Recent Reviews
Review: Notes on the Classification of Spectral Lines, the Art of Water Writing, and Other Important Ephemera by Catastrophe Theory Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 26, 2016
An entirely opaque title hides a sequence of exploratory performances that produce something expected, surprise and delight.
The title is entirely opaque. It's a curious choice by Stephen Pruitt and Rebecca Whitehurst for the succession of illuminating thought pieces they assembled with great care for a single weekend presentation at the Salvage Vanguard. The Tuesday preview audience could have been met by just about anything, from astrophysics to hoodoo. And in fact, we were. A miscellany. This short evening somewhat resembles a sequence of TED talks that you might have turned …
Review: One Man, Two Guvnors by Vexler Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 24, 2016
The script is boffo squared because Bean takes the absurd clowning of Goldoni's 1743 Commedia dell'Arte staple with stock characters and multiplies it by British panto, the broad vaudeville style that persists to this day.
This is sure-fire comic material. If you're puzzled by the slangy English title, you need only note that One Man, Two Guvnors is playing now at The Vexler Theatre in San Antonio and opens next week at the Zach Theatre in Austin. Richard Bean's cheeky adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters by Goldoni has flashed from its 2011 London opening to multiple UK tours to Broadway to our eager colonial hinterland in just five …
Review: Sealed for Freshness by Temple Civic Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 23, 2016
SEALED FOR FRESHNESS gleefully explodes the conventional picture of suburban tranquility in the 1960s, keeping the audience alternately laughing and captivated.
Temple Civic Theattre has just completed a well-attended two-week run of Doug Stone's Sealed for Freshness, billed as A 1960s Tupperware Party Gone Terriby Wrong. Five women took us back half a century into Stone's imaginary version of suburban domesticity when Jack and Jackie were in the White House and Camelot was in full flower. Natasha Tolleson's costume coordination helps maintain that illusion (bravo, for example, for that sack dress frumpily worn by Jennifer Eck as grumpy …
Review: Trevor by Capital T Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 22, 2016
TREVOR takes the audience on a wild ride piloted by a four-star cast that makes no promise of setting them down gently. It's for anyone who likes to scream on roller-coaster rides.
Trevor by Nick Jones is the fictionalization of the story of Travis the Chimp, raised and lived with a human family in Stamford, Connecticut. The family trained Travis for roles in petty media, largely TV public service announcements and local commercials. Travis became a celebrity in his town. Travis grew up, as members of every species do, and became a surly and aggressive adult, also like every species. At this point, Travis’s story morphs into the story of the …
Review: Lone Riders by Trinity Street Players
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 19, 2016
The portrait session is a tidily symbolic moment, a reminder that art, including this polished staging, captures ever so fleetingly the richness and complexity of life.
Lone Riders speaks of vast distances, and every aspect of the Trinity Street Players' production keys on that theme. This is the Nebraska Territory in 1865. From the first moments as the audience listens to Walker Lyle's musing cowboy music, the allied concepts of set designer David Weaver and lighting designer Courtney Deriger make that vastness real. A battered wooden shack for a stage depot, a barren courtyard, a bench, a tree, tools and the …
Review: Arden of Faversham by anonymous, City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 17, 2016
This contemporary 'noir' staging of ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM offers a banquet of guilty pleasures and the dessert of justice delivered.
Wicked wives, stupid husbands, thugs and murder; what's not to like? Director Kevin Gates gives the 1592 drama Arden of Faversham a canny spin by setting it as a contemporary noir tale, accenting the timelessness of the theme. It was pulp fiction when printed in Elizabethan England, and it's even more pulpy now. The company plays it straight, giving it a wicked edge, keeping the comedy quiet but in plain sight as Black Will and Shakebag the …