Recent Reviews
Review: Tomás and the Library Lady by Magik Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on February 09, 2018
The Magik Theatre's production is splendid and the actors are terrific. Scenic design is ingeniously minimal, supplemented with amusing props and atmospheric lighting. Songs are pleasantly performed.
Tomás & the Library Lady is the inspirational true story of Tomás Rivera, the son of migrant farm workers who grew up to become the first Mexican-American chancellor of a California university. The charming production now playing at San Antonio’s Magik Theatre deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience, as its message of inclusiveness is so important today. Young Tomás travels with his parents, Josefa and Florencio, from Texas to Iowa …
Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 06, 2018
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT proceeds linearly through a series of events like gems strung on a necklace of time that holds austic protagonist Christopher deeply and forever.
Zach Theatre has done itself Austin-proud with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens. Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley directs an exceptional cast of Austin talent in a brilliant contemporary play set in England. Publicity material for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (hereafter Curious) does the production a disservice by describing only the first five minutes of the show and not even generalizing about …
Review: When We Are Married by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 06, 2018
Because it's a well-made play, propriety is restored. And that's too bad, for the sharp truth-telling of comedy is covered over by a return to an only slightly altered status quo.
Different Stages' announcement of When We Are Married set up a bothersome tugging on my memory. Hadn't they done this piece before? An English comedy - on the theme of marriage - set in the very early 20th century - by J.B. Priestly? I've climbed aboard artistic director Norman Blumensaadt's literary-artistic time machine so often -- 32 times to date -- that I couldn't be sure. So of course I went checking. And in …
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Review: Little Women, the Broadway musical by The Public Theater
by Kurt Gardner
Published on February 01, 2018
Definitely working in this production’s favor is the Public’s splendid staging. Director Andy Meyers smartly puts an emphasis on the frequent comedic one-liners, which kept the audience chuckling appreciatively on opening night.
The 2005 adaptation of Little Women is the latest attempt to musicalize Louisa May Alcott’s classic, following a 1958 television version and a 1998 opera. In order to insert about 18 numbers (and a handful of reprises) into the story, Alan Knee’s book streamlines the plot and provides quick sketches of the characters. That’s not a problem, as most audiences are familiar enough with this 150-year-old classic to follow along. However, many of …
Review: 893/Ya-Ku-Za by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 31, 2018
There's a great deal of watchful waiting in the dialogue between these two characters, so much so that I found myself imagining this piece as a Japanese film in black-and-white, framed principally in closeups
The Generic Ensemble Company (GenEnCo) has mounted a starkly simple set on the Vortex Rep's inside stage, representing a private room in a Japanese restaurant or teahouse: sliding bamboo-and-paper partitions, mats, a low table and two cushions. By containing the hour-long performance of 893 YA-KU-ZA in this plain space, they're playing an evocative, reductionist game. Mia King and kt shorb meet here in an atmosphere of tense threat. King is Aya, female martial arts …
Review: The Giver by TILT Performance Group
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 27, 2018
Levels of gentle irony were at work in TILT's staging of THE GIVER, both in the story and in the use of actors, some of them differently abled, to present the complexity of difference.
Adam Roberts' staging of The Giver, a 2006 adaptation by Eric Coble of Lowis Lowry's famous YA novel, is a gentle, extended exercise in complicit irony. It's a clever pivot for the four-year-old TILT Performance Group, founded by Roberts and others to open the world of theatrical performance to actors, principally young, afflicted by physical disadvantages. TILT showed their families and the rest of us that those participants are just as capable as any of …