TAMPA THEATER REVIEWS

Director Mitchell Gonzalez leads his young cast in bringing to life this audience favorite....

A Skeptic and a Bruja by Rosa Fernandez makes its world premiere with Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, and in Cooperation with freeFall Theatre Company across the bay. The last time freeFall worked in conjuncture with another company was their collaboration with the Hippodrome and their production of ...

The show opens with a Ghost Light center stage. As most shows of a Brechtian nature go, characters of nondescript fashion layout the evening events in the manner of Prologue. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, or as it is subtitled “The Parable Play,” tells the story of the rise of Arturo Ui a...

Anyone who has been immersed in “Pop Culture” over the last 30+ years has seen, heard, or knows every line and sequence of the 1990 Romantic Comedy Pretty Woman starring the iconic duo of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Read our critic's review of the new stage musical. ...

No matter how much you know about the Titanic disaster, the musical grounds the story, humanizes it, and you leave the theatre an emotional wreck....

The Sugar Ridge Rag, a play by Philip Middleton Williams, premiered at LAB Theater Project in Tampa’s Historic Ybor City on April 28, 2022. The story is a complex, yet simplistic study of the life of an average family in rural Ohio, and what lies at the depths of family values and the definition o...

'Do yourself a favor, DO NOT miss this incredibly sobering production.' says BWW's critic. ...

Over the course of the last 26 years somewhere along the line of learned history in the depths of musical theatre you have heard the name Jonathan Larson, synonymous with the 1996 Rock musical RENT that changed the face of musical theatre in its time. Boasting a rock score and groundbreaking storyli...

Read our critic's review! Over the years and throughout the History of the stage musical, certain shows come along and start as films before moving into an adaptation for the stage. Shows such as Grease, The Bodyguard, Ghost, and more recently Moulin Rouge, Beetlejuice, and Back to the Future. One t...

Little Shop of Horrors is a horror comedy rock musical with somewhat of a cult following much like Hedwig & the Angry Inch, and Rocky Horror Show. Read our critic's review. ...

Murder on the Orient Express a stage adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel was written and adapted by Ken Ludwig and premiered in New Jersey in 2017. Based on the Christie novel that was first published in the United States in February 1934, and originally published under the name Murder on the Ca...

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill is a play with music written by Lanie Robertson and this production is directed by Wren T. Brown. The musical premiered in 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia and its story recounts some events of Billie Holiday’s life leading up to this performance at Emerson’s four m...

Though the play was performed on stage to a live audience, the Center also made it possible to enjoy the musical live-streamed from the comfort of our homes. Images of the ship and the sounds of clanging bells, water, and seagulls prepared us for the coming story. Every actor in the show played a ...

For Thursday evening’s performance of Frozen the Musical the crowd was buzzing, little girls and women of all ages appeared in Elsa and Anna dresses, and some were carrying Olafs by their side in anticipation of a magical trip to the fictional Arendelle. Like many of us immersed in pop culture and...

Titanic the Musical opened on Broadway in April of 1997. The musical tells the story of the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, or what would soon be aptly named “The Unsinkable Ship.” However, as history tells us the ship sank on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. The 1997 Broadway production w...

Jennifer Haley’s haunting and sensitively-driven script dive deep into the middle of the human experience as it examines it from one of the hardest perspectives, dealing with a crippling disease. Some diseases render a person defenseless in body and in mind, but then there are diseases such as Dem...

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a musical inspired by the Victor Hugo novel of 1831, with music primarily featured in the 1996 Disney film adaptation. With music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and book by James Lapine and Peter Parnell The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 2.5 hour deep dive ...

Take a dive and swim to Fosse Land!...

In 1962 English author Anthony Burgess published the Dystopian-Black Comedy novel entitled A Clockwork Orange. The novel itself was partially written in a Russian-influence argot called “Nadsat” which in a Russian suffix took on its namesake for the equivalent of “TEEN” in English. In 2005 t...

The Prom a new musical with music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin is based on an original concept by Jack Viertel. Directed and Choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, this explosive new musical took the stage by storm Tuesday night at the Straz Center,...

Davies is animated, charismatic, and a force of nature that keeps you on the edge of your seat with Noone's ultra-clever script....

We all know the story, have studied it in High School English, and for some even had the experience of visiting the Annex itself in Amsterdam. For Anne Frank and her family, the time spent in the “Annex” in hiding goes down in history as a timeless story that is still being told and is still as ...

Jonathan Garcia and Mckenna Knouse are standouts in a talented cast that brings this joyfully macabre show to life....

In 1946 before Julia Child rose to fame James Andrew Beard became the first “celebrity” cook with the premiere of his NBC cooking show, “I Love to Eat.” Television sets were still black and white back then and there may have been 1000 sets total in all of Metropolitan New York, but betwe...

Director Derek Baxter leads three terrific actors--Jeremiah Murzinsky, David the Day, and Steven C. Fox--in this acerbically hilarious show....