Brett Cullum - Page 9

You can feel the standing ovation building the second they start working their way through 30 hit songs that the audience sings along with gleefully. I saw the production the second weekend, and already audience members were proclaiming to others 'This is my THIRD time!'

If you're wrestling with the current election, or wondering how we have gotten to this point in America's history, this is a powerful, informed piece. It incorporates the civil rights movement at the time when Martin Luther King was taken from his mission and asks hard questions about what all of that meant back in 1968.

Stages Repertory Theatre's creation of this SHEAR MADNESS is buoyed by an outstanding cast that handles comedy and improvisation with ease. The six actors onstage are quick on their feet, and so funny they can break each other up in many instances as the story unfolds.

This is so much fun, and something you don't want to miss this season. It's a time when we could all use a good laugh, and Tamarie is going for broke as she does every summer with her sardonic take aimed at elections.

One of Houston's most engaging theatre companies Mildred's Umbrella and Wordsmyth Theatre is opening their MUSEUM OF DYSFUNCTION VIII this week for a two weekend run. This is a short play festival which will actually have two different programs running the first weekend from the second.

Right now the world needs a good chuckle at the pious and prissy, and this production answers that divine calling with ease. If you're a devout Catholic or easily offended, maybe this one isn't for you. But if you can appreciate gender bending joined with slapstick camp you've found your salvation.

From the bodily fluid throwing Miggs to the naked and tucked Buffalo Bill, expect to see everything you witnessed in the movie recreated live onstage by a company who at times don Lambchop hand puppets to narrate the action. It's fast, furious, and like being blasted by hits of nitrous oxide constantly without the pain of dental work.

This is a production that should be sought out by theatre patrons wanting something a little more powerful than a simple musical or another romantic comedy. LIDLESS is a play that looks at the darkest and lightest parts of our culture and our souls.

This is theater by design rather than organic moments of human emotion. The director has taken her background in dance and created a show that is colorful and choreographed as any ballet or opera would be.

Conversations can be hard to follow, and we're never quite sure what is happening with our couple or our hermit. We're just observing them as they try to fill in the gaps in their lives with items and words.

A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER plays out as if you took SWEENEY TODD, let Gilbert & Sullivan rewrite the score, and staged it on a revolutionary picture book set that utilized digital scenery. It's a show that will have you smiling from start to final curtain, and it's got an amazing amount of energy to share with an audience.

Anchoring SINS OF THE MOTHER is a uniformly great cast who flesh out these roles with passion and sincerity. Key to the whole piece are sisters played by Shundranieka Ross and Sonya Gooden who do a duet of dizzying acting expertise.

HEATHERS the musical at TUTS Underground is very very. It's full of Swatch dogs, Diet Cokeheads, and teenage angst that comes with a body count... backed up by buoyant songs about being popular and pretty.

This is a community theatre that pulls off a spectacular English show by keeping things simple. They give EQUUS soul by playing it in their own voices, and they mine the depths of the emotions often missed in the wordy script and dream sequences.

It's charmingly adolescent, and full of cock and pecker jokes which feature prominently in this lark of a piece. Who knew Greek comedy could be so broad and bawdy?

I always turn to Catastrophic Theatre for the best in edgy experimental work in Houston. The thing about experiments though is sometimes they fail, and in this case I am afraid it does.

SPEAKEASY has a great cast, some catchy songs, a nice plot, and a great sense of interactive fun that should have audiences on their feet doing the Charleston.

The tour Broadway Across America has brought into Houston is outstanding in how it handles expectations and shatters them in new and original ways. This is a great production of a thought-provoking show, and it brings the Roundabout Theatre Company experience out of New York City.

TUTS Underground has a crowd pleaser on its hands, and this one should have a deservedly successful run with plenty of fans at the end of it. THE SWEET POTATO QUEENS tells a great story, has a solid cast, and is a ton of fun.

Like Garland herself, the show is obsessed with high energy musical uppers contrasted with dark dramatic downers in between. It's a roller coaster ride of songs mixed with self destruction as we watch a star orchestrate her own death.