Recent Reviews
Review #1 of 2: There and Back by Ground Floor Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 11, 2018
Karina's Dominguez's stamina and subtly modulated performance endow the protagonist with the transcendence required to represent decades and generations of Mexican women whose pure endurance leaves us all in awe.
Raul Garza's new work is a tribute to the courage and resiliency of Mexican women. His story of Gloria, arrived in the United States without papers in the mid-50's, extends to the present day, and it touches upon some of the principal developments in U.S. migration policy. Scenes of prejudice, discrimination and violence are inevitable in those six deades and more, but they're handled deftly and briefly. The story is unexceptional, even ordinary, and …
Review: The Audience/El Público by Paper Chairs
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 31, 2018
Elizabeth Doss's staging of her adaptation is a sensitive but vigorous and often absurdist work, portraying both Spain's greatest twentieth-century poet and the brutal intolerance of Franco's Falange that murdered him.
It's not possible to descry how much of paperchairs' The Audience/El Público is Elizabeth Doss and how much of it is Federico García Lorca, twentieth-century Spain's greatest poet. One can guess, of course, that the succession of poetic similes describing homoerotic love probably came from the gifted, tormented poet who was arrested and arbitrarily executed by Franco's Falange in 1936 when he was only 38 years old. Playwright Doss's savage depiction of the captors and torturers of …
Review: Beauty and the Beast by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 26, 2018
Zach Theatre's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is familiar, polished, and entirely reassuring -- comfort food served in a lavish banquet.
With its seven-week-long production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast Austin's Zach theatre sets the stage with its familiar flourishes and mastery of theatrical design for a lavish banquet of comfort food. It's a fun evening with beloved characters in a familiar story, where the sweet, bookish heroine prevails over her caddish, smug suitor and recognizes the true worth of the towering, rude and resentful beast who turns out to be a prince in …
Review: Alabama Story by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on July 23, 2018
The story is simple, the staging is top notch. ALABAMA STORY, eerily timeless, challenges the audience to ask themselves: has anything other than the period clothing changed?
Montgomery, Alabama in 1959, our enchanted southern kingdom, where the lemonade tastes sweeter because it was made by both our mamas together. Montgomery, Alabama where people say things like piffle and you are in high cotton. Montgomery where it is natural and normal to be married. The capital of mighty Alabama where people fight for their rights to protect things: their lifestyle, their church, their children and their books. Alabama Story …
Review: The Lion in Winter by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 20, 2018
The Gaslight Baker production of THE LION IN WINTER offers an intimate tale on an epic set; this is story telling of demanding engagement, all the more rewarding for the challenges it presents.
Great things occur in humble venues. Over the past decade of theatre watching in Central Texas, I've seen that truism confirmed again and again. The current production of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter at the Gaslight Baker Theatre, just off Lockhart's central square, is another example. There's a lot of 'great' to it, and not in the casual American sense of the word. Goldman's script took on big themes (family, loyalty, love …
Review: The Antipodes by Hyde Park Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 06, 2018
Annie Baker's experiment of setting down eight characters in a conference room and inviting their stories is bulletproof and allows her to experiment further with imaginative story contexts.
Annie Baker seems to be family friends with Hyde Park Theatre. Her The Antipodes is brand-new, and Hyde Park Theatre gives us only the second production of it in the country. The anticipation of this play has been keen among Austin audiences who loved Baker’s Circle, Mirror, Transformation,The Aliens, The Flick, and John. The premiere Thursday night, under the direction of Ken Webster, satisfied most in the audience. It was worth the wait. The Austin production takes its place in the front rank of …