Reviews for Austin Playhouse Performances
Review: Fat Ham by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 25, 2025
FAT HAM's bright, kinetic world is far from Shakespeare's Hamlet; its stories of changing Black family life are touching, comic, and eminently satisfying.
We were surprised, captivated, and thoroughly entertained by Austin Playhouse's production of Fat Ham, the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama directed by Ben Wolfe. The notion of combining Shakespeare's dark plot and soaring verse with the story of a Black family in Appalachia could have been a bridge too far, but playwright James Ijames adapted only the sketchiest outlines of Hamlet while delving deeply into family dynamics, frustrations, and existential musing. With the barest shell …
Review: The Spitfire Grill by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 29, 2024
Sixteen songs unpack considerable baggage and provide redemption all around. Austin Playhouse's capable performers enliven a somewhat dated script from 2000.
Austin Playhouse's musical The Spitfire Grill by James Valcq and Fred Alley uses sixteen songs to frame the story of a young female ex-con who chooses the hamlet of Gilead, Wisconsin in which to start a new life. She and the other denizens of the about-to-close café of the title unpack their considerable baggage over the course of the sixteen songs. Along the way, they find redemption. Much redemption, more than enough redemption to go …
Review: The Norwegians by C. Denby Swanson at Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 04, 2023
The greatest pleasures in this staging of THE NORWEGIANS are the Sarahs: Zeringue and Fleming Walker, acting out in the crossed cultures of Texas and Minnesota.
What better way to escape Austin's endless summer than to go to Minnesota? Austin Playhouse's The Norwegians by C. Denby Swanson has got just the antidote for you, a funny, quirky, cross-cultural, character-based comedy. This odd little piece ran off-off-Broadway for more than a year. I first saw it in 2014 at Southwestern University, where the playwright was on staff. Austin Playhouse presented it in 2015. According to Michael Barnes's profile in the Austin Statesman, Swanson …
Review: Indecent by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 09, 2023
Austin Playhouse's astonishingly accomplished production of INDECENT is a fully mermerizing experience that one wants never to end.
Director Lara Toner and the many artists of Austin Playhouse bring their audience into a fully mermerizing experience with their astonishingly accomplished production of Paula Vogel's Indecent - the True Story of a Little Jewish Play. In their hands and hearts, the work transcends theatrical experience; they create a multilayered emotional, intellectual, and historical experience peopled with vividly convincing characters and set within a world that no longer exists. The world of Yiddish-language theatre is …
Review: The Catastrophist by Austin Playhouse
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on April 06, 2022
Timely but not directly about COVID, Ben Wolfe's fitfully meta solo as the virologist known as THE CATASTOPHIST is both about saving the world and about dealing with insoluble personal issues
The Catastrophist is the story of virologist Nathan Wolfe, who tracks viral pandemics. It's based on the real-life work of Dr. Nathan Daniel Wolfe and was written by his wife, playwright Lauren Gunderson (The Book of Will, Silent Sky, and Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley). Gunderson contrasts the wide world of science with the more personal story of confronting one’s own mortality. Commissioned by Marin Theatre Company in 2020, the play premiered as a digital …
Review: The 12 Dates of Christmas AND Stealing Baby Jesus by Austin Playhouse
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on December 29, 2021
These stories performed by Lara Toner Haddock and Bernadette Nason are about a personal relationship with Christmas, both elusive and ineluctable, something that cannot be yet MUST be explained.
Austin Playhouse found a new venue at Trinity Street Playhouse in time to put on two holiday offerings, and more are planned for early spring. They chose to do two one-act, one-actor plays that explore the impact of Christmas on the lives of two very different women. Or put another way, how the experiences of their lives impact their views on Christmas. The 12 Dates of Christmas by Ginna Hoben stars Lara Toner Haddock and …