Recent Reviews
Review: Maria & the Mouse Deer by Ballet Austin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 17, 2022
The music and tales so generously danced in MARIA AND THE MOUSE DEER by Alexa Capareda served Austin Ballet II's goal of bringing new source material to contemporary ballet. The work sets a high standard for others to come.
Maria and the Mouse Deer by choreographer Alexa Capareda, a Ballet Austin II production, had its world premiere at Austin Ventures Studio Theater on October 15, 2022. The youth ballet is the first outing in the series Fables of the World. The company plans to create new youth ballets every two years and tour them widely. This piece is another entry into the world of nu ballet, a movement that seeks to change in the …
Review #2 of 2: The Outsider by Beyond August Productions
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 14, 2022
With THE OUTSIDER, Beyond August Productions delivers the goods. The laughter begins as soon as action begins and continues through the final curtain call.
The program states: “Time: The Present. Place: The Governor’s Office in a Small State.” And so begins the new play by Paul Slade Smith, an actor and writer from Brooklyn. His play Unnecessary Farce was a runaway international hit with productions in eight different countries. His 2015 work The Outsider has racked up thirty-four productions in 2022 alone. This play has been described as “razor-sharp satire” and a “madcap political farce.” The elevator pitch …
Review #2 of 2: The Pact by Jarrott Productions
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 14, 2022
It's easy to imagine a continuation of THE PACT in which these characters go on forever jabbing, sneering, and sniping at each other, all the while with love in their hearts.
Jarrott Productions describes The Pact by Austin playwright Max Langert, as “a play about family, pizza, climate change, dating apps, and fringe religious sects...in that order!” Put this way, it sure sounds like a zany farce, and in truth, it is that. However, it manages to be so much more, due to the fact that all of the characters are delightfully three-dimensional. This evening of theatre feels like the pilot of runaway hit television …
Review #1 of 2: The Outsider by Beyond August Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 13, 2022
Smith's comedy on the politics of image was fun in 2015. It's still full of zing, especially with Michael Stuart, but in today's troubles the message is bittersweet.
A double irony attends Beyond August Productions' staging of The Outsider. The titular character, Ned Newley, is not an outsider at all. He's the lieutenant governor of a small, unidentified, perhaps New England state. Ned is far and away the smartest man in the room, but he didn't get that position through the exertions of politics. He was drafted as a presumptive non-entity, the state treasurer, strangled with shyness and practically invisible to the public eye. …
Review #2 of 2: Shining City by Different Stages
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 13, 2022
This production of Conor McPherson's Shining City does prove yet again that great actors cannot be held back by poor material.
Certainly, you are familiar with the expression sucked all the air out of the room. We have all felt that moment. Now imagine feeling only that moment for nearly two hours without intermission. Conor McPherson, an Irish playwright and screenwriter from Dublin, began writing in college and went on to find success on both the West End and Broadway beginning in 1999 with his play The Weir. He is considered to be one of …
Review: Blithe Spirit by Gaslight Baker Theatre, Lockhart
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 08, 2022
Noël Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT, a favorite, undergoes a subtle color change, but the fun is all there. What if spiritualism really worked? Things might get complicated!
With Halloween upon us, director Andrea Littlefield and her folks at Lockhart's Gaslight Baker Theatre have brought us a twist on Noël Cowart's never-ageing ghostly comedy. Blithe Spirit is one of my favorites. Coward, a master of witty repartee and witty lyrics, is given no shrift at all in the GBT program. That's unfortunate, for at dress rehearsal the entire front row was occupied by eager theatre club teens—they could look him up …