Recent Reviews
Two Reviews: HOT BELLY by Diana Lynn Small, paper chairs at Austin Public, February 3 - 19, 2017
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 09, 2017
HOT BELLY is a slice of two lives that come together for a while and go their own ways much later. The insight is that coming apart is never really distinct and never final. Even final isn't final.
Two lesbians fall in love. What’s new? The premise no longer has any shock value, not even any surprise value. The point that love is love regardless of sexuality has been made amply in our generation.Playwright and director Diana Lynn Small recognizes this and gets on with telling life stories in her new play Hot Belly. Chili, shoes, facial hair, and ghosts: these are the stuff of this play, the thematic bits around which Small’s characters …
Review #2 of 2: CAGES by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Justin M. West
Published on February 02, 2017
The show stuck with me for days after I left the theatre -- the light, the sound, the immersive and clever use of space to its fullest potential, but most of all the generally stellar cast and their varied, nuanced and memorable performances.
Outstanding Performances in CAGES Overcome Flawed Script Huntsville, Texas, where I was born and spent the first nine years of my life, is a horrible, godforsaken little shitsplat town, just this side of Bumfuck, Egypt and dangerously close to being a suburb of Houston. It’s also a prison town. There are seven (seven!) fucking prisons in Huntsville, a few in which my father worked as a guard while pursuing a PhD in criminology. …
Review: Crimes of the Heart by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 30, 2017
Beth Henley's gentle comedy is at heart a celebration that provides gifts to each of the sisters, along with the day-late birthday cake for Lenny that probably marks an end to her spinsterhood.
I generally resist comparing stage productions to film versions. That's on principle, since a theatre piece must stand on its own concerning casting, directing, acting, technical support and -- not least -- the charisma of folks on and off stage. For City Theatre's Crimes of the Heart I was comfortably placed to follow my convictions, since not only had I not seen the 1984 film but I had never before seen the play. All I …
Review #1 of 2: Cages by Southwest Theatre Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 25, 2017
CAGES is didactic, the application of the power of imagination and acting to teach and admonish. It's not a comfortable evening, and that's to the credit of all at Southwest Theatre Productions.
The overwhelming impressions are dark and stark. 'Stark' both in the sense of sharply contrasted in color and outcome, and 'stark' in the etymological sense of 'strong' and 'powerful.' Leonard Manzella's Cages is not entertainment; it is an orientation to a hell that few of us know but all too many of us suffer. Playwright Manzella will step out on stage after the performance. He wants you to understand what he has done and seen as a …
Review #2 of 2: A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick, Vortex Repertory, January 19 - February 5, 2017
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on January 25, 2017
A PERFECT ROBOT offers stories and concepts on so many levels that you can spend hours contemplating the nature of the soul and the principal theme: whether love can indeed be replicated by a machine that is willing to listen to and argue with you.
Her robot work is uncanny. Please define. Uncanny, as in strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way. Synonyms include eerie, unnatural, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, abnormal, bizarre and surreal. You mean it was unbelievable? No, exactly the opposite, in fact. First sentence does not compute, please begin again. Amelia Turner plays the robot, Mollybot, in the Vortex Theatre’s production of Sarah Saltwick’s new play A Perfect Robot and turns in an amazingly realistic …
Review: Matt & Ben by Penny Dime Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 24, 2017
Much of the funny comes from watching the women represent male bonding behavior. Guy slovenliness rules, and happy dreams of success without discernible pathways to them dominate their talk.
What happens when a buddy story about a brainy jock and a happy jerk in Massachusetts is performed by a pair of sopranos at the Institution Theatre, a hang-out for aspiring improv artists? And say, how's that for an opening paragraph of a review? Probably just about as surprising as the opening scene of Matt & Ben when a fully written and brilliantly crafted movie script falls out of the ceiling and lands …