Recent Reviews
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 Three Musketeers by The Archive Theater Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 27, 2024
Archive Theatre's The Three Musketeers is great fun and offers a rollicking, romping, stomping swirl of bravado and romance.
Archive Theatre's The Three Musketeers is a gem within a jewel within a brilliant display case within a treasure cave—and a rollicking, romping, stomping swirl of bravado and romance. Company artistic director and Jill-of-all-trades Jennifer Rose Davis adapted Alexandre Dumas's 1844 adventure novel, produced, directed, led the stitching team that produced the dazzling costumes designed by Cecelia Gay, and even both plays and sings in the small court orchestra accompanying the piece with delicate 17th-century tunes. …
Review: Pivot by Performa/Dance
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 22, 2024
PIVOT, organized by Performa/Dance, swam in the milieu of new ballet with always striking and often surprising interpretations and movement. Here was a new Alice for a modern Wonderland.
The group ballet show Pivot has just closed its brief run at Austin Ventures Studio in downtown Austin. Produced by Performa/Dance, Pivot was exemplary of new ballet, which incorporates new concepts and performance practices and addresses social issues. Performa/Dance deconstructs creative material that comes its way, embracing hybridity and incorporating new media and forms unusual or unheard of in traditional ballet. Yet the company’s performances can be considered nothing other than ballet. Hence the fault …
Review: Trash Planet by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 21, 2024
On a morbidly static trash planet playwright Kansas creates vignettes of hardships, backstories from previous lives, and a despairing determination to return to the fascistic hell Earth has become.
Bottle Alley Theatre Company has been doing "DIY Punk Theatre" since I first encountered them twelve years ago, thanks to an invite from founder Chris Fontanes. He and like-minded young theatre artists have remained true to that slogan ever since, scheming and dreaming tales that often deal with the dark, the dreaded, and the fantastic. Early on, they grubbed up free spaces, often outdoors, but as Fontanes' determination was recognized by the Austin arts …
Review: The Wizard of Oz by San Pedro Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 17, 2024
Playing cleverly against the revered 1939 film version, Jenny Lavery's production brings THE WIZARD OF OZ "home" to San Antonio.
The Wizard of Oz production now playing at the venerable San Pedro Playhouse in San Antonio vividly presents the story told by the 1939 MGM film and adds clever, striking production values throughout. It's a huge show -- a cast of twenty-seven, including furry four-legged Dolly Ebarra in the role of Toto -- and it mobilizes a host of staff members, supporters, and volunteers. Especially spectacular are the visuals provided by Jimmy Moore's imaginative …
Review: Borderless by Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 02, 2024
Andrea Ariel's multi-ethnic, multi-generational workshop exercises flowered orange into a collection of borderless stories danced by talented performers to driving music with Latino/Western flavor.
Borders aren’t just the boundary lines between nations. Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre explored the many meanings of the term and how at the center of the concept borders divide. Hence the title Borderless and the theme of overcoming divisions among people. As Andrea Ariel writes in promotional material, “What connects us and disconnects [us] as humans across ethnicities and cultures?” She asked guest choreographers and musicians to answer that question and bring together their …