Our St. Louis Critics
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Review: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS at The Muny
Director Maggie Burrows and choreographer William Carlos Angulo have put their unique spin on this frighteningly fun new Muny production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Burrows knows that for any production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS to succeed it requires stellar lead and background vocals from the trio ...
Review: SUNDAY STANDARD TIME WITH TIM SCHALL at Blue Strawberry
Schall and Schmidt are a lovely duo providing a vintage feel of a 1940’s supper club. Wrapping his vocals with his pleasing tenor and a deep resonant lower register, Schall takes on standards of old and what he calls the new standards of the 1970s Baby Boomers. His opening set is “S Wonderful”...
Review: WEST SIDE STORY at The Muny
Ruggiero, his casting partner’s at Telsey & Co., and the Muny assembled an appropriately youthful, talented and beautiful cast. Every member of this young cast understands how to use lyrics plus subtext to tell story through song. Kanisha Feliciano’s (Maria) gorgeous soprano pierces the stra...
Review: THE YEARS at The Chapel
Sisters Andrea (Alicen Moser) and Eloise (Summer Baer), and their first cousin Isabella (Ashley Bauman) are the trio of women who help one another cope with the hardships that life throws at them. Moser, Baer and Bauman access their character’s genuine feelings by tapping into the character’s em...
Review: THE TURN OF THE SCREW at Union Avenue Opera
“The Turn of the Screw,” a deft psychological exploration of the dimensions of horror and the human mind. UAO’s successful staging of the work appropriately raised more questions than it answered, about danger, fear, the limits of human perception, and a host of other commonplaces in horror....
Review: THE NERD at The Strauss Blackbox Theater At The Kirkwood Peforming Arts Center
Moonstone Theatre Company’s production of THE NERD is a riotous fun time thanks to swift direction and the cast’s ability to execute on slapstick comedy with impeccable timing. Director Gary Wayne Barker juices ever last laugh from the script. His vision and blocking extracts performances of sha...
Review: CHESS at The Muny
While this Muny production is more similar to the original West End production in London versus the Broadway rewrite, CHESS is still more of a concert-like production. While the actors, ensemble and orchestra perform this material masterfully, the story doesn’t fully capture the competitive nature...
Review: DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at The Muny
The Muny and director John Tartaglia have staged an enchanted and epic tale as old as time for the second show of the Muny’s 105th season. This production of Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is like no other production you’ve experienced before. The opulent scenic design, the elegant set decorati...
Review: CENTER STAGE at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
It was a grandly exciting evening of opera! I “bravo”ed and shouted myself hoarse as the large troupe of singers took their bows—and so did the rest of this huge audienceWhat did our critic think of CENTER STAGE at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis?...
Review: VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM at Tower Grovey Abbey
Stray Dog Theatre has brought one of the longest running comedies in Off Broadway history to the Tower Grove Abbey. Hilarious, camp fun from start to finish, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is both a hilarious frolic and an example of how art can serve as a defiant act.
Thanks to tight pacing and excepti...
Review: BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL at The Muny
The Muny’s production of BEAUTIFUL is a nostalgic delight. They have taken one of the best jukebox musicals, adapted to The Muny stage and elevated it with a large cast of exceptional performers who deliver the songbooks of two prolific and competitive songwriting teams of the 1960’s, Carole Kin...
Review: SUSANNAH at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
It is a brilliant production of the second-most produced American opera. (After 'Porgy and Bess')
Gorgeous scenic effects and world-class voices....
Review: ABSENT FRIENDS at Kranzberg Black Box Theater
There are those rare instances when a director perfectly casts and directs a play. The actor in every role inhabits the playwright’s characters and delivers performances that transcend an exceptional script to further elevate the material. That is exactly what Robert Ashton has done with Albion Th...
Review: AIDA at STAGES St. Louis In The Ross Family Theater At The Kirkwood Performing Arts Center
Salgado, his company, and STAGES St. Louis delivers a touching story of fateful, forbidden and unrequited love with originality and panache. While Salgado’s choices are modernistic, it is his focus on the characters and their love story, told through Elton John and Time Rice’s score that allows ...
