Recent Reviews
Review: Cabaret by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 16, 2018
CABARET, that warhorse of American musical theatre, was up and rearing at Texas State, not about to give up -- a memorable and very twenty-first-century evening.
Christopher Isherwood's stories of 1930's Berlin, that sink of jolly depravity, have transmuted since their 1945 publication. First reworked as John Van Druten's play I Am A Camera, then chosen by Kander and Ebb for the 1966 musical, the strange weird world became the 1972 film in which Michael York seemed clueless and Liza Minelli was a heedless chanteuse indifferent both to conventional morals and to the storm gathering over Germany. Here we are, fifty-two years …
Review: Until The Flood by Theatre en Bloc
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 12, 2018
There's no artful conclusion or lesson in UNTIL THE FLOOD, unless it's the appeal simply to listen and understand the depth of feeling, the constraints, and the rigidities that underlie the insoluble problems of race, class, territory and perception.
We lost the first weekend of Until The Flood by Dael Orlandersmith (Donna Brown) due to illness, so this sensitive re-creation by Florinda Bryant was only briefly on view at the Vortex in Austin. Two weekends seemed insufficient, for this was an event that required thought to digest and would have benefited from more word of mouth. The Saint Louis Repertory commissioned the playwright to create a work connected with the August 19, 2014 shooting …
Review: Macbeth by Something for Nothing Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 02, 2018
Something for Nothing Theatre in Ramsey Park will take you someplace weirder than our Austin ever really was, and you may well understand why this play has such a grip on our dark imaginations.
That full moon rose gradually at far stage right as Something for Nothing Theater began their opening performance of the Scottish play in Austin's Ramsey Park last week. The moon's inexorable climb and gathering luminescence might have been arranged by a director with greater powers than Mary Amelia Beyer, for they accorded with the ascent in blood and mystery of the Thane of Fife, played by Patrick David Wheeler. Eerily, Austin rains the previous …
Review: Nevermore, The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe by Penfold Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 29, 2018
The performance of this work must instantly go over the top and stay there for the duration of the show if it is to work at all. And this it does. Brilliantly.
Nevermore, the musical is an imaginary biography of America’s famous nineteenth century writer. The treatment, authored by Jonathan Christensen, is brilliant for wisely and succinctly relating the facts of Edgar Allan Poe’s life—what we know of them—to some of the major works of Poe’s fantastic flights. Christenson's imagination cuts through what remains obscure about Poe to create plausible scenarios, and then he wraps it all up in music and song to make a musical. And Michael McKelvey …
Review: Side Show by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 18, 2018
The real appeal of the piece is the Side Show cast, which is a rich candy box of Austin musical theatre performers exulting in the pieces by Bill Russell and composer Henry Krieger.
Theatre art is always a time machine of sorts, and the Trinity Street Players give us a lens into at least four eras: the early 20th century of tawdry sideshows, higher toned vaudeville, and pre-Code motion pictures; the mid-1990's when Bill Russell's musical about the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton surprised and intrigued New York theatre; 2014 when the show was reworked and revived successfully; and our own world of 2018, where the diversity …
Review: Toc Toc by Pedemonte Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 08, 2018
TOC TOC, extensively and artfully marketed to Austin's Spanish-speaking public, sparkles and captivates. Producer Alex Pedemonte is the spark plug of the action, and Monica Fossi captures our hearts.
The cordial collaboration between Alex Pedemonte and Austin’s Scottish Rite Theatre delivers a lively, funny evening that’s valuable both as amusement and as a look into the sense of humor of Spanish-speaking urban audiences. The 2005 comedy Toc Toc by Frenchman Laurent Baffié was translated into Spanish by Julián Quintilla in 2010, and it’s become a success that out-Simons Neil Simon. Toc Toc is still running in Madrid, with more that 1500 performances to date; …