseous Fairy
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 07, 2008
Rather than a story, this is a short submersion in magic. It’s a fine Halloween goody.
This is a trifle, but it is a delicious one. Or more accurately and using further food analogies, it could serve best as an antipasto or an amuse-bouche, a light and diverting treat preliminary to a Halloween season meal. The Nauseous Fairy is a twenty-minute puppetry experience at the newly installed home in East Austin of Geppetto Dreams Puppet Company.Geppetto himself (Ricki Vincent) and 5 unseen collaborators bring to life a vivid goblins’ garden for audiences …
Review: a thumping raging explosion of marvelous light and texture
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2008
One girl teases another; another intervenes; someone shoves, someone twists, someone hides, turning the minimalist space of the Salvage Vanguard into a playground.
This short spectacle at the Salvage Vortex is a lot of fun.Masonic, a foursome of indie rockers from Austin, cut loose and six young women dancers gambol through a happy, energetic evocation of childhood fun. When the lights come up, each is perched on a round cross-cut plaque of wood. To the driving sounds of the band, they mime dizzy capers, initially as if they were at the top of a pinnacle and then as …
Review: Glengarry, Glen Ross
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2008
Noxious winner Roma and the over-the-hill Levene, seeking a comeback, are Janus faces of the American Salesman.
The title doesn’t tell you what to expect.The grim black and white poster image of bound hands is purely symbolic, because you aren‘t going to see anyone tied up or physically abused in this play.The violence here is verbal and psychic, couched in strong male language common in everyday life but raw and powerful on stage. Mamet gives us a world of men locked in economic competition, where unscrupulous winners get privileges and hard-pressed losers …
Review: Blackbird, by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 03, 2008
There is a virtually musical rhythm to this dialogue. Clash, stacatto, cacophony and speaking past one another, listening, interrupted thoughts, a sharp dig of angry humor. . . .
I am beginning to see the pattern now, and you’ll just have to excuse me, as a newcomer, if the obvious has fallen upon my head. The Hyde Park Theatre is an actor’s theatre, intensely dedicated to the craft and to the challenge of the actor’s art. How else could one explain the production, back to back, of The Brass Ring and Blackbird? This 75-minute one-act piece by the relatively young British playwright David Harrower brings together in a …
Review: Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Southwestern University
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 02, 2008
I’m happy to see this powerful satire adapted so as to reach a modern, largely university-age audience. The shortcoming that did consistently surface through the play was shrill, rushed vocalizing.
Preparing for Southwestern University’s staging of this 2003 version of Aristophanes’ comedy, I dug out my worn copy of The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. in 1938. That’s right – the editor of the comedies was a Yale classicist and son of the famous American playwright. In his introduction to the collection and to this play O’Neill stressed that very little remains of the ancient Greek comedies. Thousands were …