AUSTIN THEATER REVIEWS

Given the incredible talent of the show's creators, creative team, and cast, it's crystal clear why A Year With Frog and Toad has such a wide appeal to such a wide audience. There's not an unlikeable thing about it. For any parents wishing to expose their young children's to theater, Frog, Toad, a...

I have always loved opera companies that have the ability to evolve and recreate productions for modern audiences. Typically, Austin Opera always rises to meet this challenge, but regrettably, in this production they miss the mark. Despite some standout performances, A MASKED BALL falls short becaus...

If you follow the theatre scene of Austin, Texas at all, then you've most likely seen or heard something related to Dirty Dancing the Musical at Bass Concert Hall. The signage, the posters, the advertisements, even the ticket listings bill the production as a musical. As a part of Lexus' Broadway in...

Look up "Broadway Flop" on Google, and Carrie is bound to be the first title to show up. Though the material still is a bit rough around the edges, Austin Theatre Project's staging of Carrie manages to straddle the show's unintentional line between camp and seriousness while finding a compelling st...

The history of Peer Gynt is now almost as legendary and epic as the story itself. Henrik Ibsen based his epic piece of theater on the Norwegian fairytale of Per Gynt (Ibsen gives Per's first name an extra vowel), a young man who has a slew of misadventures involving trolls and other mythical creatu...

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue is a mix of hip-hop beats, rock and jazz and were a big hit at this year's ACL Festival....

The Avett Brothers entertain audiences from college students to baby boomers at ACL Festival 2014...

The current touring production of Beauty and the Beast shares the songs, dialogue, title, and even the creative team of the original Broadway production, but it completely lacks any sort of purpose, save the desire to put cash in the pockets of its producers. There's no magic or life in this pitifu...

It's clear even before Time Stands Still begins that the show has been carefully designed to make us ponder the effects of war. Before the actors take the stage, clips of the war-torn Middle East are projected on the stage, including images of children being indoctrinated into ISIS. It's impossi...

Lots of things are meant to be paired together. Peanut butter and jelly, Meryl Streep and Oscar nominations, but romance and quantum physics? They might not be a logical pairing, but in Penfold Theatre's Now Then Again, the way that they come together is an entertaining thing of genius....

Ask anyone you meet and they're bound to tell you that, with the possible exception of The Godfather Part II, sequels aren't as good as the original. That seems to be the case with Rex's Exes, now playing at Sam Bass Theatre. For three years in a row now, Sam Bass has opened their season a slapsti...

COCK, a comedy by Mike Bartlett, tells the story of John, a young man who takes a break from his boyfriend, and accidentally meets the woman of his dreams. This leaves John to grapple with self-identity, while still being deeply in love with both his partners. The problem is that everyone wants him ...

Rodgers & Hammerstein are, to me, the comfort food of musical theatre. Of all their shows, THE KING AND I holds up the best some 65 years on. It avoids the saccharine sweetness and didactic qualities of some of their other works. The musical is based on the 1944 novel 'Anna and the King of Siam' by ...

I was absolutely blown away with just how much I loved this show...and it wasn't just because of the memorable one-liners that the audience all waited for with baited breath. In this comedic take on the 1980s horror franchise, characters and demons sing and dance to catchy songs written specifically...

"I really, really miss high school theatre." This was the first thought I had as I entered, sat and watched, and exited McCallum Fine Arts Academy' production of The Producers. Because I first-handedly know how much work- and how much fun- it is to spend countless hours rehearsing (need to inte...

Conceived, adapted, and performed by Robert Faires, Henry V is a production that astounds from beginning to end. The production, which premiered in 2009, is certainly worthy of the revival its received....

How do you deal with cancer? How do you deal with other people's reactions to your cancer? If you're a dancer, how do you face life in all it's un-choreographed glory?...

One of my favorite descriptions of what theatre is states that "theatre is an experience, shared by a group of strangers, in the dark." This description certainly holds true for THE ORCHID FLOTILLA created by writer/director Caroline Reck, playing through Sept. 20 at The Salvage Vanguard Theater. It...

Every once in a while, I hear comments about theater that just make me cringe. One that I've heard on more than one occasion (usually from a pre-teen who doesn't know any better) is, 'OMG! The score from Wicked has got to be the toughest thing that Schwartz guy ever wrote. How did Idina do 'Defying ...

"When you are at zero, anything can happen. It's like total possibility," says Sharon, the next door neighbor to Mary and Ben, in Lisa D'Amour's DETROIT. And that is exactly what this play is about… sliding out of your place in society's economic structure and down to zero....

There's a sad phenomenon that occurs when an artist shows extreme talent and brilliance in one artistic medium. We tend to reward that talent by unjustly pigeonholing that artist into that medium alone. Case in point: Chekhov. We revere the Russian artist as a playwright, but we forget that he wrote...

Two of my very favorite things are satire and black comedy. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL has been a favorite of mine since the show took home Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical back in 2002. It is a rarity in today's musical...

This is a show with one solid goal in mind: spark conversation. And that it does quite well. It's the intent of Daniel Pearle's smart and powerful play to challenge the audience's thoughts on the education system, gender identity, and relationship between the two. Even the most socially liberal a...

Tradition. The world in itself embodies the theme of the well-known and beloved musical Fiddler on the Roof. For over half a century now, the timeless tale of Teyve, a loveable yet customary man raising five daughters in 19th century Russia, has touched a plethora of audiences, ranging in age, fa...

If you attend Jungalbook, currently running at Sam Bass Theatre, leave your memories of the Disney movie at the door. The stage adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's short stories, written by Edward Mast, differs greatly from the iconic Disney film and from the original Kipling stories. While Kipling ta...