AUSTIN THEATER REVIEWS

I've heard a lot of great things about Reina Hardy, the playwright of Stars and Barmen. I've heard people throughout Austin refer to the UT Austin MFA candidate as a quirky comedic genius whose work is witty, smart, and intriguing. I hadn't seen any of Hardy's work for myself until I recently saw ...

Shakespeare should be about three things: language, character, and story. While Titus Andronicus is not be Shakespeare's best work by any means, it still has a treasure trove of elements to be mined by a skilled director and cast. Shakespeare's tale of revenge plots between Titus, a powerful Roman...

There were several empty seats at TexARTS last night as Broadway veteran Darcie Roberts took the stage for her first cabaret performance ever. I'm guessing the empty seats were partly because theater lovers in Austin proper may not know of the Lakeway based TexARTS and because Austinites may not be...

There is a happiness that is There Is a Happiness… Indeed, it easily could lead to crappiness Given how much it owes to poetry and rhyme, Arts rarely found on stage in our time. But writer Mickle Maher's play is full of wit Which he manages to pepper with touches of grit As he ex...

Falsettos may be a show that challenges both performers and audience members due to its complexity and subject matter, but any audience member who is up to the challenge (and I hope you are) must see this show. Falsettos is funny, intelligent, entertaining, and an important piece of musical theater...

There are times when I leave a theater feeling that the show I have just seen was tailor-made for my enjoyment. There are other times when I may not have been the intended audience but I nevertheless see the merits of the piece or can tell who the piece was intended for. And then there are shows l...

As a relative newbie to Austin, I have not seen The Dead President's Club until recently, but it's well known that Austin Playhouse's revivals of it are more frequent than political sex scandals. But while the later may induce eye-rolling and head-scratching, The Dead President's Club is met with u...

By the pricking of my thumb, something wickedly entertaining this way comes. Austin's City Theatre has a reputation for rousing and memorable stagings of Shakespearian plays, and that reputation continues with their current production of Macbeth....

It should be no surprise that as a lover of theater, I firmly believe in the transitive power of the performing arts. Any production has the power to elicit some emotional response from the audience, but theater often does more. Studies have shown that participating in the performing arts helps st...

Musicals rarely reach the phenomenal success of Les Miserables. It's played in London's West End for 28 years and counting. The Original Broadway production ran for over 6,500 performances and played for over 16 years, and the recent film adaptation won 3 Academy Awards and earned over $440 millio...

It's amazing how much sounds and noises made from the audience can be an accurate barometer of whether or not a performance is succeeding. Usually groans and hisses aren't a good sign, but in the case of Fat Pig, the anti-romantic comedy by Neil LaBute, such noises are a compliment, and Theatre En ...

Is there such thing as the perfect murder? That's certainly the question at the heart of Dial "M" for Murder, the 1952 drama about a husband's plot to murder his adulterous wife. Frederick Knott's play, now playing at University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance, is not as well-known as the...

At the end of the first act of The Book of Mormon, now playing Austin's Bass Concert Hall for a two week run, I thought to myself, 'This is the most distasteful, crude, offensive, and subversive musical I've ever seen, and I'm loving every minute of it.' When I went out to the lobby, it was clear t...

Last October, I visited Sam Bass Theatre for the first time. They were producing The Hallelujah Girls, a Southern screwball comedy by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten, and I was instantly impressed at the company's ability to bring zany characters to life. It's now a year after my fir...

If the thought of a brilliant hour of theater featuring twisted puppets living in someone's head sounds like your idea of a good time, I have one suggestion for you. Stop what you're doing, buy tickets to see The Head, and then keep reading this review. On the flipside, if the thought of a brillia...

THE MUSIC MAN plays the Georgetown Palace Theatre at 810 S. Austin Ave now thru October 27th. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $26 general, $24 seniors 55+, $14 active military & students, $10 children 9 and under. For tickets and information, pleas...

Though art about art has been all over Austin as of late, there's always room for one more production provided it's as good as this. Museum is a bold, laugh-out-loud farce that lovingly mocks the pretentiousness often found in both modern art and those who claim to love and understand it....

There are times when audiences would much rather see a carefree, lighthearted show rather than something thought provoking and profound, and that's exactly what National Pastime, a new Broadway-bound musical offers. While the show may need a few rewrites before it gets to the Great White Way, it's ...

Sometimes going against the grain pays off. Sadly, for the real life Bonnie and Clyde, going against the grain by becoming bank-robbing outlaws ended in their demise, but for the McCallum Fine Arts Academy and their musical production of Bonnie & Clyde, doing something daring and different is far m...

At one point in Red, the brilliant drama which kicks off Penfold Theatre's 2013-2014 season, the eccentric artist Mark Rothko forces his assistant to look at his work with a closer, more critical eye. 'Look at the tension between the blocks of color,' he demands. 'They ebb and flow and shift, gently...

Any theater-goer must have some passing familiarity with William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, arguably the screwball comedy in which fairies use a magical flower to make two sets of humans fall in love with each other. No such flower is needed here to elicit the audience's love and affe...

In a rare moment of profoundness and introspection, Groucho Marx once said, "I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose what it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it." I'm sure Grou...

Halfway through the first act of A Trip to Bountiful, now playing at the Monument Market in Georgetown, the elderly Carrie Watts escapes the cramped Houston apartment she shares with her son and his wife and ventures to Bountiful, a small Texas town she once called home. As soon as she leaves her f...

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, chivalry isn't dead, but it certainly has to fight to survive. As long as chivalry, kindness, and optimism are challenged, the story of Don Quixote will continue to be told. Perhaps that's one of the reasons behind Austin Playhouse's decision to open their...

There are so many characters in the visual arts who we instantly recognize. The Mona Lisa. The statue of David. We could probably even name the artist and where the piece is showcased now. But what about the models that inspired these iconic works? As one performer in Art Show/Model Show asks, ...