Review: COSI FAN TUTTE at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
Sublime voices overcome a troubled concept....
Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM at The Marcelle Theatre
New Line Theatre’s production of A FUNNY THING HAPPENS ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM succeeds due to Scott Miller’s directorial vision and the comedic timing of Miller’s strong cast. There are plenty of laughs in the First Act, but the second act builds to a crescendo of complete hilarity. Miller’...
Review: GLORIA: A LIFE at Wool Sutdio Theatre
Jenni Ryan gives a magnificent performance as Steinem. She paints Steinem with human vulnerability. Her characterization elicits audience empathy as she exposes the incertitude Steinem experienced in her early work. Ryan illustrates Steinem finding her voice and ultimately demonstrates Steinem’s m...
Review: TREEMONISHA at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
Last Saturday Opera Theatre of St. Louis premiered a new adaptation of Scott Joplin’s legendary opera Treemonisha. It is a bright and worthy addition to our recent flurry of adoration of some of America’s major black composers; the Black Rep closed their stunningly fine evening of Eubie Blak...
Review: WELCOME TO ARROYO'S at The Zack
WELCOME TO ARROYO’S is the current production by The Tesseract Theatre Company that closed on May 7th. Brittanie Gunn directs a funny and mostly effective production of Diaz’s uneven play. There are plenty of genuine laughs, more resulting from the energy, physical acting choices and rapping a...
Review: GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES at Kirkwood Performing Arts Center
Told in nonlinear time, the play is all about Doug and Kayleen's reconnections and missed opportunities. Over these years, the effects of alcoholism, bad relationships and family dysfunction complicate their relationship, testing the unspoken connection they share. Separated by time and distance, ea...
Review: EUBIE! at The Black Rep At The Edison Theater On The Washington University Campus
Originally produced in the 1970s, EUBIE re-introduced audiences to Blake’s iconic career and his music with a 23-song musical review. The Black Rep's production has taken century old music giving it a current sound with choreography that is both traditional and contemporary. The vocally talented...
Review: THE ABSOLUTE BRIGHTNESS OF LEONARD PELKEY at The Kranzberg Blackbox Theatre
Midnight Company’s Joe Hanrahan performs all nine roles in the play that is narrated by detective Chuck Desantis as he tries to solve the mystery of what happened to Leonard. Along the way the audience is introduced to Leonard’s Aunt Ellen, his cousin Phoebe, one of his bullies, Tyler, and to ab...
Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME at The Marcelle Theatre
Michelle Hand is mesmerizing as Heidi, driving nearly all of the play’s dialogue. Her indelible presence is captivating. She enters, introduces herself as Heidi and tells the audience about her mother’s vision to help her pay for college by winning VFW sponsored debates about what the constituti...
Review: BROKE: THE GAME SHOW SHOW at The Westport Playhouse
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things broke with this production. The scripted part of the show is banal. There are too few laughs. The two songs written, one for each act, are forgettable. In fact, the only memorable thing about the production value of BROKE was the bright kelly green blazer and...
Review: VIOLET at The Kranzberg Blackbox
While the source material is subpar, director Bekah Harbison uses simple staging with minimal set pieces to focus the audience on the relationships between the characters. Through her collaboration with her actors, she extracts committed and emotional performances out of each member of the cast. Her...
Videos
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God of Carnage New Jewish Theatre (NJT) (6/11-6/28) |
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The Light in the Piazza Loretto-Hilton Center (5/30-6/28) |
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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Stages St. Louis at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center (5/29-6/28) |
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The Wasp by Morgan Lloyd Malcom Albion Theatre (6/12-6/28) |
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Wicked Fox Theatre (5/12-5/30) |
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Liverpool Legends "The Complete Beatles Experience!" Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center (6/27-6/27) |
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Jake’s Leg - June 27, 7:30pm The Wildey (6/27-6/27) |
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Please Don''t Destroy: Live The Pageant (8/08-8/08) |
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Guns N’ Roses at Busch Stadium Busch Stadium (8/16-8/16) |
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USAF Band of Mid-America “Freedom 250” Concert Missouri Botanical Garden (7/01-7/01) |
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