Recent Reviews
Review #2 of 2: Fiddler on the Roof by Touring Company, Bass Concert Hall, April 2 - 7, 2019
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 03, 2019
This FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, 55 years after the Broadway premiere, offers scene after scene of vividly masterful scenography, lithe and exuberant dancing, family conflict, quirky characters, love and heartbreak. You'll be getting full value for your ticket.
The first worry for a reviewer of the touring production of Fiddler on the Roof playing this week at UT's Bass Concert Hall is whether there's really anything useful or insightful to be said about this epic musical. First produced on Broadway 55 years ago, it received 1965 Tony awards for best musical, best score and best book. That monster success has been revived five times on Broadway since then, at intervals averaging nine years. …
Review #1 of 2: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF by touring company, Bass Concert Hall, April 2 - 7, 2019
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on April 03, 2019
This touring FIDDLER ON THE ROOF stays very faithful to the original and it may be a bit long for modern audiences. Yehezkel Lazarov with his invigorating comic zeal is perfectly cast as Tevye.
The Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof is playing in Austin from April 2nd to April 7th(including matinees on Saturday and Sunday). And as with many Broadway epics this production has been lavished with praise from The New York Times to New York Magazine. This performance is presented by Texas Performing Arts (TPA), found on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, an organization that produces performances, educational events, and …
Review: Three Shitty Sons by University of Texas Theatre & Dance
by Amanda Paz
Published on April 03, 2019
Hannah Kenah's comedy THREE SHITTY SONS speaks to the confused amazement that many millennials like me experience in their everyday lives.
Hannah Kenah creates an amusing portrait of life with three rambunctious sons who love the holidays but wish their mother would hurry up and just drop dead. A woman narrator introduces these “shitty” sons and their mom but also gives us background and perspective by evoking the boys’ dad and sister, both deceased. The narrator eventually steps into this dysfunctional family and marries the youngest brother. Kenah even takes the action into the afterlife and …
Review: THE MOORS by Gaslight Baker Theatre, Lockhart
by Kara Bliss McGregor
Published on March 16, 2019
The accents, contemporary music, and occasional sharp modern dialogue in THE MOORS are bracing and hilarious. This cast is gleeful and deft in establishing the button-up Victorian conventions and then punching them in the face.
The “merciless strength” and delightful absurdity of The Moors The English moors are both the setting and a brooding character in the gothic writings of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their 19thcentury fiction defined dark and stormy literary tropes made more compelling by having come from the imaginations of isolated young women living with a brother, aunt, and maid on the edge of the moors. The Moors by Jen Silverman reconstructs the conceits …
Review: Lardo Weeping by Local Opera Local Artists - LOLA
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 10, 2019
LOLA's "world workshop premiere" is the first act of a work to be premiered in 2020. With more recitative than aria for the wildly eccentric protagonist, it showcases mezzo Liz Cass's skills and Peter Stopchinski's wide-ranging musical inspirations.
LOLA is a collective of opera artists stretching its limbs and starting to create impressive new work. Lardo Weeping is a laudable effort in that direction. The show is up now at Ground Floor Theatre on Springdale Road, playing until March 16. Opera fans and postmodernists will love it immensely. Playwright Terry Galloway has created a world-class eccentric in the character of Dinah Lafarge. We know the type, and we touch the fringes of her …
Review: Well by Austin Community College
by Amanda Paz
Published on March 09, 2019
Austin Community College’s vividly abstract play added to the Theatre Department’s strong season. Leads Holly Parmer and Remy Joslin portrayed characters different from those of their previous work.
edited by Michael Meigs Imagine you’re thinking about writing a play but you have a very noisy mom. Lisa Kron’s play Well about illness and mothers is structured as a work in process with Lisa herself as the character onstage addressing the audience. Kron focuses on her family medical history and the Lansing, Michigan neighborhood where she grew up. She knits together issues of health and illness both in the individual and in a community. …