Recent Reviews
Review: Well by Austin Community College
by Amanda Paz
Published on March 09, 2019
Austin Community College’s vividly abstract play added to the Theatre Department’s strong season. Leads Holly Parmer and Remy Joslin portrayed characters different from those of their previous work.
edited by Michael Meigs Imagine you’re thinking about writing a play but you have a very noisy mom. Lisa Kron’s play Well about illness and mothers is structured as a work in process with Lisa herself as the character onstage addressing the audience. Kron focuses on her family medical history and the Lansing, Michigan neighborhood where she grew up. She knits together issues of health and illness both in the individual and …
Review: NOTES FROM THE FIELD by Anna Deavere Smith, Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on March 05, 2019
Culled from the interviews with real people, the texts are filled with words that are passionate, well-spoken, and as colorful as any a playwright might wish to craft. NOTES FROM THE FIELD is an intrepid work of art.
Using empirical evidence and recorded interviews, playwright-actor Anna Deavere Smith tells the personal stories of those dealing with the difficult communities challenged to escape what they describe as “America’s school-to-prison pipeline.” There is mature content in these stories, and Zach Theatre recommends that audience members be at least 14 years of age. Smith originated Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education as a one-woman performance. She's a famous actor, playwright, and educator who has …
Review: A Doll's House, Part 2 by Hyde Park Theatre
by Samantha Hendel
Published on March 02, 2019
Hyde Park Theatre’s production directed by Ken Webster brings up questions regarding gender equality and marriage, while providing good laughs throughout.
As the sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s controversial play, written in 1879, A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath brings us even further into the 21st century feminist movement. Hyde Park Theatre’s production directed by Ken Webster brings up questions regarding gender equality and marriage, while mixing in good laughs throughout. In her show-stopping performance, Katherine Catmull brings the leading character to life with her mannerisms and truthful monologues. Catmull …
Review: For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 21, 2019
From Davenport, Iowa, magical realism, pixie dust, and Tinker Belle, played by a shiny party ball, fling us into septuagenarian siblings' journey to Neverland.
What if Peter Pan did grow up? Sarah Ruhl in her play For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday imagines PP in a middle class Irish Catholic family in Davenport, Iowa where she found joy, success, and ennui with professional siblings. Jarrott Productions’ production of the play at Trinity Street Playhouse plumbs its complexities and offers memories for many with similar family histories. Caution: the show is for adults with considerable life experience, not …
Review: The Rover by Hidden Room Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 20, 2019
Deep research, authentic practice, inspired 80's design on top of a Restoration scene of revelry and sexual violence. Many of Austin's best young, still rising stage stars appear in Hidden Room's THE ROVER.
Aphra Behn’s The Rover is a Restoration action-adventure tale of libertinism, romantic intrigue, riches lost and won, kingdoms contested, and a whole lot of sexual violence. The piquant theme of sexual violence gives us romantic couplings, marriage, mistaken identities, jealousy and revenge, revelry, prostitution, flirtation, frank depictions of attempted rape, love every which way, wild dancing, and swordfight after swordfight. The tropes of mistaken identity, masquerades, and mannish boys (often in disguise) are those developed to …
Review: When We Were Young and Unafraid by Filigree Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 15, 2019
Polemical but well crafted, Sarah Treem's script with its strongly contrasted characters, episodic construction and tidy plot is evidence of the playwright's success as a writer for television. Her message is clear.
Go back forty-six years with playwright Sarah Treem and the artists of Filigree Theatre, and you'll find yourself in an eerily different place and time. The unpretentious kitchen Chris Conard has crafted in the compact space of the Mastrogeorge Theatre looks pretty much like what you'd expect to find at a bed and breakfast out on an island close to the border with Canada, but you're seeing through a glass darkly. While St. Paul urged …