Recent Reviews
Review: Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan Austin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 20, 2018
G&S Austin lays down a very smooth production of RUDDIGORE, with the advantage of recruiting probably the best singers in the Austin region. This year the star is tenor Danny Castillo.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, or The Witch’s Curse, now playing at the Worley-Barton Theater at Brentwood Christian School off north Lamar Boulevard, sparkles as a well-produced and well-performed gem of light opera. The show is the yearly grand production of Gilbert & Sullivan Austin, a largish cabal of G&S fanatics under the control, barely, of Artistic Director Ralph MacPhail, Jr. The music, as always, is under the superb direction of Jeffrey Jones-Ragona. Known simply as Ruddigore, the light …
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Review: Little Bird by Heartland Theatre Collective
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 15, 2018
LITTLE BIRD offers, like a gift, a gentle imagining of childhood innocents who are oblivious of the brooding evil that surrounds them.
Nicole Oglesby's Little Bird offers, like a gift, a gentle imagining of childhood innocents who are oblivious of the brooding evil that surrounds them. Willa and Peg are thirteen-year-old girls, best friends, trusting in one another and their Texas bayou surroundings. Willa's discovery of a litle bird fallen from its nest at first seems a randon incident, one that we probably all hold from childhood -- Willa gathers the creature in her hands but is …
Review: STATIC: An Evening of Casey Wimpee Transmissions by Theatre Synesthesia
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 10, 2018
Playwright Casey Wimpee writes dialogue so stessed that it’s practically projectile. It’s vivid, unpredictable, at times horrific. Perfect actor bait: these performers, all devoted to the power of language, must have shivered in anticipation when first reading this script.
Theatre Synesthesia keeps you in dim light looking down into the pit for Casey Wimpee’s Static, which seems entirely appropriate. The playwright’s vision for these short pieces is not unlike that of Dante looking down into lower circles of hell. You’ll be visiting first with a manic soul who doesn’t at first realize he has passed away. Instead of the poet Virgil as his guide, Brett Howard will have Nicolas Kier as a hectic …
Review: Sunday in the Park with George by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 06, 2018
Artistic director Dave Steakley makes SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE an explosion of sound and image. The Zach Theatre applies its talents and vast resources to fill that virtually bare stage with a work so intense that it verges on an experiment in synesthesia.
The Zach Theatre's staging of Stephen Sondheim's 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George offers a tempting treat. Sondheim's oeuvre is extensive and varied, and I've had the opportunity to sample it only from time to time. Of course there are the most popular pieces, including West Side Story with Bernstein, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Into the Woods with James Lapine, so familiar that they now seem obvious; and …
Review: Polly Mermaid: Apocalypse WOW by Glass Half Full Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 28, 2018
Glass Half Full Theatre has gone and done it again. Caroline Reck, Indigo Rael and their team have pushed the envelope and brought this zany story alive with mundane plastic objects and unbounded imagination.
Glass Half Full Theatre has gone and done it again. Caroline Reck and her team have pushed the envelope of design, materials, and concepts of puppetry toward manipulable props. Or perhaps artist-designer Indigo Rael has pushed the envelope of innovative materials for props, costumes, and sets toward puppetry. Whatever the vector, the Vortex stage comes alive with mundane plastic and unbounded imagination. Glass Half Full Productions is perhaps the premiere Austin puppet theatre troupe (though with …
Review: Lucky Stiff by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 27, 2018
LUCKY STIFF's silly run-around plot is a showcase vehicle for powerful songs by some of Austin’s best singing and performing talent. It will appeal to everyone who has musical theatre as a guilty pleasure.
Lucky Stiff by Ahrens and Flaherty, now playing at Austin Playhouse in ACC Highland in central Austin, is a light and frothy musical entertainment, not even a murder mystery, although it is about the last will and testament and vacation of a murder victim. And it is still not a murder mystery even when Boni Hester slings around silver-plated and gold-plated revolvers throughout the show. Her high heels alone are sufficient to do all the killing …