Reviews for The Vortex Performances
Review: fire work by The Vortex
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 08, 2026
Plot twists, including one that hurls us beyond the astounding. FIRE WORK is a meld, a structured fantasy, an allegory worth experiencing.
“I didn’t want a big life—I wanted our life." Spoken at the climax of Fire Work, those words brought the vast scales of the play’s themes down to the level of the human heart. The line and the scene from which it exploded illuminated the great crime of grinding poverty. The kind that imprisons the body, heart, mind, and soul, and, against all heroic efforts, sadistically thwarts any attempt to escape. Fire Work gives us …
Review: Dora's Gently Used Dreams Store by The Vortex
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 24, 2025
Dora's imaginary, imaginative tent has folded and left the Vortex, but her pitch, emotion, and shared dreams leave memories behind.
CTXLT publishes its criteria: our focus is live narrative theatre. You might be able to argue that Morgan McKenzie Kauffman's Dora's Gently Used Dreams Store, presented in the intimate space of the Vortex's "pony shed," didn't strictly meet that definition. It was equal parts solo description and experience. Katie Green's Twin Alchemy group presented similar short, intense, participatory experiences in Austin from 2014 to 2019. In this performance form, the playwright/producer imagines a place and …
Review: Sunny Days by Reina Hardy at The Vortex
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 12, 2024
Reina Hardy's sprawling HAPPY DAYS has a Brechtian approach to evil, to innocent joys, and to magic that is as endangered as we all are.
Sunny Days is virtually all concept -- an awkward multicourse serving of bitter and sweet that's made palatable by Rudy Ramirez's direction, inventive puppetry, and the dedicated cast. I can imagine playwright Reina Hardy at her desk, musing on the sweetness of Sesame Street and brooding on the adult evils that victimize children in this world; she then imagines evoking these opposites by inventing the story of an earnest and eventually successful puppeteer. She emphasizes …
Review: The Dragonfly Princess by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 20, 2023
Take advantage of the Vortex/Ethos cyber operas when you can; someday they may become as rare as the fairies at the bottom of your garden.
“There are fairies at the bottom of our garden…” the song goes. But they are no fairies such as these I’ll warrant. Fairy mythology and the land of faery have taken many turns in literature and the arts, their baby-stealing propensities amplified in Changelings, produced at Salvage Vanguard Theatre several years back. But in the dark, gothic imagination of Chad Salvata the fairies have become more contradictory, at once monstrous, magical, loving, quarreling, self-serving, passionate, …
Review: Selfie, the Musical by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Rick Perkins
Published on April 11, 2022
The powerhouse band of four players and singers, along with the superb cast of four, made SELFIE, this grooving ensemble, rock the house at the Vortex in Austin!
The title alone made me want to see this show. Got it. Selfies, we all have shared them, all too often. Just today at my weekly Friday meal with my golf buddies, I posted my lunch Especial of Chicken Enchiladas. I was certain the world wanted to see how sophisticated and luxurious my measly wasted life is these days, hey looky: #Enchiladas, Livin’ Large, ya Losers! I felt victorious then; now I’m hiding in horrors …
Review #2 of 2: Heartland by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 28, 2019
In the tradition of the best modern plays, HEARTLAND also tells several stories at the same time, tracks up-to-the-minute, and shows great heart. This latter quality is sure to make it evergreen.
Heartland, an important new play by Gabriel Jason Dean, is now up at the Vortex. The longish, heavily scripted work takes on geopolitics, especially the alt-tidal forces sweeping back and forth across Afghanistan and the United States. In the tradition of the best modern plays, Heartland also tells several stories at the same time, tracks up-to-the-minute, and shows great heart. This latter quality is sure to make it evergreen, some day to enter the canon. …