Recent Reviews
Review: The McAdo by Gilbert & Sullivan Austin
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 10, 2023
GSA's THE MIKADO, a brilliantly reimagined world-class opera take-off on THE MIKADO: Gilbert and Sullivan would be proud. Savoyards everywhere should come see it.
The 2023 grand production of Gilbert & Sullivan Austin (GSA), The McAdo, premiered June 9 at the Worley Barton Theater in north Austin after a monumental hiatus. Work on the clever relocation of The Mikado to Scotland, songs and characters intact, began well before the pandemic, which stopped all work on it. When it was deemed that the coast was clear, the show premiered in 2022. Immediately after the premiere performance, COVID rendered more than …
Review: These Events are Fortunate by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 05, 2023
This company's dancers, with only a few spoken lines for humorous effect, were luscious to watch. All have mastered modern dance technique and the quick-firing energy of movement that created surprising moments throughout the show.
These Events Are Fortunate is a rather vague title for a time of life at the entryway to summer filled with hope and excitement just one week after Memorial Day. But the title raises a question—what events? —that the audience tries to answer while watching the performances of the highly skilled, trained, athletic, and attractive dancers of the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company (KDHDC). As the website program notes: “Hamrick has created a world where …
Review: To Kill a Mockingbird (Sorkin) by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 30, 2023
Aaron Sorkin's adaptation for modern audiences is refreshing, compelling, and a sharp reminder that the controversial issues in Harper Lee's 1960 novel are relevant today.
Having reviewed quite a few new Broadway plays, I have gotten pretty used to seeing that such-and-such a production has won four, five, six, seven, or a gazillion Tony Awards. It is hard to describe my shock that the best Broadway play I have seen in years, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, won only one. I realize that the knee-jerk reaction to this statement will be along the lines that the Antoinette Perry …
Review: Sanctuary City by Ground Floor Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 29, 2023
The SANCTUARY CITY of urban New York is anything but a refuge; playwright Majok portrays a dark world lit only by the tenuous flame of friendship. Her ninety-minute piece grips and provides an unexpected, devastating twist.
Ground Floor Theatre's Sanctuary City plays on a starkly bare stage where the principal set pieces are metal scaffolding units and the principal decoration is a dark urban mural with random tagging. This set could represent anywhere or nowhere. There's a sense of brooding about it. It looks like a prison or a random inhabited space in a wasteland. In a sense, it is both. The lives here are those of "B" and "G," …
Review: Shakespeare's MEASURE FOR MEASURE by Classic Theatre, San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 23, 2023
The powerful message from the set and staging of Classic Theatre's MEASURE FOR MEASURE is that of a world of voyeurism, secrets, and ambiguity, particularly sexual ambiguity.
Classic Theatre's Measure for Measure places its audience in a dark, uneasy, and tainted world. Those attending seat themselves in the rows of black chairs flanking the long sides of a rectangular playing space; at the narrow ends of that virtually bare stage television monitors flicker fretfully and insistently. They show images of public spaces, parking garages, and other places that would be monitored by closed circuit television. As the audience gathers, a man seated at …
Review: Kaleidoscope by Ventana Ballet and Austin Camerata
by David Glen Robinson
Published on May 16, 2023
KALEIDOSCOPE: Five not so easy pieces. HAIKU: In a studio / music becomes the dancers / the night tastes it all
Dance in Austin is said to exist in a state of underfunded flux. Some say it is dying out, an artifact of twentieth century fine arts having no claim on the twenty-first. Ventana Ballet says no to all that, producing dance in ballet and contemporary technique and blends of the two. Ballet purists take note; widen your horizons a smidge by giving some creative attention to Ventana Ballet. Ventana’s show Kaleidoscope gives us a powerful, …