Reviews for Zach Theatre Performances
Review: One Man, Two Guvnors by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 08, 2016
ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS is full of glee and surprises. It will tickle your funny bone without taxing your brain, making fun of greed, lust and cluelessness -- eternal aspects of the human condition.
The Zach Theatre's delivery of Richard Bean's zany rewrite of classic commedia dell'arte is great fun, full of circus glee with turns as unexpected and amusing as blasts of a confetti cannon. With One Man, Two Guvnors director Abe Reybold puts Goldoni's tricky servant Trifaldino into the ever charismatic and fat-suit-padded body of Martin Burke, the funniest actor on Austin's legitimate stage. Burke's radiant persona and confident ability to play directly to the audience make him a …
Review: Tribes by Zach Theatre, January 27 - February 28, 2016
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 06, 2016
Dave Steakley picked a winner with this script, successfully courted a fine ensemble and placed them in a soaring circular Palace of Ozymandias.
Nina Raine's Tribes deals with language. Make that plural: languages. First and predominant at the opening is the sharp back-and-forth of a comfortably middle-class English family, a couple with three grown children, all living at home. Christopher the father is particularly abrasive and foul-mouthed. Wife Beth puts up with it, and two of the children are uncowed by their dad's bantering sneers. The other, Billy, is quiet most of the time, and the prominent hearing devices …
Tonight’s Gonna be a Good Night: A Review of Zach Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, 2015
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on December 03, 2015
In a cornucopia of musical selections director Dave Steakley finds the heartbeat of this production, and let me tell you: It's a very, very rapid heartbeat.
EXPLOSIVE AND CHARMING, two adjectives very little aligned, are actually the most apt description for Zach Theatre’s 2015 interpretation of Charles’ Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol (ACC). An usher in the lobby warned me on the way in, “Take everything you remember about A Christmas Carol from your childhood and forget it.” His endearing enthusiasm was enough to excite the most suspicious Scrooge in the place. And true enough, the performance took a few liberties with the …
Review: Sophisticated Ladies, the Duke Ellington musical by Zach Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 21, 2015
Talent, thy name is Jennifer Holliday, brought to Austin for this production and all by herself the guarantor of the success of the show.
Zach Theatre's production of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies in the Topfer Theatre is spectacular. The Topfer is gaining a reputation for high-tech productions that dazzle large audiences. Sophisticated Ladies bodes well to enhance that reputation and with its production values to grant some sophistication to its design aestheticsl, although some more work remains to be done. This evening is a song cycle of Duke Ellington’s songs and music, tied in non-narrative fashion to Ellington’s …
Review: Cenicienta, at Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 26, 2015
Ten-year-old Belinda is solo but she's not alone. With the happy magic of object puppetry and the play of imagination, Gricelda Silva animates objects in the dreary basement so convincingly designed by David Molina Garza
If you've ever had the fleeting wish that Disney's Cinderella wasn't so dated and unreal, here's your remedy. The story of the valiant but terribly neglected stepdaughter dates back to Italian folktales and was retold in French by Charles Perrault and later in German by the Brothers Grimm. Now we have here in Austin a charming bilingual version, Spanish and English, that's the collaboration of talents from three Austin theatre companies or more. The …
Review: All The Way by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 18, 2015
You arrive at the theatre expecting to be entertained by a play about LBJ, and in Vinovich's first three minutes on stage you believe that you are right there with Lyndon. It's an eerie and electrifying experience.
Let's shout it out right now: Steve Vinovich is an astonishing LBJ impersonator. He resembles our larger-than-life 36th president, but what nails it is his mastery of the man's accent, phrasing and physical gesture. You arrive at the theatre expecting to be entertained by a play about LBJ, and in Vinovich's first three minutes on stage you believe that you are right there with Lyndon. It's an eerie and electrifying experience. Playwright Robert …