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Bryon Jacquet, Briana Resa and Juan Sebastián Cruz in 4th Wall's production of Between Riverside and Crazy.

Still Glorious Theater: Between Riverside and Crazy Opens Again at 4th Wall

By Margaret Downing

May 14, 2022

As a shrill police siren alerts the audience that the play is starting, Between Riverside and Crazy opens to a kitchen table scene: former NYPD office Walter "Pops" Washington is eating his breakfast accompanied by healthy servings of whiskey. Byron Jacquet in a command performance as Pops, is king of...

Jasmine Renee Thomas, Chelsea Ryan McCurdy, Kasi Love, and Elizabeth Marshall Black in Hurricane Diane

Blown Over By the Production In Hurricane Diane

By Jessica Goldman

May 13, 2022

In Madeleine George's comedy with a message play, Hurricane Diane, it's the Greek Demi-God Dionysus (here focusing on his realms of vegetation and ecstasy) who has all the superpowers. Returned to Earth disguised as the charming butch lesbian permaculture gardener Diane, he plans to save the world from environmental ruin...

Matthew Amendt and Dylan Godwin in Born With Teeth at Alley Theatre.

Born With Teeth: Elizabethan England With a Punk Sensibility at the Alley

By D. L. Groover

May 12, 2022

“Odd's bodkins,” what a play! If you, dear playgoer, desire time travel with a vengeance, then take my hand and merrily traipse with playwright Liz Duffy Adams back to Elizabethan England via quick-witted punk sensibility in her delicious fantasia Born with Teeth. In a season replete with world premieres, the...

Dylan Godwin and Matthew Amendt in Alley Theatre's production of Born With Teeth.

Born With Teeth: When Genius Met at a Crossroads in the Lives of Shakespeare and Marlowe

By Margaret Downing

May 9, 2022

Despite being rivals, William Shakespeare and Christopher "Kit" Marlowe actually collaborated on a history playwriting cycle. That's what gave modern playwright Liz Duffy Adams the idea for Born With Teeth cast in a time when a polarized nation was filled with paranoia while governed by an aging ruler. And when...

Apollo 8: A time when the journey to outer space captured world wide attention.

Apollo 8 at A.D. Players Emphasizes Regular People Rather Than the Astronauts

By D. L. Groover

May 8, 2022

Except for a turntable, Jayme McGhan's Apollo 8, a world premiere from A.D. Players, employs all the bells and whistles that a state-of-the-art theater production could ask for: a gigantic upstage cyclorama for high def projections of the heavens; a sound system cranked up to 11 to rival that of...

(L-R) Cay Taylor, Brad Scarborough, Luke Wrobel, Rebekah Dahl, Kristina SUllivan

Music Box Theatre Sings the Number Ones

By D. L. Groover

May 7, 2022

One of the great pleasures of Music Box Theater's celebrated entertainments is that you never really know what you're going to hear. You know what you're going to get – superlative interpretive singing from the Fab Five: Rebekah Dahl, Brad Scarborough, Kristina Sullivan, Cay Taylor, Luke Wrobel; delicious orchestrations from...

Apollo 8 at A.D. Players: When the Whole World Watched and Hoped

By Margaret Downing

May 4, 2022

When Jayme McGhan was first approached about writing a story about Apollo 8, the first human spaceflight to orbit the moon, he hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't know how to write plays — he's written lots of them. He just wasn't as well versed in the particulars of a highpoint...

Four guys who came together to become the Four Seasons.

The Jersey Boys Are Back in Town and Theatre Under the Stars Has Them

By Margaret Downing

May 2, 2022

In 2004 there wasn’t yet the great collection of juke box musicals that has come in the years since. “It was still a relatively new genre,” remembers music arranger Ron Melrose. But, of course, with the success of Mamma Mia using ABBA’s music, that was about to change. Melrose got...

Christian L. Scott in Black Superhero Magic Mama

Black Super Hero Magic Mama Lacks A Super Human Punch

By Jessica Goldman

Apr 29, 2022

Who’s your favorite superhero with no powers? An important discussion for many 14-year-old boys, but an even more pressing one for Flat Joe and Tramarion, who together are creating Maasai Angel, a superhero comic book of their own inspired by Tramarion’s single mother, Sabrina. The most interesting characters aren’t those...

(L-R) Amanda Martinez as Julia, Ricardo Hernandez-Morgan as Mario and Armando Gonzalez as Pedro in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

An English-Language Premiere of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter at Main Street Theater

By Margaret Downing

Apr 28, 2022

Mario is a young man looking to establish himself as a writer when he encounters a woman ten years his senior and a recently divorced — which in 1950s Peru is still somewhat scandalous. In typical rom-com fashion they don't like each other at first, but with time, an attraction...

