AUSTIN THEATER REVIEWS

William Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, by Shrewd Productions and playing at Trinity Street Theatre is a blissful, flawless evening at the theatre....

Opening to a warm and receptive full house on Tuesday night, the national tour of the Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's iconic favorite, THE SOUND OF MUSIC proved to be an evening you simply mustn't miss. Whether you are seeking to introduce your child or grandchild to the warm and fami...

A SHINING ATTRIBUTE by Candyce Rusk is a one act, solo work that tells the story of Bijou, a spirit that haunts a former burlesque house in Boston's Combat Zone. The Combat Zone was the name given in the 1960's to the adult entertainment district in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. In the early 70's ...

FIRST DATE THE MUSICAL is a new musical with a book by Austin Winsberg and music and lyrics by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner. It's based around the various permutations of blind dating. It made its world premiere in 2012 at Seattle's ACT Theatre in a 5th Avenue Theatre co-production and made its B...

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS by Robert Bolt started out as a radio drama for BBC Radio in 1954. It was adapted into an hour-long live television version in 1957 and finally was reworked by Bolt for the stage in 1960. After success on the West End and on Broadway, it was subsequently made into an Academy Aw...

In the grand tradition of musical parody, Georgetown Palace brings us the lighthearted, all-in-good-jest musical, XANADU. For Valentine's Weekend, The Palace is having a special promotion of $5 off per ticket order if the code XANADU5 is entered at checkout online. With only one weekend left, a tic...

Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare is one of his plays that scholars either group with his tragedies or as one of the so-called "problem plays". FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS is part of an on-going attempt by the Rude Mechs to make more accessible and usable pieces of theatre out of the canon of Shakes...

TRIBES by Nina Raine first premiered in 2010 at London's Royal Court Theatre. It won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play in its Off-Broadway premiere. The play is a look at a dysfunctional British family, made up of parents Beth (Babs George) and Christopher (Mitch Peleggi) and their thre...

EXIT 27 by Aleks Merilo, produced by Southwest Theatre Productions at the Boyd Vance Theatre is a fascinating study in mind control and the effects of cult religion on the innocent....

Adrienne Dawes' new play, DENIM DOVES, is now in its World Premiere staging at Salvage Vanguard Theatre. Described as a collaboratively devised piece created with SVT and as a feminist farce, DENIM DOVES plays like a modern day version of a Greek comedy by Aristophanes. It's a deliriously silly bawd...

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...

Noel Coward's comedy, FALLEN ANGELS, produced by Different Stages and running at The Trinity Street Theatre is a sublimely entertaining evening at the theatre....

BLUE MAN GROUP is not your average stage show. BLUE MAN GROUP is a strange, zany, comical, and surreal experience. How do you describe the indescribable? Its not a musical, its not a play, its an experience. While performance art comes closest to categorizing them, what an audience experiences is re...

During the seventies, the adult film industry went through a very strange period of trying to make adult films with actual plots and dialogue. The attempts, to put it mildly, were laughable. The 'acting' was, at best, wooden and the dialogue ranged the gamut from stilted to repetitive. During this p...

KILL THE CRITIC! by Todd Wallinger is a new period farce that had its second production here in Austin. Set in the fifties, it is a clever little script about an actor who kidnaps a critic to avoid another bad review. Unfortunately, this production by Stage Presence Players, had so much wrong with i...

DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, currently playing at Georgetown's Palace Theatre exhibits some truly wonderful performances from many of the actors, unfortunately it is the technical aspects of the show that are less than stellar....

THE BOOK OF MORMON is a satirical musical with book, lyrics, and music by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone. Parker and Stone are the creators of the animated series South Park, which just wrapped up its 19th season. Lopez is best known as a co-composer/co-lyricist of Avenue Q and Frozen. THE...

One woman show STEALING BABY JESUS written and performed by master storyteller Bernadette Nason and directed by Michael Stuart, is an hilarious look at childhood holiday traditions and their sometimes odd translation to our adult lives....

With only 30 audience members per performance, your experience with the Rude Mech's NOW NOW OH NOW begins when you get your tickets. Each audience member must choose from one of six symbols. Your choice will group you into a tribe of five members. You are about to embark on an adventure with people ...

SKYLIGHT is a drama by British playwright David Hare. It premiered in London in 1995, played on Broadway in 1996 and was revived in 2015, winning the Tony for Best Revival of a Play. The play also won the 1996 Laurence Olivier Award for Play of the Year. Hare's brutal examination of an extramarital ...

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER THE MUSICAL is based on the Rankin/Bass animated television special. The stage production directed and conceived by Jeff Frank, script adaptation by Robert Penola, arrangements and orchestrations by Timothy Splain, made a stop at The Long Center. There can be no more d...

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens, adapted and directed by Dave Steakley, currently playing at ZACH Theatre, is a stellar way to celebrate the holidays. Reimagined as a musical with contemporary songs and performed by a Broadway caliber cast, Dickens' classic has never been more entertaining....

David Sedaris wrote 'SantaLand Diaries', an essay that is a humorous account of Sedaris' stint working as a Christmas elf in 'SantaLand' at Macy's department store. Sedaris first read the essay on NPR's Morning Edition on December 23, 1992. Well-received, it became Sedaris' first major break. In 199...

THE WILD PARTY is a musical with a book by Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe and music and lyrics by LaChiusa. Based on the 1928 Joseph Moncure March poem of the same name, the show is about the masks that people wear culturally and the removal of those masks over the course of a party. The ...

THE DUMBWAITER, by Harold Pinter, is a one act play written in 1957. Almost 60 years on, it still has a lot to say about our need to assert our individuality while seeking meaning. It still manages to make a profound statement about the human condition. The title refers not only to the food lift tha...