Recent Reviews
Review: Henry IV by Hidden Room Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 19, 2017
What all of us got was a rollicking, loud, action-adventure tale performed in live: Shakespeare amped, glorious, and compelling down to the last tear and blood splat.
At the end of The Hidden Room’s Henry the Fourth by William Shakespeare, the audience pauses to catch its breath. What have we just seen? The many people there on dates may have been expecting a dry reading of a play they read in college. People closer to the theatre scene may have expected a painstaking period drama in exquisite costumes. What all of us got was a rollicking, loud, action-adventure tale performed in live: Shakespeare …
Review: You Can't Take it with You by Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on September 12, 2017
The Classic launches its tenth season with a splendid production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, still hilarious and relevant after 80 years.
The Classic Theatre launches its 10th season on a high note with a rollicking production of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning comedy You Can’t Take it With You. On opening night, the appreciative audience roared frequently with laughter – a tribute to both the timelessness of the piece and the skill of the actors performing it. Allan S. Ross plays “Grandpa” Martin, the patriarch of the Vanderhof family. A former businessman, …
Review: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying by Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on September 10, 2017
Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows’ 1961 spoof of big business comes to San Antonio's Woodlawn Theatre in a well-mounted production.
Sort of a comic Mad Men with musical numbers, Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows’ Tony award-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying arrives at the Woodlawn Theatre in a typically enthusiastic production. The plot centers around one J. Pierrepont Finch, a window-washer with ambitions to climb the corporate ladder. Using the book “How to Succeed In Business” as his guide, he infiltrates the corporate offices of World Wide Wickets and ingratiates …
Review: The Understudy by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 30, 2017
Playwright Theresa Rebeck has great fun with this cartoonishly cynical look at the business of theatre. She implies that in big league art the megastars and the money men rule, while those very many hopeful and talented artistis looking for a break are willfully deluding themselves.
Playwright Theresa Rebeck has great fun with this cartoonishly cynical look at the business of theatre. Not theatre as we like it and practice it here in Austin, or even as the three vivid and vigorous cast members practice it in this piece. Her theme is that in big league art the megastars and the money men rule, while those very many hopeful and talented artistis looking for a break are willfully deluding themselves. …
Review: Title and Deed by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 27, 2017
One speaker on a bare stage spins word webs about his world, all insubstantial and yet so vital. To what are we entitled? What are we to do? Speaking as that anonymous yearning affable individual, before disappearing from view Phelps offers us Eno's parting words in inconclusive summary.
This stark, brainy and hypnotizing production of Will Eno's curious Title and Deed placed me in a confusion of circumstances that further magnified the power of Jason Phelps's performance. In the Austin darkness outside the safe space of the Hyde Park Theatre a hurricane was brewing and coming in our direction. Placed before the darkness of the audience areas, Mark Pickell's set is an assembly of floorboards with untrimmed edges, the merest …
Review: INDUSTRY NIGHT, Fourth Season Premiere at the North Door, Austin, August 14, 2017
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 23, 2017
With Cami Alys's torch song the audience fell to contemplation of the wild artistic beauty that takes one by surprise from anywhere, including from a downtown drinking establishment on an ordinary Monday night.
If you’ve ever wanted a confectionary sampler of Austin’s high theatrical talent, INdustry Night is the show for you. Every bi-monthly show in the series lights up a Monday night, when all the theatres are dark and the actors, dancers, and musicians in shows have the evening off. And there lies the industry in the title. The performers and technicians are available to meet, greet, and hurl cocktails within the well-appointed watering hole with the …