Recent Reviews
Review: Lardo Weeping by Local Opera Local Artists - LOLA
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 22, 2022
The tragedy and darkness of LARDO WEEPING is the harsh reality none of us like to admit—that most of us vacillate between ambition and hopelessness,and never find true stability or strike a sustaining balance.
Lardo Weeping has been called a chamber opera, a smaller-scale opera designed to be performed by a chamber ensemble and a smaller cast. Such a confining definition certainly does not capture the operatic grandeur of this production. Its impact on one’s impressions is magnified by the sensory contrasts it imposes on attendees. The production is professionally realized, and the first contrast is the venue. Crashbox is an interesting choice for staging an opera, …
Review: Mean Girls by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 08, 2022
The MEAN GIRLS touring cast and producers relied on the material and not the performances to deliver the goods. The tap-dancing scene felt phoned in, but the comedic material is strong enough to provide a full night of entertainment.
The city of Austin is fortunate to be a perennial stop for touring Broadway productions. There are nearly thirty different touring productions visiting approximately 240 different cities in the United States in a single year. The newly renovated Bass Concert Hall has all the bells and whistles necessary to accommodate such large performances. It also has recently reconfigured their security, making it much easier to enter the venue which is a greatly welcome alteration—especially considering …
Review #2 of 2: Austin Dance Festival by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 25, 2022
In his dozen short examples of dance on film, or "film dance," ll the tools of videography and cinematography come into play, including screenplays and scripts written in or before pre-production.
Part II As promised, the writings and review of Austin Dance Festival 2022 for CTXLive come in two parts, largely due to the volume of artistic material presented at the festival. The event filled the Rollins Studio Theatre stage and screens at the Long Center in Austin for four days, July 14-17, 2022. The material covered here is from Dance on Film, Thursday, July 14, 2022. An added benefit of the Dance on …
Review #1 of 2: Austin Dance Festival 2022
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 19, 2022
Kathy Dunn Hamrick brings the festival back.
Austin Dance Festival 2022 Produced by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company at The Long Center's Rollins Studio Theatre July 14 – 17, 2022 Part I The Austin Dance Festival 2022 has taken place at the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center. The event was very much an expanded version over what came before, with performance showcases and film taking place over four days. The 2022 edition may have been the largest ever, with three …
Review: The Sound of Music by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 30, 2022
Dave Steakley succeeds with an innovative staging concept and sparkling cast for THE SOUND OF MUSIC; he mostly succeeds in tying fraught pre-Anschluss Austria to today's beleaguered United States.
Austin's Zach Theatre needed a big one to bust free of the COVID oppression that harmed this and other venues, and Dave Steakley has delivered handsomely. Who doesn't know The Sound of Music, the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that garnered an armload of Tony awards and was the basis of the 1963 film that swept the Oscars? Steakley's challenge: use that familiar material but make it new. He succeeds with an innovative …
Review: Undark - A Radioactive Puppet Play by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 13, 2022
This workshop production with gaps and taped-up aspects gives a foretaste of another deeply socially concerned work to be done by Trouble Puppet master Connor Hopkins.
Trouble Puppet Theater’s first production in a while, Undark: A Radioactive Puppet Play, remains in development. The performances at the Vortex in east Austin were supported by a Workshop Grant from the Jim Henson Foundation. That organization, the Olympus of puppetry, may give a full production grant to Undark for production in about a year’s time if its leadership ultimately likes what it sees in the workshop edition. That is the stimulus for the full …