Reviews for Bottle Alley Theatre Company Performances
Review: The Last Seance of Harry Houdini by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 31, 2025
The Last Séance of Harry Houdini in the evocative setting of the Flower Hill mansion gathers historical figures into a world without ghosts but one that still yearns for transcendent experience.
Old houses—and especialy mansions that are no longer inhabited—have memories. Or at least we impute memories to them, for they have housed generations of families, people no longer with us, people so long gone. Step into a well-preserved dwelling that once contained daily lives fifty, a hundred, or more years ago, and it becomes a temple. Like François Villon, it subtly asks us, Où sont les neiges d'antan? Metaphoricaly though not literally, that's "Where have …
Review: Self Portraits 5 by Bottle Alley Theatre Company, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 08, 2025
Intimate, intense, anonymous -- nine vigorous ensemble members presented self portraits in random order. You never knew what was about to hit, but you found out it was always vivid.
Self Portraits produces anonymous eternal ephemera in intense interactive staging. Bottle Alley Theatre's founder Chris Fontanes began the series in 2014. He was inspired by the late-night theatre of Chicago's Neo-Futurists, who originated the notion of thirty plays in sixty minutes back in 1988. The Neo-Futurists have run the show—or, more precisely, the technique—continuously since then; it's currently under the title The Infinite Wrench. The concept is simple but irresistible: members of an ensemble prepare …
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 world, …
Review: Wraith Radio by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 30, 2023
The reveals of WRAITH RADIO, when they come, are well foreshadowed and satisfying—if, that is, yielding to the void can ever seem satisfying to those still quivering with life.
Chris Fontanes's parable Wraith Radio portrays delirium and last hours of an injured soldier isolated in some dark time and place. The work debuted in a shabby warehouse in South Austin in 2016. The playwright's ragtag Bottle Alley Theatre Company was born in an equally devastated punk locale in 2012, and they've crept from one found venue to another since—proof of the ingenuity and dogged determination of DIY theatre makers. The 2016 Wraith Radio brought …
Review: A League of Her Own by Bottle Alley Theatre Company
by Justin M. West
Published on May 20, 2022
"That was one of the best performances I have ever seen," I told Abby Ferree, the solo protagonist. I stand by that. "You're amazing," I told director Allison Price.I regret not finding better words for an unforgettable and transformative experience.
For years I have maintained, as I likely always will, that theatre is not and should never be a "safe space." I am not referring to the creation process, of course. The creation of a piece, from its inception to its rehearsals and performances, should absolutely be a safe space for all involved. The safety of performers and those supporting them is paramount. But the art, itself? The ideas and emotions it evokes and provokes? …
Review: Wildcraft by Bottle Alley Theatre Company, in the Vortex Garden
by Justin M. West
Published on November 21, 2020
WILDCRAFT is a participatory exercise, extremely immersive. Our fingertips relish in the touch of unfamiliar herbs. Our ears parse our host December’s carefully crafted, wistful and alluring oration. Bottle Alley has done something exceedingly special.
2020 has been a year of sacrifice and loss. We’ve traded abundance for scarcity, kinship for solitude, and whim for measured compromise. For those of us with a creative spirit and for whom trips to the theatre were a mainstay of our nights and weekends, the inability to enjoy the arts—or the outright unavailability of them—has served as a poignant reminder that we’ve been taking it all for granted. Joni Mitchell was right. Undefeated, Austin …