ST. LOUIS THEATER REVIEWS

There are defining moments in every life that change a person's entire trajectory. Sometimes we recognize them as such. Other times, we never recognize them at all, or maybe worse, we recognize them too late. Annapurna, a tender but unsettling 2013 two-hander play by Sharr White asks, among other qu...

There is a lot to wig out about with The Rep's production of The Mystery of Irma Vep. A rapid-fire mélange of B-movie insanity and camp hijinks, it is a throwback to a time when bawdy and raucous theater was a rebellious sign of the times....

St. Louis is so lucky to have a Shakespeare Festival, yes? Aren't we also lucky to live in a city where an energetic audience comes out on a weeknight in the middle of an icy February to pack a house and watch characters originally created some 430+ years ago take their shots at first love? Teens an...

Jordan Matt-Zeitler says he and Richard Matt-Zeitler packed up two years ago after ten years running Open House Theatre in Athens, IL to start Myriad Productions in St. Louis. They wanted to design a company that could produce new work as well as shows that aren't produced very often. a?oeA myriad o...

Flanagan has passed. It was terrible how he went. It was terrible that he went. But here you are in the pub with the others to hear the reading of the will and to mourn his passing at a traditional Irish Catholic wake. Not Irish? Or Catholic? Not a problem. Grab a name tag in the lobby before you en...

My Name is Asher Lev is a play written by Aaron Posner and directed by Aaron Sparks, adapted from the 1972 novel with the same title by Chaim Potok. It calls on its audience to imagine what it was like to be a Hasidic Jew whose artistic genius brings great conflict to his family and community in 195...

Theater is at its most compelling when the work on stage stays with the audience long after they have left the production. This is especially true with Upstream Theater's Wildfire, a well-acted and perfectly executed play that delves deeply into the psyche of some pretty ugly people....

If there was ever room on a plate for a heaping helping of delectable holiday conflict, it's inside a classroom where heartfelt high school drama teacher and teaching artist Logan (Shayna Blass) sets out with three well-intentioned white allies to write and produce a a?oefully-devised educational pl...

SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical opens with a swell of music and a chorus full of sequined, big-haired glittered-up dancers who sure can sing. The costumes are dazzling. The strobe lights are electrifying. Everything is loud and large and pulsing and promising. a?oeYou like that modest opening?a?? D...

Expeditiously paced and featuring a talented ensemble, The Rep's Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles is an unflinching look at the underbelly of immigration that continues this season's focus on offering intriguing dramas filled with complex characters....

It's 140 years old, but it's as fresh and appealing as when it first bounded into the public eye on New Year's Eve, 1879....

What you'll find at the end of a long, foggy hall with ominous flickering lights is the home of Lurie and June Walker. Come on in when you get here. Walk across the creaky kitchen floor and take a seat in one of the old wooden chairs along the walls. Don't mind the noises. Don't worry about those sh...

The St. Louis Rep has opened a smart, fast-paced, rather serious comedy about the meaning of Truth. It's called 'The Lifespan of a Fact'....

The arrival of the Repertory Theatre St. Louis' production of The Lifespan of a Fact could not be better timed. Although set in 2003, it's explorations of fiction versus nonfiction, fact versus embellishment and storytelling verses the truth could be ripped from the headlines of the modern world....

New Line Theatre, whose tagline is fittingly #MusicalTheatreAF, opens their 29th season with Cry-Baby, the 2007 musical with book by Mark O'Donnell & Thomas Meehan and songs by David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger. It is based on Cry-Baby the film, written and directed by Hairspray creator, John Water...

For going on fifteen years now Philip Boehm's Upstream Theater has been giving us some of the finest, most thought-provoking theater in town. Now they have opened a play about two iconic American agitators in the struggle for equal rights: Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. It's by playwrig...

Some Things that All People Should Know About the Nature and Function of the Self, Its Place in the Economy of Life, its Proper Training and its Righteous Exercise...

Angels In America is must-see event that is, in equal parts, a depiction, dialogue, response and conversation about the AIDS crisis. It also is underpinned by themes of race, life, death, faith and politics....

'A Model for Matisse' opens at the .ZACK in St. Louis....

A soldier gone to a far off war, absent for years. His wife in anguish, not knowing whether she's a widow. It's a story far older than The Odyssey....

Adapte from the 1994 film, A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE centers around Alfie Byrne, a down on his luck bus conductor and theater director whose latest theatrical production leads to a powerful journey of self-discovery....

Assisted Living: The Musical, written and performed by comedy duo Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett, and accompanied by pianist Jeremy Franklin Goodman, is a hilarious little 75-minute distraction from life's real aches and pains, playing now at The Playhouse at Westport Plaza. The vaudeville-style mus...

Union Avenue Opera is on a roll! Two homers in a row! First their sublime Candide, and now an equally fine production of Puccini's La bohème. Union Avenue knocked them both right into the bleachers, and those of us who were lucky enough to catch one of those prize performances now own a true treasu...

Jørgen Pedersen makes his musical directorial debut with Chicago (High School Edition) featuring the talented youth at Ignite Theatre Company, and here's something fun: it features an all-female cast! The fine performers at Ignite (whose mission involves inclusion of performers from all walks of li...

WOW is the word right now, as Grease, with direction and musical staging by Michael Hamilton, plays at Stages St. Louis! In this automatic, systematic, hyyyydromatic show, it's 1950s USA, and a new school year is beginning at Rydel High. A feisty Miss Lynch (Kendra Lynn Lucas) greets us as her stude...