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BWW Review: ADMISSIONS Highlights The Good, Bad, And Ugly Of White Liberalism
by Lacey Cannon Gonzales - Sep 26, 2019

At the core of the play is a family examining what it means to benefit from white privilege in a racially biased society. Director, David Jarrott succeeds in turning Joshua Harmon's words into an accelerant that forces white progressives to reexamine themselves and where their allyship stands. This production starkly displays the characters' problematic views and statements while still leaving room for audiences to relate to the family's dynamic. In the end, the play is left unresolved and open-ended leaving plenty of room for discussion post-show.

BWW Review: THE MAGIC FIRE Is Wise, Witty and Wonderful
by Frank Benge - Jan 16, 2019

THE MAGIC FIRE, by Lillian Groag, is a 1997 memory play set in Buenos Aires during the 1950s regime of Juan Peron. This cross cultural immigrant family finds their personal refuge from the fascist politics of Argentina in art, theatre and opera. Events eventually bring them to the point where they are forced to confront not only politics, but also, their own moral obligations. The play first premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and still contains a powerful message that mirrors some of this country's current disturbing political trends.

THE MAGIC FIRE Opens This Week At Different Stages
by BWW News Desk - Jan 11, 2019

Different Stages continues its 2018- 2019 season this week with The Magic Fire by Lillian Groag. The Magic Fire is a wonderfully warm and amusing play about a young woman growing up in a family of European immigrants who surround themselves with a 'magic fire' of art to fend off the unpleasant realities of Juan Peron's Argentina in the years after World War II.  Argentinean-American playwright Lillian Groag explores the connections among memory, history, and art through the eyes of a child, revisited from the perspective of adulthood. By turns funny, loving, and politically alarming,  The Magic Fire weaves a spell of tango and opera, treasured memories and hidden truths.     Watch an interview with the director:

THE MAGIC FIRE Opens This Week At Different Stages
by A.A. Cristi - Jan 9, 2019

Different Stages continues its 2018- 2019 season this week with The Magic Fire by Lillian Groag. The Magic Fire is a wonderfully warm and amusing play about a young woman growing up in a family of European immigrants who surround themselves with a 'magic fire' of art to fend off the unpleasant realities of Juan Peron's Argentina in the years after World War II.  Argentinean-American playwright Lillian Groag explores the connections among memory, history, and art through the eyes of a child, revisited from the perspective of adulthood. By turns funny, loving, and politically alarming,  The Magic Fire weaves a spell of tango and opera, treasured memories and hidden truths.     Watch an interview with the director:

BWW Review: MRS. MANNERLY is a Sweetly Comic Story of Youth
by Frank Benge - Mar 27, 2017

MRS. MANNERLY, a memory play by Jeffrey Hatcher, takes inspiration from the playwright's memories of a childhood etiquette class that he took at the tender young age of ten. Walking with an etiquette book balanced on your head, learning complex table settings with a confounding array of flatware and stemware, and dropping a quarter in a jar each time you interrupt...those were the ways of Mrs. Mannerly's classes in 1967. Mrs. Mannerly (Jennifer Underwood) has high standards; so high, in fact, that not one student in her thirty-six years of teaching proper deportment has ever achieved perfection. Young Jeffrey (Suzanne Balling) wants to be the first and he has a trick up his sleeve that he thinks makes him a shoe-in to achieve that sought after goal... he has discovered Mrs. Mannerly has a secret past.

Different Stages Continues its Season with MRS. MANNERLY
by BWW News Desk - Feb 13, 2017

Different Stages continues its 2016 - 2017 season with Jeffery Hatcher's Mrs. Mannerly.

BWW Review: 4000 MILES is Warm, Wise and Wonderful
by Frank Benge - Mar 21, 2016

4000 MILES is a dramedy by Amy Herzog. It ran Off-Broadway 2011 - 2012, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2012 Obie for Best New American Play. The play is a affectionate look at dealing with loss, aging and love told through the relationship of a lost young man making a cross country bike trip and his 91 year old grandmother. What makes 4000 MILES interesting is the subtly incisive dialogue and the fascinating lead characters Herzog has written.

