St. Louis Theater Reviews Page 4

Review: CLUE at STAGES St. Louis In The Ross Family Theater At The Kirkwood Performing Arts Center
by James Lindhorst - July 29, 2023

St. Louis Stages is producing their first play in decades with their astonishing, brilliant and comical production of CLUE. The dictionary doesn’t hold enough superlatives to describe the superb quality of this production. This review is going to sound cliché in its description but be assured that a...

Review: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS at The Muny
by James Lindhorst - July 27, 2023

Director Maggie Burrows and choreographer William Carlos Angulo have put their unique spin on this frighteningly fun new Muny production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Burrows knows that for any production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS to succeed it requires stellar lead and background vocals from the trio ...

Review: SUNDAY STANDARD TIME WITH TIM SCHALL at Blue Strawberry
by James Lindhorst - July 23, 2023

Schall and Schmidt are a lovely duo providing a vintage feel of a 1940’s supper club. Wrapping his vocals with his pleasing tenor and a deep resonant lower register, Schall takes on standards of old and what he calls the new standards of the 1970s Baby Boomers. His opening set is “S Wonderful” as he...

Review: WEST SIDE STORY at The Muny
by James Lindhorst - July 17, 2023

Ruggiero, his casting partner’s at Telsey & Co., and the Muny assembled an appropriately youthful, talented and beautiful cast. Every member of this young cast understands how to use lyrics plus subtext to tell story through song. Kanisha Feliciano’s (Maria) gorgeous soprano pierces the stratosp...

Review: THE YEARS at The Chapel
by James Lindhorst - July 15, 2023

Sisters Andrea (Alicen Moser) and Eloise (Summer Baer), and their first cousin Isabella (Ashley Bauman) are the trio of women who help one another cope with the hardships that life throws at them. Moser, Baer and Bauman access their character’s genuine feelings by tapping into the character’s emotio...

Review: THE TURN OF THE SCREW at Union Avenue Opera
by Benjamin Torbert - July 10, 2023

“The Turn of the Screw,” a deft psychological exploration of the dimensions of horror and the human mind. UAO’s successful staging of the work appropriately raised more questions than it answered, about danger, fear, the limits of human perception, and a host of other commonplaces in horror....

Review: THE NERD at The Strauss Blackbox Theater At The Kirkwood Peforming Arts Center
by James Lindhorst - July 09, 2023

Moonstone Theatre Company’s production of THE NERD is a riotous fun time thanks to swift direction and the cast’s ability to execute on slapstick comedy with impeccable timing. Director Gary Wayne Barker juices ever last laugh from the script. His vision and blocking extracts performances of sharp p...

Review: CHESS at The Muny
by James Lindhorst - July 07, 2023

While this Muny production is more similar to the original West End production in London versus the Broadway rewrite, CHESS is still more of a concert-like production. While the actors, ensemble and orchestra perform this material masterfully, the story doesn’t fully capture the competitive nature o...

Review: DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at The Muny
by James Lindhorst - June 24, 2023

The Muny and director John Tartaglia have staged an enchanted and epic tale as old as time for the second show of the Muny’s 105th season. This production of Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is like no other production you’ve experienced before. The opulent scenic design, the elegant set decoration, th...

Review: VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM at Tower Grovey Abbey
by Rob Levy - June 19, 2023

Stray Dog Theatre has brought one of the longest running comedies in Off Broadway history to the Tower Grove Abbey. Hilarious, camp fun from start to finish, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is both a hilarious frolic and an example of how art can serve as a defiant act. Thanks to tight pacing and excepti...

Review: BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL at The Muny
by James Lindhorst - June 13, 2023

The Muny’s production of BEAUTIFUL is a nostalgic delight. They have taken one of the best jukebox musicals, adapted to The Muny stage and elevated it with a large cast of exceptional performers who deliver the songbooks of two prolific and competitive songwriting teams of the 1960’s, Carole King/Ge...

Review: ABSENT FRIENDS at Kranzberg Black Box Theater
by James Lindhorst - June 11, 2023

There are those rare instances when a director perfectly casts and directs a play. The actor in every role inhabits the playwright’s characters and delivers performances that transcend an exceptional script to further elevate the material. That is exactly what Robert Ashton has done with Albion Thea...

Review: AIDA at STAGES St. Louis In The Ross Family Theater At The Kirkwood Performing Arts Center
by James Lindhorst - June 10, 2023

Salgado, his company, and STAGES St. Louis delivers a touching story of fateful, forbidden and unrequited love with originality and panache. While Salgado’s choices are modernistic, it is his focus on the characters and their love story, told through Elton John and Time Rice’s score that allows this...

Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM at The Marcelle Theatre
by James Lindhorst - June 03, 2023

New Line Theatre’s production of A FUNNY THING HAPPENS ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM succeeds due to Scott Miller’s directorial vision and the comedic timing of Miller’s strong cast. There are plenty of laughs in the First Act, but the second act builds to a crescendo of complete hilarity. Miller’s blocki...

Review: GLORIA: A LIFE at Wool Sutdio Theatre
by James Lindhorst - June 02, 2023

Jenni Ryan gives a magnificent performance as Steinem. She paints Steinem with human vulnerability. Her characterization elicits audience empathy as she exposes the incertitude Steinem experienced in her early work. Ryan illustrates Steinem finding her voice and ultimately demonstrates Steinem’s mat...

Review: WELCOME TO ARROYO'S at The Zack
by James Lindhorst - May 07, 2023

WELCOME TO ARROYO’S is the current production by The Tesseract Theatre Company that closed on May 7th.  Brittanie Gunn directs a funny and mostly effective production of Diaz’s uneven play. There are plenty of genuine laughs, more resulting from the energy, physical acting choices and rapping abilit...

Review: GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES at Kirkwood Performing Arts Center
by Rob Levy - May 07, 2023

Told in nonlinear time, the play is all about Doug and Kayleen's reconnections and missed opportunities. Over these years, the effects of alcoholism, bad relationships and family dysfunction complicate their relationship, testing the unspoken connection they share. Separated by time and distance, ea...

Review: EUBIE! at The Black Rep At The Edison Theater On The Washington University Campus
by James Lindhorst - May 06, 2023

Originally produced in the 1970s, EUBIE re-introduced audiences to Blake’s iconic career and  his music with a 23-song musical review. The Black Rep's production has taken century old music giving it a current sound with choreography that is both traditional and contemporary. The vocally talented ca...

Review: THE ABSOLUTE BRIGHTNESS OF LEONARD PELKEY at The Kranzberg Blackbox Theatre
by James Lindhorst - May 05, 2023

Midnight Company’s Joe Hanrahan performs all nine roles in the play that is narrated by detective Chuck Desantis as he tries to solve the mystery of what happened to Leonard. Along the way the audience is introduced to Leonard’s Aunt Ellen, his cousin Phoebe, one of his bullies, Tyler, and to about ...

Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME at The Marcelle Theatre
by James Lindhorst - April 16, 2023

Michelle Hand is mesmerizing as Heidi, driving nearly all of the play’s dialogue. Her indelible presence is captivating. She enters, introduces herself as Heidi and tells the audience about her mother’s vision to help her pay for college by winning VFW sponsored debates about what the constitution m...

Review: BROKE: THE GAME SHOW SHOW at The Westport Playhouse
by James Lindhorst - April 16, 2023

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things broke with this production. The scripted part of the show is banal. There are too few laughs. The two songs written, one for each act, are forgettable. In fact, the only memorable thing about the production value of BROKE was the bright kelly green blazer and...

Review: VIOLET at The Kranzberg Blackbox
by James Lindhorst - April 07, 2023

While the source material is subpar, director Bekah Harbison uses simple staging with minimal set pieces to focus the audience on the relationships between the characters. Through her collaboration with her actors, she extracts committed and emotional performances out of each member of the cast. Her...

Review: INTO THE WOODS at Tower Grove Abbey
by Rob Levy - April 06, 2023

The second show of Stray Dog Theatre’s 2023 season honors the late Stephen Sondheim with an innovative take on his musical Into the Woods. Filled with great songs, this imaginative production gives audiences a thrilling theatrical experience.at did our critic think of INTO THE WOODS at Tower Grove A...

Review: SKELETON CREW at The Black Rep At Berges Theatre At COCA
by James Lindhorst - April 01, 2023

Director Geovonday Jones vision and collaboration with his actors and technical crew deliver a superb production of SKELETON CREW. In addition to the exceptionally directed performances by the actors, Jones empowers his technical teams and allows their creativity to raise the production value to the...

Review: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS at The Loretto-Hilton Center On The Campus Of Webster University
by Rob Levy - March 27, 2023

Brimming with Hitchcockian noir and soaked in blood and intrigue, The Rep’s Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express excels in every possible way. Great performances, a smart use of projections, gorgeous costumes and a must-see set design come together for a vivid interpretation of Christie’s ...