Reviews for Zach Theatre Performances
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 …
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 rise …
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 Zach …
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 Shenkkan's All …
Peter and the Starcatcher, by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 12, 2015
Direction and conception evoke the sort of rowdy play-making one might imagine if a dozen pre-teens spent the night at a lock-in after watching Disney's film of Peter Pan.
Professional fan-drama has gotten to be a thing in recent years. Wicked, the dreamy adolescent take on The Wizard of Oz, has been the most successful, and the Marvel Comics franchise leaped past the stage right to the big screen. In 2004 Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson wrote their Peter and the Starcatcher prequel to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and followed it with three additional post-prequel/pre-Peter Pan children's books. This theatre adaptation by Rick Elice …
Review: The King and I by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 24, 2014
The first and probably unnecessary point to make is that this opulent evening is not the place to go for authenticity. The Zach Theatre has of course gone to great lengths to provide us with an Asian experience, and it's an enchanting one. It's not a historic document, however, and The King and I on the stage at the Topfer Theatre is really a fantasy about the guardedly cordial meeting of East and West. Freely …