BWW Review: TERMINUS - A Work of Great Power and Beauty
by Frank Benge - Jan 18, 2016

TERMINUS, now in a World Premiere engagement at The Vortex, is a new play by Gabriel Jason Dean. This intricately layered family drama is the latest chapter in Dean's cycle of plays about the Georgia working class, The Attapulgus Elegies. TERMINUS examines a family haunted by the traumas of race and class in the South both in the past and in the present. This projected seven play collection covers a twenty plus year span and chronicles the disappearance of a small mill town.

BWW Reviews: Different Stages' THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE Explores Expressions of Love
by Jeff Davis - Jan 26, 2014

At the top of the second act of The Language Archive, a skilled linguist named George (Trevor Bissell) gives the audience a lesson in Esperanto, a universal language created in the late 1800s. In the span of about 2 minutes, we learn the Esperanto translations of 'I am loved,' 'I was loved,' and 'I have been loved,' among others.

BWW Reviews: Different Stages' ARSENIC AND OLD LACE Is Murderously Fun
by Jeff Davis - Dec 10, 2013

When December rolls around, it's customary for theater companies to scramble around for Holiday-themed fare. As beloved as Holiday shows are, it's refreshing when companies like Different Stages mount something decidedly in opposition of the trend. With its strong and hysterically funny production of Arsenic and Old Lace, Different Stages essentially defines how to successfully pull off counter-Holiday programming in Austin.

THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE to Open 1/10 at City Theater
by Tyler Peterson - Dec 9, 2013

Different Stages continues its 2013 - 2014 season with Julia Cho's prize winning play The Language Archive. George is a man consumed with preserving and documenting the dying languages of far-flung cultures. Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma has for him. Language and love are the twin themes of this loopy excursion into the difficulty of finding words for what lies in our hearts. A Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner, this lyrical, quirky comedy offers a gorgeous look at the power of words and the private languages that love inspires.

Different Stages Presents ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, Now thru 12/14
by BWW News Desk - Nov 22, 2013

Different Stages' Arsenic and Old Lace will run tonight, Nov 22 - Dec 14, 2013, playing Thu - Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm at The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd (map).

Different Stages to Present ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, 11/22-12/14
by BWW News Desk - Nov 12, 2013

Different Stages' Arsenic and Old Lace will run Nov 22 - Dec 14, 2013, playing Thu - Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm at The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd (map).

Different Stages to Present ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, 11/22-12/14
by Tyler Peterson - Oct 24, 2013

Different Stages opens its 2013-2014 season with the classic comedy by Joseph Kesselring, Arsenic and Old Lace. Drama critic Mortimer Brewster must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to relieving the loneliness of old men by inviting them in for a nice glass of homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and just a pinch of cyanide. Add to the mix his two brothers - one who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, and one who is a serial killer. Toss in a police officer who thinks he's a playwright, sprinkle in a few corpses, and you have one of the most hilarious and enduring comedies in American theater. The New York Times called Arsenic and Old Lace so funny that none of us will ever forget it!

BWW Reviews: QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT Offers an Honest Look at Drug Abuse
by Jeff Davis - Jun 4, 2013

We all have secrets. We all have ways of coping with disappointment or pain. Some of those coping methods do more harm than good. None of these ideas are necessarily original, and they've all been dramatized before. However, the story of an elderly couple who secretly copes by using crystal meth is an unexpected one that has yet to be told. That's one of many reasons that makes Qualities of Starlight, the new play by Gabriel Jason Dean now playing at Vortex Rep, such a riveting and effective drama.

BWW Reviews: World Premiere of ELIZABETH: HEART OF A KING Lacks Regal Focus and Polish
by Jeff Davis - Jan 13, 2013

I hoped to enjoy the World Premiere of Elizabeth: Heart of a King, now playing Austin's Vortex Theatre as it had many elements I generally gravitate towards. However, though Queen Elizabeth may be one of the most successful monarchs in history, Elizabeth: Heart of a King does not fare so well.

Different Stages Presents Well Thru 12/3
by BWW News Desk - Dec 3, 2011

Different Stages opens its 2011 - 2012 season with Well by acclaimed writer and performer Lisa Kron.

Lisa Kron's WELL To Play The Vortex Thru 12/3
by BWW News Desk - Dec 3, 2011

Different Stages opens its 2011 - 2012 season with Well by acclaimed writer and performer Lisa Kron. Kron's newest work is all about her mom.

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