AUSTIN THEATER REVIEWS

THE HISTORY OF KING LEAR, as revised by Nahum Tate, produced by The Hidden Room is an absolutely brilliant piece of theatre history....

The journey of every gay person is different and, in ways, the same. The hurts, the emotional scars and the retrospectively funny stories are all part of the baggage of every gay person and part of what makes us the survivors that stand here today. In NAKED AS A GAYBIRD, writer and performer Jay Byr...

DEAR PENELOPE by Kat Sparks, produced by SouthWest Theatre Productions that played a short two week run at the Dougherty Arts Center is a sweet love letter to girlfriend/buddy situation comedy....

THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW is a musical with music, lyrics and a book by Richard O'Brien. A camp tribute to the drive-in science fiction and horror B movie double features of the late 40's through early 70's, it tells the story of newly engaged couple Brad Majors (Daniel Cline) and Janet Weiss (Becca Sef...

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's iconic seven-time Tony Award-winning rock opera tells the story of Argentine political leader, Eva Peron, the second wife of Argentine president Juan Peron. We follow Evita's early life, rise to power, charity work, illness and death by cancer at the youthful age ...

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, whose full official title is The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, is a musical with a book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan and music and lyrics by Brooks. Based on the 1974 film of the same name by Brooks and Gene Wilder, it is a parody of the horror film genre, specifi...

STEEL MAGNOLIAS is a comedic drama written by Robert Harling, based on his experience with his sister's death. It is about the friendships and families of a group of Southern women in northwest Louisiana. The title references how these women are both delicate and strong. One of the most produced pla...

SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM is a multi-media musical revue consisting entirely of the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. It was conceived by James Lapine and had a limited run on Broadway in 2010. It is based on a show produced in 2000 called Moving On that was created by David Kernan. Kernan also creat...

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare, produced by The Baron's Men and currently playing at The Curtain Theatre is a stellar achievement for the veteran company....

PONTIAC FIREBIRD VARIATIONS takes a scene from William Shakespeare's RICHARD III (Act I, Scene IV to be precise) and proceeds to give you twenty variations on that scene. The result, ranging from funny to striking, is perhaps one of the most brilliant deconstructions of the Bard of Avon I have ever ...

LOVE ALONE, a new play by Deborah Salem Smith opens City Theatre's 10th season. In 2014, she was awarded a New Play Commission by Trinity Repertory. LOVE ALONE received the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award and an Honorable Mention for the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. It was also a fin...

The famous diary of Anne Frank has been recreated, republished, and reproduced in perhaps every form imaginable. Since its original publication in Amsterdam in 1947, The Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into over 67 languages, with over 30 million copies sold to this day. It has inspired th...

THE QUARRY, a new play by Greg Pierce, now in the work's second staging at Hyde Park Theatre, uses an unusual and surrealistic narrative style for what is basically a detective story to an effectively provocative effect. A series of puzzling events in the marble quarry in an unnamed town in Vermont ...

Jarrott Production's FREUD'S LAST SESSION by Mark St.Germain, features two veteran actors at the top of their game....

Ever since the success of Disney's The Lion King, Disney Theatricals have been trying to catch lightning in a bottle a second time. After the original production of Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID closed on Broadway in 2009 (after a run of 685 performances), it underwent two years of intensive work to f...

MURDER BALLAD MURDER MYSTERY was originally produced as a full-length, site-specific show at the VORTEX Theatre in 2009; and since then, paper chairs has been condensing the piece into the current gem now on display for three nights only in East Austin....

John Barrowman is a Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, host and writer who has both British and American citizenship. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1975. His first big break was as Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes on London's West ...

Sirius Theater's production of LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN by Oscar Wilde, playing a short four show run at City Theatre, is an admirable company premiere....

'These lives matter and these stories need to be told' - Chelsea Manasseri...

Tom Stoppard's THE REAL THING is a structurally complex play that uses the gimmick of the play-within-a-play to examine the concepts of marriage and infidelity. It debuted in London in 1982 and two years later was on Broadway....

Glass Half Full Theatre's original production of MISSIONARY POSITION: PLEASURE JOURNEYS FOR THE INTREPID LADY EXPLORER playing at Salvage Vanguard Theatre is a pure pleasure to experience on many levels.With an ensemble cast of three, and running at 40 minutes, not a moment is wasted in keeping the ...

THE 39 STEPS is a parody of the works of Alfred Hitchcock. It is adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. The original concept of a four actor version was by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon. Patrick Barlow rewrote their adaptation in 2005. The play's concept cal...

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart....

'One day I will destroy the sun' says the angry 8-month-old gamecock of the title in Capital T Theatre's current production of Eric Dufault's riotously funny black comedy, YEAR OF THE ROOSTER, now playing at the Hyde Park Theatre. 'I think I could kill a cow if I put my mind to it,' Odysseus Rex rag...

Playing at the Kam and James Morris Theatre in Lakeway, TexARTS presents the all-time audience favorite, GUYS AND DOLLS from August 14-23. Based on The Idylls of Sarah Brown by Damon Runyon, Frank Loesser's GUYS AND DOLLS takes us on a journey back in time to Broadway's Golden Era, and renowned dir...