Recent Reviews
Review: KOMOREBI by Navaji David Nava and Ventana Ballet
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 27, 2023
Influenced by many world traditions, Navaji David Nava's KOMOREBI dances were intensely beautiful, stamping us with the expansiveness of the brilliant choreographer's spiritual journey.
Ventana Ballet is one of those new advanced ballet companies in our dance-rich town. Along with PerformaDance and Ballet Austin, it pushes the envelope of dance and the meaning of ballet for the fine arts. They try new forms and ideas, unrestrained by the ballet canon. Rarely do they wear toe shoes onstage. At the same time, they insist that what they create is ballet, nothing less, nothing more. Their own acceptance of that seeming contradiction …
Review: Antigonick by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 27, 2023
This glittering enticement to the strange and wonderful world of Greek drama gives no time to address the deep moral question inherent in Antigone's story.
A long time ago, distinguished Classics professor Dr. Charles Stow commented to his Greek Theatre class, "No one performs these plays they way they were written." That was a scholar's somber statement of fact. In antiquity, three masked actors stood in the amphitheatre and declaimed. A chorus stood unmoving and responded in strophes, with the chorus leader sometimes speaking individually. Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides used formal language to explore legends deeply familiar to the entire …
Review: George Gershwin Alone by Hershey Felder, on tour at Zach Theatre, Austin
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on September 23, 2023
Hershy Felder, one of the most naturalistic actors working today, brilliantly tells Gershwin's story and attacks the piano with a visceral ferocity, channeling the man's spirit, personal ambitions, and frustrations.
Was he happy? This inspired question seemed to come out of nowhere, as if plucked from the stratosphere, in order to formulate in words, the thought the whole audience was unknowingly thinking. It was asked during the question-and-answer session that immediately followed Hershey Felder’s unquestionably brilliant performance …
Review: Raven-Winged Hours by The Archive Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 11, 2023
Raven-Winged Hours is a marvelous work. Some theatre reviews are lazy lists of superlatives. Archive Theatre's production is one of the few that deserve such praise.
A new production focused on Edgar Alan Poe has just opened in Austin. Raven-Winged Hours at the Jourdan Bachman Pioneer Farms in northeast Austin. It's produced by The Archive Theater, led by Jennifer Rose Davis. Chris Fontanes of Bottle Alley Theatre directs. Theirs is an auspicious conjunction of theatrical forces. It is surprising, really, that the literature of Edgar Allan Poe has not ramified further through popular culture. Certainly, it is represented iconically by the black-wearing …
Review: Night Birds by Ventana Ballet
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 04, 2023
Ventana Ballet's consistently themed NIGHT BIRDS, virtually perfect, was an emotionally high-toned confection for a sultry summer evening in Austin.
Ventana Ballet presented another in their Night Birds series of ballets at The Cathedral ATX, the former Landmark Missionary Baptist Church on 16th Street, repurposed as an event center and art gallery. If exquisitely choreographed and well-performed dances weren’t enough to entice a general audience, then Ventana’s strategy of presenting the dances accompanied by cello music certainly completed the evening to great satisfaction. The cello artistry was provided by Daniel Kopp and his friends Cory …
Review: Head Over Heels by Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 31, 2023
The crowd of chiildren and adults roared in approval as Go Go's hits were unleashed one after another. A beach party indoors, in this weather? (Yes, pleasee!)
The Go-Go's got their start in Los Angeles, California in 1978 . While there have been all female rock groups before and after, they are one of the most successful of all time. Their debut album Beauty and the Beat reached number one on the billboard chart, stayed there for six weeks, and sold more than two million copies. Their achievements continued to skyrocket and their initial break up in 1985 didn’t stop the members …