Recent Reviews
Review: Pool (No Water) by Ensemble Mercury
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 04, 2017
POOL (NO WATER) is as chilling and intimidating as a straight razor. Diane Irwin's fluid direction sends five theatre artists swirling in shared consciousness like an aerial storm of starlings or underwater plunges of a school of fish.
There's something eerie yet very satisfying about witnessing a tight group of young contemporary artists present a play about a tight group of young contemporary artists who turn on one of their members because she was more successful than they were. Ensemble Mercury is half a dozen theatre artists from Texas State University now set loose on the outside world and specifically upon Austin. Five are in the cast; Diane Irwin, their contemporary, directs. …
Review: Mrs. Mannerly by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 04, 2017
Jennifer Underwood and Suzanne Balling combine to produce theatre to transform the Santa Cruz Center not only into Steubenville, Ohio, in the 1960s but also into a magic lantern of memory.
Jennifer Underwood and Suzanne Balling have worked together on stage before, perhaps most memorably in the 2009 Different Stages production of Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon which brought Balling a B. Iden Payne award as supporting actor in a comedy. That production, like the current staging of Mrs. Mannerly by Jeffrey Hatcher, was directed by Karen Jambon. Both works are lightly ironic comedies; both show these two very familiar and much applauded Austin actresses to great advantage. …
Review: Waiting for Godot by Austin Jewish Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 31, 2017
You can step as deep as you dare into this engima. Time, existentialism, uneasy friendship, futility, the enduring unfulfilled promise of something -- anything! It's ripe for metaphor and symbolic interpretation.
Adam Roberts, guiding force of the Austin Jewish Repertory Theatre, chose the season of Passover and Lent to stage this famously enigmatic parable of Samuel Beckett, the dour Catholic atheist who originally wrote the piece in French. Roberts has staged it in the sanctuary of Congregation Agudas Achim on the campus of the Dell Jewish Center. The above paragraph should give you lots to chew on, especially if you know anything about the …
Review: Las Cuatro Estaciones: A Story of Human Trees by Sharon Marroquin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 30, 2017
Memories of the performance play like flash images: the company in stillness on the stage floor, curled and gnarled, grains of potential and nothing more; Lisa del Rosario on a tree stump, becoming the tree; a slap fight; the mundane; and death.
Sharon Marroquin has made a profound artistic statement in her work as part of her residency at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin. Her field is multimedia dance, and her Las Cuatro Estaciones: A Story of Human Trees is effectively her recital in culmination of her residency. As such she sets a high bar for the other seven latino artists in the Latino Art Residency Project at the MACC. Also, her soundtrack is …
Review: Disgraced by Playhouse San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on March 29, 2017
The speed with which the masks of gentility slip off to reveal the hatred that boils just below the surface makes for a powerful and important statement. That’s why this production is essential viewing at this time.
Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning one-act, is a searing indictment of the prejudices we all carry inside of us. Now playing at the Playhouse San Antonio’s Cellar Theatre, the timing couldn’t be more perfect – considering the current political climate. Amir (Suhail Arastu) is a Pakistani-American lawyer on the fast track to a partnership at his firm. He has an American wife, Emily (Kate Glasheen), with whom he shares a swanky apartment on New York’s Upper …
Review: Meetings of the Mind by Chaddick Dance Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 29, 2017
Throughout the program the dancers rushed at high speed to the widely dispersed points of the playing space in order to exploit every available performance surface, creating significant surprises.
Meetings of the Mind took place in and on the south facing surfaces of Austin City Hall. Dancers performed on the plaza in front of the main entrance, the balcony, the amphitheatre terraces, and in the landscaping all around. City Hall is the heart of Austin civic property, and because of this the performance with Chaddick’s skilled dancers was a gift to the city and the citizens of Austin. The City awards grants to …