Recent Reviews

Review: Ballet Austin Two and Butler Fellowship Program Spring 2024 Show by Ballet Austin Two

Review: Ballet Austin Two and Butler Fellowship Program Spring 2024 Show by Ballet Austin Two

by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 08, 2024

Seventeen dancers with fellowships from Ballet Austin's second company displayed mastery and dazzling technique in ballets classic and emphatically modern. They deserve great recognition.

2024 Spring Performance by Ballet Austin Two and the Ballet Austin Butler Fellowship Program has just been performed at Austin Ventures Studio in Downtown Austin. It was given over one weekend, March 1 and 2, 2024. The show was easy to miss because of that brief performance life, and that is a loss to all the ballet mavens and committed fine arts aficionados of Austin. Take heart, it lives as an annual series.   The …

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Review: Barney Carey Gets His Wings by Scottish Rite Theater

Review: Barney Carey Gets His Wings by Scottish Rite Theater

by Michael Meigs
Published on February 29, 2024

Irish playwright Brendan Murray creates a bright, deep world where both the young audience and attending adults can soar enthusiastically. This is a thoughtful, playful and effective lesson, especially for first-time theatregoers.

Children's theatre—well performed, as Austin's Scottish Rite Theatre does—is magic. The young person's world of play and imagination is lit by a play crafted with imagination. One sure, snug adult pleasure is to sit close to the stage, the actors and musicians, and the very young in the audience with their family members. There's very little suspension of disbelief, for there's a lot of wide-eyed, appreciative, open belief. Magic and enchantments are immediately accepted, as …

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Review: UNSTILL LIFE by Blipswitch

Review: UNSTILL LIFE by Blipswitch

by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 28, 2024

Blipswitch's UNSTILL LIFE was a mosaic, a kaleidoscope, a swirl, time-traveling through living dioramas of contrastive color palettes, music, and movement vibe.

  Blipswitch Movement has just finished its latest big show in Austin, Unstill Life, at the historic Wolf House a few blocks east of I-35 on Cesar Chaves St. in east Austin. The brainchild of Taryn Lavery, Alex Miller, Nathan Brumbaugh, and Lucy Wilson, the group has extended its quirky signature pattern of finding alternative performance spaces in which to install its work. From the Curtain Theatre (and surrounding fairyland) in far western Travis County …

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Review: Beetlejuice by touring company

Review: Beetlejuice by touring company

by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on February 16, 2024

David Korins's set design is amazing, but Eddie Perfect's music is a maelstrom of meandering melodies muddled together.

The name Beetlejuice was derived from Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion. yet for many a fan it is the brightest star in the Tim Burton cinematic universe. The idea for the movie came to writers Michael McDowell and Laurence Senelick when they were at home trying to write a screenplay inspired by Ghostbusters and Poltergeist but were increasingly annoyed by their family members. Thus came the clever idea of ghosts …

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Review: Deadly Sins by K Zamore, Zamore Foundation at Mary Hardin Baylor University

Review: Deadly Sins by K Zamore, Zamore Foundation at Mary Hardin Baylor University

by Michael Meigs
Published on February 15, 2024

Playwright Zamora's message is clear -- virtuous, hardworking people may find themselves in an emotional wilderness. But God never forgets you.

Theatre is community; it has always been community, from its formal origins in ancient Greece through our own day. In his  2008 essay The Necessity of Theater philospher Paul Woodruff defined theater as "the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching." People gather at an appointed place and time to witness an action. The audience may be vast -- think of the 57th Superbowl of last Sunday -- or it …

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Review: PHOTOGRAPH 51 by Anna Ziegler, by Filigree Theatre, Austin

Review: PHOTOGRAPH 51 by Anna Ziegler, by Filigree Theatre, Austin

by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 05, 2024

Superlative writing makes DNA discovery accessible; Anna Ziegler's script and Elizabeth V. Newman's direction provide the competition, misgivings, and misogyny behind that Nobel Prize.

Anna Ziegler’s play Photograph 51 could exhaust a reviewer’s list of cliché superlatives. And such hacking would show disrespect to an impressive work of art premiering in Austin. Photograph 51 relates the scientific story of the discovery of the role of DNA in the genetics of life. Science-based plays have exceptional challenges explaining scientific principles and activities to non-scientific audiences. The writer must exercise great care in order not to lose the average theatregoer. Anna …

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