Reviews for Gaslight Baker Theatre Performances
Review: Frankenstein (adapted by Nick Dear) by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 18, 2023
Nick Dear tells the creature's story and the Gaslight Baker Theatre presents it with astonishing physicality and amazingly vivid projected detail.
The towering wall and platforms beyond the Gaslight Baker stage are swathed in white. When you settle into the already chilled audience space, you have the impression that you've been transported to the Arctic. That red, red sun in the distance is the only dim hint of possible warmth. A muted, percussive soundtrack seems to emanate from it as if from a celestial speaker. CTXLT reviews live narrative theatre -- stories told in words. …
Review: Blithe Spirit by Gaslight Baker Theatre, Lockhart
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 08, 2022
Noël Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT, a favorite, undergoes a subtle color change, but the fun is all there. What if spiritualism really worked? Things might get complicated!
With Halloween upon us, director Andrea Littlefield and her folks at Lockhart's Gaslight Baker Theatre have brought us a twist on Noël Cowart's never-ageing ghostly comedy. Blithe Spirit is one of my favorites. Coward, a master of witty repartee and witty lyrics, is given no shrift at all in the GBT program. That's unfortunate, for at dress rehearsal the entire front row was occupied by eager theatre club teens—they could look him up …
Review: Crimes of the Heart by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Annie Knox
Published on May 11, 2022
Beth Henley's CRIMES OF THE HEART is still acutely relevant, a beautiful tapestry of storytelling.
Beth Henley wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Crimes of the Heart more than 40 years ago, but its treatment of racism, domestic violence, and metal health issues makes it acutely relevant still. Henley weaves her complex characters, a trio of sisters in 1970s Mississippi, into a beautiful tapestry of storytelling. Under Tysha Calhoun's expert direction, the actors deliver quick, witty dialogue. Calhoun, recently voted Broadway World Austin’s Director of the Decade, has created a believable …
Review: The Play That Goes Wrong by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Kara Bliss McGregor
Published on February 14, 2022
THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG is a night of belly laughs and did-I-really-make-that-sound-out-loud snorts, exploring the comedy gold of theater disasters.
The Play That Goes Wrong goes right! One of the many joys of live theater is the exhilarating knowledge that there are live humans on the stage moving in real time and that absolutely anything can happen, for better or worse. And in truth, some of my favorite moments both as a performer and audience member are when something goes dreadfully wrong. There’s a heady quickening of adrenaline as the players try to …
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 …
Review: The Lion in Winter by Gaslight Baker Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 20, 2018
The Gaslight Baker production of THE LION IN WINTER offers an intimate tale on an epic set; this is story telling of demanding engagement, all the more rewarding for the challenges it presents.
Great things occur in humble venues. Over the past decade of theatre watching in Central Texas, I've seen that truism confirmed again and again. The current production of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter at the Gaslight Baker Theatre, just off Lockhart's central square, is another example. There's a lot of 'great' to it, and not in the casual American sense of the word. Goldman's script took on big themes (family, loyalty, love …