Recent Reviews
Review: Gliders by Different Stages
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 10, 2020
World War II gliders and the 1969 moon landing are the awkward frame for a story of domestic abuse and a fractured family. The abuser's always off stage, but the cast of women does have one male character, bankrupt and passive, to beat up on.
Gliders by Rita Anderson is a story set in the late Sixties of domestic abuse and a fractured family. The first Moon landing is the background of the play but it's no more than that, background. We see elements of three generations of a family of mothers and daughters. The family cannot gain lift-off due to the instability, alcoholism, nicotine addiction, and promiscuity of the matriarch, who blames it all on her early widowhood. The …
Review: A Night with Janis Joplin by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 03, 2020
A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN gives meaning to the otherwise trite phrase that the music lives on. We all can be grateful for that.
Zach Theatre has once again produced one of its brightest assets, A Night with Janis Joplin, at the Topfer Theatre. The show is perfect for midwinter in Austin. The blues and rock songs, sung and played by headliner Mary Bridget Davies and a highly talented ensemble of singers and musicians, give us a set of popular music of the Sixties and earlier decades of blues singers. Davies makes a career specialty of Joplin; she has …
Review: Hello, Dolly! by touring company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 22, 2020
What pipes Carolee Carmello has as Dolly! The veteran Broadway singer has a wide and expressive range and always seems joyous. And costumes and set were worth the price of admission
Broadway has remounted Hello, Dolly!, the Broadway beast of the 1960s, creating a new, upgraded show fit for touring the provinces. And we provincials receive it with enthusiasm. The show, guarantor of the career of Carol Channing, is about nothing more than feelings of the shallow romantic kind. Featuring three full-out arrangements of the title song, it certainly doesn’t forget where it came from, and I’m not talking about Yonkers. The comedic story covers the …
Review: The Niceties by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 18, 2020
Director Jeremy Rashad Brown tries to tease apart the issues writhing in this spaghetti bowl of despair, but he can’t. The script won’t let him. And that’s the point of the play.
The Niceties is about intersectionality, the intersections of every issue you can name: race, gender, age, sexuality, class, power, revolution, economics, freedom, history, semiotics, equity in all modes, communication theory, pronoun etiquette, and morality over all. The intersections of these issues, each to all, are touched lightly or embraced passionately in this play by Eleanor Burgess. Jeremy Rashad Brown directs. The play is set in the office of a history professor of a small, elite, …
Review: Tiny Beautiful Things by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 16, 2020
TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS is an accomplishment of grace and bravura on both sides of the non-existent footlights at the Austin Playhouse.
The premise is simple, almost anodyne, and celebrated in the publicity and the program: what if we put together a play based on real letters from real people to an anonymous advice columnist? Counsel dispensed by newspaper column is an entertaiment that dates back centuries but really proliferated in the early twentieth century. Back then it was "Dear Abby" or "Hints from Heloise" or similar lesser lights; now, ageing millenials can get an occasional tittle …
Review: The Butcher of Baraboo by Street Corner Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 16, 2019
THE BUTCHER OF BARABOO is one of the most gripping and entertaining pieces I've seen in Austin. Director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia and a breathtaking cast deliver insightful, imaginative, thought-provoking gothic comedy.
No theatre performance is the same from night to night. The combined talents of the company create the front part of the magic, delivering the text richly incorporating the visuals, the rhythm, and subtleties of gesture and tone, but just as important is the ardent, usually silent participation of those who attend, witness, and vicariously participate. Attending The Butcher of Baraboo on "industry night," the Monday evening after opening weekend, was a rare high. Anticipation …