Reviews for The Archive Theater Company Performances
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: A Sherlock Holmes Christmas by The Archive Theater Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 21, 2022
The venue is comfortable, the story's satisfying, the cast and staff are friendly, and the Christmas cheer comes happily sneaking up even on the occasional Grinch. Afterward, I was ready to face the holiday season!
Not to bah, humbug! about it, but December is a difficult month for theatre reviewers. And December—okay, the Christmas season—starts in mid-November. With a sigh, I tot it up once again this year: stages across the CTXLT region are putting up thirty-eight holiday plays this holiday season. THIRTY-EIGHT! Including eight versions of A Christmas Carol. EIGHT! Oh, for some variation! A cracking good mystery, for example. Though preferably not Ken Ludwig's The Game's Afoot, or Holmes for the Holidays, opening …
Review: Macbeth by The Archive Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 13, 2022
The essential quality of Shakespeare’s supernaturalism is his ability to knife directly into the minds and psychology of the characters. Archive Theatre's Appalachian imagining does just that.
What can one say about Macbeth? Volumes have been written about that one Shakespeare play, its fabled history, and its purported curse. Everyone has read it and seen it on stage, on TV, and in one of many filmed versions. What compels production companies to continue staging it? For my money, it's the narrative of a timeless story told in language dense in imagery and offering endless opportunities for variety in staging. This …
Review: The Man of Destiny by The Archive Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 13, 2020
Shaw's wit, crisply delivered, impressively detailed period costumes, Napoleon and a mysterious lady, kitchen delights, and charming music, all in an unexpected and perfectly appropriate venue!
The Archive Theater Company is staging George Bernard Shaw's The Man of Destiny at Pioneer Farms in far north Austin. The company’s second production, following last year’s Cyrano de Bergerac, is another reputation builder, an exceptionally well produced play with a historical focus, featuring period music performed live. The company founded by Garrison Martt and Jennifer Rose Davis has established a very distinctive esthetic that emphasizes vivid language and period costuming. In Austin only The Hidden …
Review: Cyrano de Bergerac by The Archive Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 03, 2019
Exceptional principal actors, a large ensemble of standouts, gallantry, poetry, combat and love; this immensely complex play is delivered with zeal and panache. CYRANO DE BERGERAC is not to be missed.
Edmond Rostand wrote Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897, a play about a 17th-century French soldier and poet. As the inaugural production of Jennifer Rose Davis’s Archive Theater Company, this archival play is an Austin original. So why Cyrano de Bergerac? It’s not the nose or the methods of antique warfare; the big heart of the romantic story is unrequited love. Audiences have had an instinctual feel for that for 130 years. Anyone who has …