The company of the North American tour of Fiddler on the Roof.

This Revival of Fiddler on the Roof at the Hobby Shines Best in its Dance Numbers

By D. L. Groover

Apr 27, 2022

Relevance haunts the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof (1964). In the acclaimed Bartlett Sher Broadway revival from 2015, on its American tour presented by Broadway at the Hobby, a connection shocks us with a slap. Perchik, a young radical in thrall to the new social and political ideas fomenting...

Yes indeed, The Wickhams — Christmas at Pemberley returns.

Man Street Theater Announces its 2022-23 Season

By Houston Press

Apr 26, 2022

A comedy-drama that was supposed to open on Broadway in the 1950s but was canceled after its playwright wouldn't compromise about its messages about racism, identity and ego in New York theater — that's the opener for Main Street Theater's MainStage 2022-23 season. The play, Trouble in Mind, did finally...

Abraham Zapata firmly anchors Bob, a Life in Five Acts.

Life as a Road Show: Bob, A Life in Five Acts at Firecracker Productions

By D. L. Groover

Apr 24, 2022

Firecracker Productions' intimate, low-rent version of Peter Sinn Nachtreib's Bob, A Life in Five Acts (2011) may possibly be the sleeper hit of the season. This life story of everyman Bob is packed with incident, screwy characters, surreal situations, and a wicked gay wit that veers from easy sit-com laughs...

Heart by Heart: Chad Quist, Lizzy Daymont, Michael Derosier, Somar Macek and Steve Fossen.

Heart by Heart Keeps the Magic Men Spinning and Barracudas Swimming

By Bob Ruggiero

Apr 22, 2022

Asked to name any members of the band Heart, most casual listeners would be able to mentally cough up sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. After all, the vocalist and guitarist have been the “faces” and most photographed of the group since their 1975 debut Dreamboat Annie, as well as being...

Chris Hutchinson and Elizabeth Bunch in Dead Man's Cell Phone

The Surreal Rings Loud In Dead Man's Cell Phone

By Jessica Goldman

Apr 21, 2022

I'd just die without my phone. All of us who walk around with the world in our pocket, who depend on the information, organization, and connection it affords, have thought this at some point. These machines have become not just the conduit through which we live our lives, but to...

Everclear in 2022: Freddy Herrera, Art Alexakis, Davey French and Brian Nolan.

Art Alexakis on Three Decades of Everclear, Making Noise and His Own Future Path

By Bob Ruggiero

Apr 20, 2022

When we spoke with Art Alexakis of Everclear in July of last year, the band’s founder/singer/guitarist was literally a day away from launching their Summerland package tour trek across the U.S. One that already filled him with equal amounts of excitement and nervousness, given the whole pandemic situation. “It was...

Chris Hutchison as Gordon and Elizabeth Bunch as Jean in Alley Theatre’s production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone.

Dead Man's Cell Phone: Technology and its Traps

By Margaret Downing

Apr 19, 2022

For a dead man, actor Chris Hutchison gets a lot of time on stage. In the Alley Theatre's production of playwright Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, he plays Gordon, who's passed on to his great reward. But still very much a part of the story in what Hutchison calls...

Gabriel Regojo as George, Shanae'a Rae Moore as the Curate in Classical Theatre's The War of the Worlds.

Atmospheric Effects Are the Stars in The War of the Worlds at Classical Theatre

By D. L. Groover

Apr 16, 2022

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds might be the most popular science fiction story ever. The battle between aliens and puny earthlings has been produced so many times and in so many versions that it's hard to count. It hit the screen in 1953 in an Academy Award-winning Paramount...

A season filled with Houston premieres including Richard Thomas in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Broadway at the Hobby Announces its 2022-23 Season

By Houston Press

Apr 15, 2022

Memorial Hermann Broadway at the Hobby announces its 2022-23 season today, complete with five Houston premieres — To Kill a Mockingbird, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Six, Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations and Pretty Woman The Musical — as well as Jesus Christ Superstar and the return of...

Kaleb Womack, Rayevin Johnson, Sarah Sachi and Jordan Okeke in You are Cordially Invited to Sit In

Too Many Ideas Hamper You Are Cordially Invited to Sit In

By Jessica Goldman

Apr 14, 2022

The good ideas that birthed ShaWanna Renee Rivon’s, You Are Cordially Invited to Sit In, now playing at Stages, are plentiful. A commissioned show (hooray for original work), filled with joy (a light touch post-pandemic is what most people are craving), about the sit-in protests that led to the desegregation...

Stage

A Fab Five Pay Tribute to the Beatles on Hits-Laden Tour

Review: Main Street Theater's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

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