Recent Reviews
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 …
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 …
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 …
Review: The Spitfire Grill by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 29, 2024
Sixteen songs unpack considerable baggage and provide redemption all around. Austin Playhouse's capable performers enliven a somewhat dated script from 2000.
Austin Playhouse's musical The Spitfire Grill by James Valcq and Fred Alley uses sixteen songs to frame the story of a young female ex-con who chooses the hamlet of Gilead, Wisconsin in which to start a new life. She and the other denizens of the about-to-close café of the title unpack their considerable baggage over the course of the sixteen songs. Along the way, they find redemption. Much redemption, more than enough redemption to go …
Review: Tina - The Tina Turner Musical by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on January 20, 2024
TINA is full of exuberance, energy, and hits (it's a jukebox musical, after all). The cast does a wonderful job. The script is slanted so Tina's victories are without exception either Pyrrhic or monetary.
In 1967 Tina Turner was both the first African American and the first woman to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Her story is well known to many. Born Anna Mae Bullock, she rose to stardom early in her career after joining Ike Turner’s band the Kings of Rhythm in 1956 at the age of seventeen. Her marriage to Ike Turner was marked by sixteen years of physical and emotional abuse, from …
Review: The Watchmaker's Song by Ventana Ballet
by David Glen Robinson
Published on December 11, 2023
The collaborative THE WATCHMAKER'S SONG, now annual, offers even more magic and diversity than its core story of The Nutcracker, in a setting that evokes dark times in Texas and a shift toward the light.
In The Watchmaker’s Song by Ventana Ballet and Red Nightfall Dance Theatre, the sugar plums are sprinkled with extra magic and the flavor is tasted in our imaginations. In hoary ancient times, a curse was leveled against a hero (Aidan DeWitt), who became the robotic and mysterious nutcracker. The Watchmaker, an equally mysterious supernatural being played by Navaji David Nava, makes a magic watch to counteract the evil. As we might expect, the Watchmaker’s superpower …