Recent Reviews
Review: Las Cuatro Estaciones: A Story of Human Trees by Sharon Marroquin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 30, 2017
Memories of the performance play like flash images: the company in stillness on the stage floor, curled and gnarled, grains of potential and nothing more; Lisa del Rosario on a tree stump, becoming the tree; a slap fight; the mundane; and death.
Sharon Marroquin has made a profound artistic statement in her work as part of her residency at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin. Her field is multimedia dance, and her Las Cuatro Estaciones: A Story of Human Trees is effectively her recital in culmination of her residency. As such she sets a high bar for the other seven latino artists in the Latino Art Residency Project at the MACC. Also, her soundtrack is …
Review: Disgraced by Playhouse San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on March 29, 2017
The speed with which the masks of gentility slip off to reveal the hatred that boils just below the surface makes for a powerful and important statement. That’s why this production is essential viewing at this time.
Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning one-act, is a searing indictment of the prejudices we all carry inside of us. Now playing at the Playhouse San Antonio’s Cellar Theatre, the timing couldn’t be more perfect – considering the current political climate. Amir (Suhail Arastu) is a Pakistani-American lawyer on the fast track to a partnership at his firm. He has an American wife, Emily (Kate Glasheen), with whom he shares a swanky apartment on New York’s Upper …
Review: Meetings of the Mind by Chaddick Dance Theater
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 29, 2017
Throughout the program the dancers rushed at high speed to the widely dispersed points of the playing space in order to exploit every available performance surface, creating significant surprises.
Meetings of the Mind took place in and on the south facing surfaces of Austin City Hall. Dancers performed on the plaza in front of the main entrance, the balcony, the amphitheatre terraces, and in the landscaping all around. City Hall is the heart of Austin civic property, and because of this the performance with Chaddick’s skilled dancers was a gift to the city and the citizens of Austin. The City awards grants to …
Review: For the Love of Mahalia by RKJB Entertainment
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 04, 2017
FOR THE LOVE OF MAHALIA is a thrilling musical, a star vehicle for singer Jacqui Cross, and the best recent theatrical call in Austin to social activism.
Several theatrical productions in town now, on stage or just closing, give or claim to give important messages about activism, resistance, gender, and race relations in America in our current time of turmoil. Perhaps the clearest and most moving of these activist guidebooks is about to pass under the radar, but it is not to be missed by anyone. For the Love of Mahalia sings its vibrant song at the Boyd C. Vance Theatre at the Carver …
Review: The Curious by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 02, 2017
The pauses in Bottle Alley's THE CURIOUS speak unbounded stories. Writer-director Chris Fontanes has again bound a group of explorers in a mystery and invited the witnesses along. The case remains both solved and unresolved. As in life, we'll have to be satisfied with that.
Writer-director Chris Fontanes prefers the shadow worlds of mystery, enigma and the threatening unseen. Forced to turn to 'found' spaces, his essentially penniless and well named Bottle Alley Theatre Company makes a virtue of that necessity by incorporating the environment fully into the action. Their cryptic parables don't hang like abstract art from the surfaces of scenery flats on a stage. The Curious is set in a modest but comfortable bungalow in Austin's south-of-the-lake …
Review: A Girl Named Sue by Color Arc Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 26, 2017
Christine Hoang's bilingual English-and-Vietnamese A GIRL NAMED SUE does not stop at harshly lit explications of the problems—we see those every day—but instead it prompts us to think forward to practical solutions.
A Girl Named Sue is an innocuous, almost innocent, title for a powerful and hardhitting stage presentation. Other theatre productions in town currently tout their relevance to our political and social state of affairs, and many have called for a new discussion of race in America. Without much fanfare, A Girl Named Sue actually delivers the punch, showing and telling us much about ourselves. This proverbial mirror held up to America is formed of numerous forthright …