AUSTIN THEATER REVIEWS

HOLY CROSS SUCKS! is Rob Nash's solo show that is a combination of four earlier separate plays: Freshman Year Sucks!, Sophomore Slump, Junior Blues and Senioritis. All of these earlier plays made their premiere at The Vortex between 1997 and 2000. HOLY CROSS SUCKS! played Off-Broadway in New York in...

Rodgers and Hammerstein have been a household name for many years. Even younger generations know them as one of the greatest musical duo's in the history of Broadway. With the creation of THE KING AND I, Rodgers and Hammerstein proved that they would take their place in history amongst the greats....

DRY LAND is play by Ruby Rae Spiegel that concerns a seventeen year old high school girl who is exploring options for ending her unwanted pregnancy. With the right to choose being part of the current war on women that unfolds daily in our political arena, this subject matter is both timely and a sto...

POCATELLO is a 2014 play from acclaimed playwright and MacArthur Fellow Samuel D. Hunter, that takes a darkly comedic look at the need for interaction and connection in an increasingly homogenized America. In a time when corporate stores are wiping out the uniqueness and the differences that separat...

Who doesn't know the story of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'? The story is drummed into our heads every holiday season from the moment we're able to process speech. The story has been adapted a staggering number of times for film, stage, opera, and other media. 'A Christmas Carol in Prose, Be...

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE is a parody of 20's musicals with a book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It is a show within a show told by a middle-aged, asocial Broadway musical fan, known only as Man in Chair (Scott Shipman). Seeking to cure his 'non-sp...

Austin Playhouse's production of MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY, continues the season of holiday-themed entertainment in Austin. Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, but taking the characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, this play endeavours to be a potential sequel to the ...

Casey Wimpee's new play, THE BRUTES, opens in 1861 and is set in 1864. It is a look at the storied theatrical family, the Booths. It examines not only John Wilkes Booth and his plans to assassinate President Lincoln, but also the people, known as Brutes, who conspired along with him in sympathy for ...

Austin Shakespeare has long ruled the 'Bard scene' in Shakespearean production here in central Texas. Oh, sure, others produce a play or two, but Austin Shakes has been the top of the heap for decades. Their productions have always been filled with the best Austin has to offer and have delighted aud...

Ringing in the holiday season is Georgetown Palace Theatre and their production of SANTALAND DIARIES. Originally written as an essay by humorist, David Sedaris, it was first read on National Public Radio's Morning Edition in 1992. An instant crowd-pleaser, the essay gave Sedaris his first major brea...

THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING was a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took her five years to complete, although she did interrupt the writing for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Caf . The novel has been adapted for the stage, motion pictures, and television. ...

Allison Gregory's WILD HORSES is a wickedly funny examination of the heady early teenage years. It is a stunning one woman monologue about the struggle for identity, independence and authenticity. It delves deeply into youth's search to find where and how you fit in a complicated world. Set in the 7...

THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND is an award winning musical revue showcasing the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb. It won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical Revue. The revue takes its title from a tune the songwriting team wrote for Liza Minnelli...

Austin Opera continues its tradition of masterfully recreating classic operas with Bizet's CARMEN currently playing at The Long Center....

I HATE HAMLET is a 1991 comedy by Paul Rudnick, who is best known as the author of Jeffrey and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. It is a supernatural fantasy inspired by the time when the playwright was living in an apartment in New York that was John Barrymore's old apartment. The play is a throwb...

ACT ONE is the story of famed playwright-director Moss Hart, from his poor Bronx beginnings to his first Broadway hit Once in a Lifetime. Hart's autobiography, considered by many to be the best book ever written about show business, has been stylishly adapted for the stage by James Lapine, Tony Awar...

It's Christmas in Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas where the Lion's Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never dies! Between the holiday yard display contest and the Little Theatre's 'A Christmas Carol' on the brink of cancellation, it's a miracle anyone gets tinsel on a tree. Three actors play...

THE SEAFARER is a 2006 play by Irish playwright Conor McPherson. Set on Christmas Eve in Baldoyle, a coastal suburb north of Dublin city, the play centers on James 'Sharky' Harkin (Steve Wright), an alcoholic who has recently returned to live with his blind, aging brother, Richard Harkin (Rick Felki...

Robert Harling's STEEL MAGNOLIAS is a 1987 comedy drama about the bond amongst a group of Southern women in northwest Louisiana and is based on his experience with his sister's death. The title suggests that while women may be as delicate as magnolias they are also as tough as steel. The magnolia al...

ZOMBIE PROM is an Off-Broadway musical that was later adapted into a short film. It was first produced at the Red Barn Theatre, Key West, Florida in 1993. It opened off-Broadway in 1996....

Presented by Georgetown Palace Theatre, ANNIE features a large and talented cast that knows how to entertain an audience. The performances of the characters played by children, however, are where the production shines brightest....

WAIT UNTIL DARK is a 1966 play by Frederick Knott that was revised in 2013 by Jeffrey Hatcher. Hatcher's revisions backdate the story to 1944, making Sam and Mike Marine buddies who served together in Italy, and the doll that is the object of search now contains diamonds instead of heroin. It also s...

RENT is a rock musical with music, lyrics and book by Jonathan Larson. It won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008 after a 12-year run of 5,123 performances, making it one of the longest running musicals of all time. The suc...

RHINOCEROS was written by Eug ne Ionesco in 1959 and staged for the first time in 1960. Considered by many scholars as one of the best examples of The Theatre of the Absurd, this label was, in later years, rejected as too interpretatively narrow. Over the course of three acts, the inhabitants of a s...

Filigree Theatre Delivers Icy BETRAYAL...