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HAMLET
Best Production - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Actor - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
"As played by — and directed by — the artistic director of Austin Shakespeare Festival, the most notorious character in dramatic literature appears first as a priggishly mewling boy, then a ferociously vindictive warrior, then a calculatingly loopy clown. Often, Roberts' blond and variable Hamlet compresses all three into one soliloquy, sometimes into one line. Rightheadedly, Roberts places himself center stage, physically and metaphorically, through three hours of Shakespearean tragedy about the Danish prince who must revenge the death of his father. It's a blank stage, standing for constantly shifting exterior and interior worlds...An actor with a nimble technical style and a thorough knowledge of Shakespearean tradition...It surprises no one who has observed Roberts over the past few years that his Hamlet is outrageously ambitious, thoroughly researched and...electrifyingly fulfilled."
- Michael Barnes, Austin-American Statesman
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OTHELLO
Best Actor - B. Iden Payne Award
Best Actor - Austin Critic's Table Award
"Quick, focused and treacherous, Roberts' Iago was a sociopath in army fatigues. Beautifully economical in his gestures and coldly and calculatingly explosive, he created a remorseless villain."
- Jamie Smith Cantara, Austin-American Statesman
"Clear and purposeful direction by Guy Roberts, who also plays Iago, brings the story into modern times. The buzzing court becomes, genteel place of business where suits hold sway over swords for hire. The soldiers, who appear in beige and brown camouflage fatigues, are armed with laptop computers as well as guns...As Iago, Roberts was the consummate career soldier turned secret rogue. Quick witted, steely-eyed and precise, his Iago was economical in movement, firm in stance and artful in machinations. Neither Jeremy Brown's trusting Cassio nor Hilary Spillar's guileless and transparent Desdemona stood a chance against him. Sarah Johnson's practical and worldly Emilia, Iago's wife, rendered the play's heart. As military men, bureaucrats and relatives stood silently around Desdemona's dead body, Emilia's cries pierced the silence, and it was she who angrily revealed the truth of Iago's depravity without regard for her own welfare."
- Jamie Smith Cantara, Austin-American Statesman
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HENRY V
Best Production - B. Iden Payne Award
Best Actor - B. Iden Payne Award nomination
Best Production - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Director - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Actor - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
"Austin Shakespeare Festival has crowned its 19-year history with its finest show to date. Guy Roberts' staging of Shakespeare's Henry V is lean, smart and charged with dramatic action...At the center of the show was Roberts' as Henry, at turns tentative, cunning, fierce, chastened, flirtatious and forceful...his performance fired this production, his direction made it sing and his leadership has borne Austin Shakespeare from the margins to the forefront of Austin theater."
- Michael Barnes, Austin-American Statesman
"Fast-paced and executed with split second timing, this production is nothing if not intense…With confidence and grandeur, the warrior-king exhorts his men to greatness…the real winners were the playgoers who witnessed a most dynamic production of Henry V"
- Mel Meeks, Shakespeare Bulletin
"But despite its timeliness and many modern touches, this Austin Shakespeare Festival production is not about parallels between the Bard's "star of England" and our current commander in chief. ASF Artistic Director Guy Roberts clearly comprehends that George is not Henry, Baghdad is not Agincourt...
Based on the evidence of this lean and vigorous production -- as tight and inventive a staging of Shakespeare as Roberts' A Macbeth -- the director is more interested in the way the playwright has written about all wars...Roberts provides a sweeping panorama of life during wartime...As the war gathers momentum, we feel it, the thunderous percussion work of the duo Austin Teiko pounding like blood in our temples, quickening, quickening. Scenes flow by briskly, their urgency deepened by the emotional commitment of the actors...Just as Roberts is at the heart of the production -- as adapter of the text, director, and star -- his Henry remains at the heart of the drama, his actions precipitating the war, his speeches inspiring his troops, his passion pulling them back from the brink of despair and defeat and urging them to victory. Roberts begins the play looking boyishly insecure upon the throne, but he quickly assumes an authoritative air, challenging the messenger from France, the traitors in his midst, and the French themselves with an almost preternatural confidence and calm...Because he bears so much responsibility for what happens, his reactions are especially significant. He responds to his soldiers' cynicism about his motives with disbelief that grows into defiance. And after his decisive victory at Agincourt, through the blood smearing his face, one can clearly read the sorrow and the outrage he feels over so much bloodshed. He is the leader who comes to see firsthand the cost of war, and it changes him. With a new humility, he gently wipes the blood from the face of one of his soldiers."
- Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle
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AS YOU LIKE IT
Best Production - B. Iden Payne Award nomination
Best Director - B. Iden Payne Award nomination
Best Production - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Ensemble - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
"I've been going to the Austin Shakespeare Festival's performances at Zilker Hillside Theater since my parents wheeled me in on a wagon to watch until I fell asleep. But the company's new "As You Like It" — playing a truncated run after leaving Austin Playhouse — is easily one of my favorites...This scaled-down performance teems with Shakespearean comedy essentials: playful interaction with the audience, improvised joking among the cast, moments of tenderness between lovers and catchy, live music...The entire ensemble rolls with the energy...each player contributing a spot of anarchic energy, delightful doddering, or country copulation. Capping it all off is accompaniment by Ed Kliman, whose gravelly drawl and country plucking wouldn't be out of place 100 yards across the park at the Blues on the Green."
— Joey Seiler, Austin-American Statesman
"The limitless joy of the eight-member cast was felt in every line...the experience was magical..."
- Michael Barnes, Austin-American Statesman
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THE DOG IN THE MANGER
Best Alternative Production of the Year, Austin-American Statesman
Best Production - B. Iden Payne Award
Best Director - B. Iden Payne Award nomination
Best Actor - B. Iden Payne Award nomination
Best Production - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Director - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
Best Actor - Austin Critic's Table Award nomination
"The Dog in the Manger by Spanish Golden Age master Lope de Vega is, without a doubt, smart and silly. But it's also rather dark. Austin Shakespeare Festival finesses that fine line between comedy and tragedy, wit and schtick, delivering a Dog that sparkles."
- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin-American Statesman
"My favorite production of the year..."
- Michael Barnes, Austin-American Statesman
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