Reviews for The Vortex Performances
Review: 893/Ya-Ku-Za by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 31, 2018
There's a great deal of watchful waiting in the dialogue between these two characters, so much so that I found myself imagining this piece as a Japanese film in black-and-white, framed principally in closeups
The Generic Ensemble Company (GenEnCo) has mounted a starkly simple set on the Vortex Rep's inside stage, representing a private room in a Japanese restaurant or teahouse: sliding bamboo-and-paper partitions, mats, a low table and two cushions. By containing the hour-long performance of 893 YA-KU-ZA in this plain space, they're playing an evocative, reductionist game. Mia King and kt shorb meet here in an atmosphere of tense threat. King is Aya, female martial arts …
Review #2 of 2: A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick, Vortex Repertory, January 19 - February 5, 2017
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on January 25, 2017
A PERFECT ROBOT offers stories and concepts on so many levels that you can spend hours contemplating the nature of the soul and the principal theme: whether love can indeed be replicated by a machine that is willing to listen to and argue with you.
Her robot work is uncanny. Please define. Uncanny, as in strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way. Synonyms include eerie, unnatural, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, abnormal, bizarre and surreal. You mean it was unbelievable? No, exactly the opposite, in fact. First sentence does not compute, please begin again. Amelia Turner plays the robot, Mollybot, in the Vortex Theatre’s production of Sarah Saltwick’s new play A Perfect Robot and turns in an amazingly realistic …
Review #1 of 2: A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick, Vortex Repertory, January 19 - February 11, 2017
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 22, 2017
Sarah Saltwick's A PERFECT ROBOT is multi-layered and gives us robots, yes, but also a love story. Mollybot senses the world anew, imperfect in her highest functions and full of naïveté.
Anticipating Sarah Saltwick’s A Perfect Robot, we wonder what direction the play will take. Will it move toward robots and artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world imperfectly, as in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? Or will it take the deeper, heart-wrenching approach of that moral diamond in the rough, 1983’s Bladerunner, the film by Ridley Scott? The latter, especially, poses the question of what it means to have self-aware consciousness, what it means to be human. Can Saltwick’s play …
Review: Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 06, 2016
Cautionary play PRIVACY SETTINGS: A PROMETHEAN TALE focuses on real world issues from drones to cyber sex trafficking. The clever treasure hunt that follows bodily sucks the audience into a high-risk tale of Pandora's Box.
A slightly-built man dressed in T-shirt and slacks is led to a high black stone cube by law officers. After gaining the top of the cube, the man is chained to it, arms and legs, by a high official in a suit. The man says nothing as law enforcement officers and the suited man berate him as a traitor for releasing the files to, of all hideous groups, the American public. The officers curse him, spit …
Review: Terminus by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 27, 2016
Everything comes together magnificently in Gabriel Jason Dean's Terminus, and director Rudy Ramirez, wizard-like, summons the arts and crafts to make it live.
Everything comes together magnificently in Gabriel Jason Dean's Terminus to bring you to another place, another time and a situation as fraught, intense and haunting as those of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. The playwrght's dialogue is clever, sharp and memorable, and he has carpentered a framework and plot of great satisfactions. Director Rudy Ramirez, wizard-like, has summoned forth all the needed arts and crafts to make it live. Eller Freeman lives with her grandson Jaybo …
Review: Tartuffe by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 02, 2015
The all-teenage cast is fearless, they know their lines, they’re clear even when shouting, they dance sharply and well, and thus armed they dive straight into the world’s foremost play about hypocrisy and deception.
We’ve entered Austin’s hot summer of theatre. Get involved, there’s Zach Theatre’s Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, the experimental and satisfying MAST at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, three musicals by Summer Stock Austin at the Long Center, Hairspray at Zilker Hillside Theatre, Terence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! at City Theatre, 7 Towers’ Closer at the Dougherty Arts Center, and the new original The Tree Play by old Austin hand Robi Polgar coming soon to Ground Floor Theatre. And …