Reviews for The Vortex Performances
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. …
Review: Changelings, by Vortex Repertory
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 31, 2015
Reina Hardy establishes a secret land one can enter with the correct magic keys and incantations. Once there, characters fight fairies’ nasty habit of stealing mortal babies and raising them as their own, the changelings.
Reina Hardy’s Changelings, A Dark Fairytale Adventure, playing weekends until February 7 is the very paragon of the dark fairytale subgenre. I expect it will have success and long runs nationally after its performances at the Vortex Repertory on Manor Road in Austin. Hardy, a young playwright and Michener Fellow from UT Austin, has already enjoyed recognition on the national level. She has typically pursued magical realism in her playwriting, notably in her Stars and …
Review: Spirit by The Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 13, 2014
Spirit is that which connects the forces of earth, air, fire, and water. And at Vortex Theater in East Austin, Spirit is the culmination of a performance suite of shows with the titles of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—the Elementals performances, created by Vortex Repertory Company and producing artistic director Bonnie Cullum. And what is Spirit the show? One good answer: it's a collection of excellent performances by the Vortex’s stable of highly talented actors, …
Review: For Fear the Glass May Shatter by The Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 26, 2014
For Fear the Glass May Shatter is an opera about physics. Stop right there, don’t leave! The first impression of this show directed by Bonnie Cullum at the Vortex is its high accessibility, quite surprising. Everyone must agree that an opera about physics is a refreshing change from yet another revival of a shallow canonical tale about violent European teenagers in love. I must back up. The opera is indeed set in Europe (and America), …
Review: Stars and Barmen by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 06, 2013
Watching these ineptitudes and witnessingTrey Deason's presentation of grad student Rupert as a quivering, clownish loser, I began to sense that Hardy's idea of comedy didn't correspond very much with my own.
I was in the mood for a a feel-good experience on Halloween, something without fangs or fishnets or pumpkins, and the Vortex's blurb 'a romantic comedy about getting lucky in space time' enticed me to their staging of Reina Hardy's script. She is semi-local, after all, as a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas, and the Shrewds staged her piece Glassheart not too long ago. The Vortex, bless Bonnie's heart, has succeeded in transforming …