Recent Reviews
Review 1 of 2: Austin Dance Festival 2021 by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company and friends
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 06, 2021
Austin Dance Festival Performances had overlapping time frames, so that a single reviewer found it impossible to give eyewitness testimony to all the pieces in the grand event. The culminating piece titled "Entr'acte" could have been more colloquially entitled “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.”
The Austin Dance Festival, 2021 edition, was a triumph of bootstrapping. The 2020 edition was canceled when Austin and the world lay in the destructive grip of the coronavirus pandemic. This year the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company, producer of the festival, had to reset all the organizational devices necessary to produce a live show with multiple artists. The job was especially hard for not having produced any kind of public performance for a …
Review: A Portrait of My Mother by Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, presented by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 12, 2021
We're lucky Carlo Lorenzo Garcia was willing to share this story without a scrap of sentimentality, and that his gift as an actor is the rare ability tell it so well.
I remember very clearly when I first saw Carlo Lorenzo Garcia. Curiously enough it was in another—very different—drama about family. That was in December, 2017 when Street Corner Arts presented Pocatello, directed by Benjamin Summers. Garcia was surrounded by a dozen Austin actors, including some of the very best and most vivid. I wrote, "Carlos Lorenzo Garcia, newly arrived in Austin from Chicago, is Eddie. [ . . .] [and his] performance"[ . . …
Review: DEAR V., by Blipswitch at the Curtain Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 08, 2021
Blipswitch has thrown down a gauntlet for other contemporary dance groups to pick up in the coming post-Covid world. Welcome the light!
At the Curtain Theatre in far west forested Austin, Texas The pandemic is dead, long live performance in live! All the permutations and iterations of flickering streaming shows comprised but a single candle against the dark, a needed guide to light the way to our artistic return. The bold performers of Blipswitch have struck out into the light of day with their show Dear V,. Obeying the protocols, the dancers of …
Review: Short Play Festival by Deaf Austin Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 02, 2021
The first night of three short plays by Deaf Austin Theatre was an auspicious beginning by an enthusiastic group of writers and performers. We look forward to many more such evenings of theatre.
In livestreaming, the waiting is the hardest part. The happy live-chatting audience could slap brief emojis on the screen from a short menu of such provided, but that was all. The waiting and the delayed start were harbingers of the technical difficulties to come. But the performances eventually did start and run their courses, and while the technical support staff sweated bullets to drive the beast forward, they ended with a solid success for …
Review: Tameca Jones Concert by Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on April 20, 2021
Tameca Jones opened up about the challenges of having to live up to so many different personas expected of her, including bad-ass, alluring, powerful, and sexy. Her true self still outshines them all.
Zach Theatre’s answer to the obstacles of practicing safe social distancing while keeping live theatre and entertainment thriving, Songs Under the Stars continues throughout the spring season with shows till May 23, 2021. The venue has done an excellent job of adopting with an outdoor stage, lighting, and sound systems enhanced by the beauty of the night sky (the clarity of the night sky not guaranteed). The staff and volunteers are well trained …
Review: Behind the Scenes -- The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, Bass Concert Hall, University of Texas to April 18, 2021
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 14, 2021
This monumental mid-twentieth-century art form harkened back to the origins of painting, with the same vulnerabilities and ephemerality.
Camille Paglia, in one of her milder pronouncements repeated many times, said that cinema was the dominant art form of the twentieth century. Behind the Scenes: The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, showing now at the Bass Concert Hall of UT-Austin’s Texas Performing Arts offers a striking, monumental affirmation of that insight. The show is a collection of huge painted backdrops measuring scores of feet high and scores of feet long and all dimensions in …