Recent Reviews
Review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2016
Deprived of Brecht's framework of satirical references to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the plot of this production sways awkwardly with no real point of attachment to our current political drama.
David Long's annual choices for directing at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre usually show a clever quirkiness and the ability to make surprising juxtapositions. He has a string of successes. He takes a classic and gives it modern comic spin (Molière's The Imaginary Invalid and Tartuffe) or he chooses a modern text that tips into absurdist fantasy (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Love & Information, Overmeyer's On The Verge or The Geography of Longing, Chuck …
Review: The Drowning Girls by Theatre en Bloc
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 04, 2016
The flood of images was created to soggy perfection by the three incomparable actresses. I never again want to hear the sentence: “He took my breath away.”
The Drowning Girls is a murder mystery told in nonlinear fashion by the murder victims. The three brides, each drowned in the bath, rise from the water postmortem and sopping wet to tell their tale.The play is definitely a strong textual dialogue play, but not one with parlor scenes in a spacious set with numerous characters, as one would expect from an Agatha Christie mystery. No, here we have a bathroom set, looking perhaps like …
Review: Incorruptible by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Kara Bliss McGregor
Published on October 04, 2016
Equal parts satire and soul, INCORRUPTIBLE at the Gaslight Baker Theatre in Lockhart will renew your faith in the transformative power of theater. And belly laughs.
Billed as “a dark comedy about the dark ages,” Incorruptible seemed sure to be some amalgam of Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. But the latest production at the Gaslight-Baker Theater in Lockhart is neither nonsensical nor ominous. This nimble prodution is delightful. And improbable, set far from our modern reality yet landing right where we live. Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger is a bawdy satire …
Review: THE PRICE by Arthur Miller, Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 01, 2016
To whom do these things belong? That question is literal but rapidly becomes metaphorical. Each is condemned to his discontents, Miller tells us; the price is simply what you're willing to pay.
The setting for The Price is heavily symbolic, an attic living space abandoned for sixteen years since the death of its occupant. The half-covered pieces of heavy furniture, the wardrobe with its mirror reflecting emptiness, empty frames, bric-a-brac, a sagging armchair, a piano bench at stage center without a piano, a passageway to an unseen bedroom -- designer Desiderio Roybal avoids clutter but embraces the miscellany of memory. There's a price for all of this, …
Review: ANY NIGHT by Elizabeth V. Newman Productions at City Theatre, September 21 - October 9, 2016
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 27, 2016
Most of all, this is a gripping fable about trust. Face value cannot be assumed. Face is valueless here; faces may be masks or, equally, those who see them may be delusional.
Any night you participate in this disquieting evenng at City Theatre you'll be seeing two actors-- but at least nine characters. Or, to put it a different way, in the eerie ninety minutes you'll be spending in this netherworld, slim and vulnerable Marie Rose Fahlgren will flicker between states of reality as Anna, an earnest and emotional young woman trying to break away from a former relationship. Zac Thomas will be variously geeky stammering …
Review: Twelfth Night by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 22, 2016
The cast of this lively and family-friendly TWELFTH NIGHT are among the best devotees of Shakespeare in the city, the ones we are wont to take delight in.
Fun, family-friendly, free and right downtown where all the cool kids shop -- can this be Shakespeare? The clever theatre folk of Present Company have been here before, and this cheerful picnic-style produiction of the comedy Twelfth Night on the easily accessed rooftop terrace of the Whole Foods flagship store at 5th & Lamar in Austin is just as accomplished as their 2014 Much Ado About Nothin and their 2015 Love's Labor's Lost in the same location Austin …