Recent Reviews
Review: Unbury Your Gays by Broad Theatre, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 06, 2025
Your BFF may not be one, and Maxine Dillon's piece about growing up, growing away, and coming out reminds us. Unburying doesn't have to be literal.
BFF. Best friends forever, right? Think back. Or look around. How often does that cheery acronym come true? Maxine Dillon's Unbury Your Gays offers a lively series of scenes that turn out to be a meditation on that question. In retrospect -- both the playwright's and my own -- there's a faint, bitterness to what is otherwise an entertaining and often amusing story. That's not the fault of the production, for director Kairos …
Review: Grand Hotel by Alchemy Theatre Company, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 05, 2025
GRAND HOTEL is one of Austin's best theatre experiences of the current season. Maybe the very best. More, please; this is quality theatre art in every detail.
Grand Hotel is one of Austin's best theatre experiences of the current season. Maybe the best. This musical rendition of the complex, interlocking stories of guests and staff of a Berlin hotel began as a 1929 novel, followed by a play that same year, followed by a 1932 Hollywood-star-studded movie that was the uncontested winner of the 1932 Academy Award for Best Picture, followed by this 1989 musical theatre adapation. Entering the …
Review: Moulin Rouge by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 31, 2025
Stretching the bounds of story, performance, and audience endurance, the surging, glowing, glittering MOULIN ROUGE is still an enjoyable (if exhausting) night at the theatre.
First it was a venue, then it was a movie, then it was a critically acclaimed Broadway musical, and now it 's a touring production. The Moulin Rouge, with its trademark red windmill on the roof, opened in Paris in 1889. It is best known as the home of the world-famous Can-Can Dance (a variation of the square line dance known as a quadrille) which was originally performed by the club’s courtesans. Founders Joseph …
Review: Here. Now. by Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 17, 2025
HERE. NOW. was a patchwork quilt of diversity, teaching the lesson of the common search for identity, purpose, and meaning across every culture.
Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre (AADT) continues its winding path along the leading edge of the Austin performing arts community with Here. Now. The show is an essential dance show with exquisite live music accompaniment. The show is a compound of techniques and themes that Ariel has addressed in her 35-year Austin dance career. It intentionally incorporates elements of AADT’s Community Voices workshops, endowing it with reflections and echoes of AADT’s 2024 Borderless show. …
Review: Kaleidoscope (2025) by Ventana Ballet
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 10, 2025
With their flashing kaleidoscope of dance Ventana Ballet and Austin Camerata have again raised the bar of ballet performance and show production in Austin.
The third annual edition of Ventana Ballet’s Kaleidoscope has just taken place at the Draylen Mason Music Studio in the still-new KMFA radio station near Austin's Lady Bird Lake. The sampler of ballet pieces by different choreographers informed and delighted, as always. Aptly named, the seasons turned round, and the views through the looking glass of dance revealed fresh new performances. The quality of the offerings seemed even higher than those of the previous year …
Review: The illusionary Games of Edward Rye by Filigree Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 29, 2025
The world of stage magic and murky hypnotic manipulation raises questions in the psychological thriller with action-adventure overtones.
The Illusionary Games of Edward Rye, a world premiere authored by Ashley Griffin offers a brainy riff on illusionism, mesmerism, mentalism, magic, agnosticism, faith, free will, determinism, card tricks, math tricks, therapy, trust, ethics, and plush toy tigers. That's a lot to chew on. It's clear that Griffin researched these topics. The lead character is Edward Rye, played by Malcolm Stephenson, not a neurosurgeon or alien abduction hypno-researcher, but a slightly down-at-heel stage illusionist. Rye's faith in …