Recent Reviews
Review: The Last Five Years by Sherrod Curry Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 30, 2016
Bittersweet: the fact that this enchanting experiment wasn't scheduled to run longer, so that more Austin audiences could participate in it.
If you don't already have your tickets for this intimate treat of a production, you're out of luck. Megan Sherrod and Sarah Marie Currie perform Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years a total of only six times, last week and this in Austin, tucked away in an annex to the Institution Theatre with seating for only about 30 persons. And they've certainly got more than 200 friends and fans who've wanted to see …
Review: Is There Life after Lubbock? by Jaston Williams
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on March 28, 2016
Lubbock’s severe austerity creates resilient but mirthful characters. The discreet but ever sizzling electricity of latent natural disaster and the stark expanse of gorgeous but nearly barren land makes it a land of contradictions and majesty.
Dust in their Blood: An Intimate Night with Jaston Williams and Kimmie Rhodes Jaston Williams the actor, writer, producer and notable wit, got together with country singer and songwriting star Kimmie Rhodes at the Stateside Theatre at the Paramount in Austin to answer a seemingly simple question: Why Lubbock? Using songs, personal stories, poetry and many, many jokes they hashed out the possible reasons why a quiet and dusty outpost in the Texas panhandle …
Review: 4000 Miles by Different Stages
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 16, 2016
Our attention is held by the exposition of the protagonists old and young, but Herzog's work is essentially a Bildungsroman that runs a jumpy young Leo through life lessons, particularly concerning the opposite sex.
Amy Herog's 4000 Miles starts off pretty clunky and she deliberately withholds important chunks of background. It's 3 a.m and we're in a rent-controlled apartment in lower Manhattan, assuming that such accomodations still exist. Leo has just turned up in full biking gear and roused his grandmother Vera, evidently because he has nowhere else to go. In opening scenes the story is doled out: Leo's been incommunicado on a cross-country bike trip that started in Seattle. …
Review: Marie Antoinette by Capital T Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 11, 2016
Playwright Adjmi examines history's great irony: the fact that revolutionary France tried to build on rationality to fulfill human potential, but its only dynamic was the raving irrationality of the murderous mob.
Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi presents the events of the title character's life with historical accuracy. The play is not what anyone would call a historical play, however. It is a biographical work focusing on almost exclusively for the French queen's death, not on her life. Capital T Theatre’s extremely well-designed and performed production at the Off-Center treats Adjmi’s play well and brings some literary justice to Marie Antoinette. The show provides …
Review: Marie Antoinette by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 09, 2016
Marie sails with instructed indifference even through horrors, and the circumstances of her death remain opaque and unexplained to her.
Aristotle wouldn't have liked it. His rules for tragedy in Poetics, the earliest surviving work of literary theory, insist that the protagonist of a tragedy should be a great or heroic individual, and misfortune should result from a mistake or misjudgement of the protagonist. And don't forget hubris -- the canny old fellow liked to point the finger at overweening pride as preparing the way for a fall. David Adjmi isn't headed that way. Indigo …
Review: A Man for All Seasons by City Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on March 05, 2016
When Norfolk tries to understand Thomas More's stance, he's thwarted by the simple line, "I trust I have made myself obscure." Yet the truth couldn't be farther from this gibe.
A Season for a Fall It’s good to be king, as the saying goes, you have absolute power and most of your desires are readily fulfilled. Everyone loves you, or at least they pretend to. . . ahhh, there's the rub. The pandering sycophants and your truest friends are forced by fear of the executioner’s axe to be pretty much one and the same. An honest opinion is hard to find. This is why …