# Bat City Stage Reviews

> A review blog for live theater in Austin, Texas


## Posts

- ["The Talk: A Pep Rally Purity Play" by Grackle Jack](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-talk-a-pep-rally-purity-play-by-grackle-jack/): In The Talk, writer and performer Lilly Percifield becomes five different characters in 60 minutes to lead the audience through a rowdy Christian high school pre-dance pep rally. (How does she do it? By owning several wigs and wearing layers and layers of costumes on top of each other.) Percifield’s characters take on cheerleading moves, dress code enforcement, a worship singalong, and an abstinence-only sex ed talk. It’s chaotic, self-aware, and hilarious. It’s intimately familiar with the culture it parodies, pointing out and laughing at its hypocrisies and absurdities, encouraging the audience to wonder what exactly this kind of teaching […]
- ["Unbury Your Gays" at Broad Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/unbury-your-gays-at-broad-theatre/): I would say that about half of Unbury Your Gays by Maxine Dillon is made of a good play. The good half – the important half – is a nostalgic coming-of-age, slice-of-life story of teenage feelings, frustrations, and friendship. It explores that awful age of being so full of feelings that you could burst, and yet not being able to name half those feelings. That age where longings and desires don’t always feel like love, but like jealousy or disappointment; where even your very best friend can break your heart again and again, and how somehow, even though it doesn’t […]
- ["I Wanna Be A F*cking Princess" at Ground Floor Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/i-wanna-be-a-fcking-princess-at-ground-floor-theatre/): I Wanna Be A F*cking Princess by Jenny Connell Davis is a beautiful picture of friendship, even when friendship doesn’t look that beautiful. At first, I thought its silly dance numbers and frantic energy felt cliché. But Ground Floor Theatre director Patti Neff-Tiven clearly knows how to balance the frantic with the heartfelt; by the end, I couldn’t help but cry. Women are just so wonderful! But I Wanna Be A F*cking Princess isn’t just “about women” – it’s about growing up, and growing apart; about the thoughtless things we say even to our best friends; about forgiving graciously; about […]
- [Announcing the Austin Theatre Critics Awards Nominees](https://batcitystagereviews.com/announcing-the-austin-theatre-critics-awards-nominees/): The secret is out! Over the last year, a number of theater enthusiasts, critics/reviewers, and writers, with many thanks to Sharron at ATXTheatre for organizing, have been meeting and emailing about our favorite theater performances in the Austin area. Now, we’re excited to share who we all agree are the best of the best! Winners will be announced live on June 9th at the O4 Center on S. Lamar at 7pm. Reserve your free tickets online, and see you then! Eligible performances/shows for these awards ran from May 1, 2024 to May 1, 2025. The 2025 Austin Theatre Critics Award […]
- ["Venus in Fur" at Dirty Gold Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/venus-in-fur-at-dirty-gold-theatre/): In Venus in Fur‘s opening scene, director/playwright Thomas (Dylan Hoeffler) complains that none of the actresses who’ve auditioned for him that day are good enough or smart enough to play Vanda, the love interest in his new adaptation of Venus in Furs, which is definitely not autobiographical S&M pornography, thank you very much. Thunder rolls. Lightning flashes. Darn, the call to his fiancee drops. And then, almost as if he’s dreamed her into existence, in comes an actress actually named Vanda (Julia Bennett): young, sensual, over-the-top, and nearly naked. She insists on reading with him, and the play-within-a-play that follows […]
- ["Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at Austin Playhouse](https://batcitystagereviews.com/dirty-rotten-scoundrels-at-austin-playhouse/): Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is based on the ridiculous 1980s movie of the same name where two con men work with each other, then work against each other, get a monkey boy involved, and eventually get beat at their own game by a better con artist than themselves. The musical, which came out in 2005-ish, isn’t the hugest hit, perhaps because the pacing of the plot is a bit odd: the main mark and yet-unknown opponent Christine Colgate (here played by Sarah Fleming Walker) doesn’t show up until the play is nearly halfway over, so the rest of the show has […]
- ["Company" by Roustabout Theatre Company](https://batcitystagereviews.com/company-by-roustabout-theatre-company/): The current production of Company by Roustabout Theatre – another brand-new venture in the Austin scene – is directed, music directed, and choreographed by Adam Roberts, and produced by and starring Seth David Mitchell as Bobby. I’m not really a Sondheim fan, to my husband’s chagrin, but I suppose Company would be my favorite if I had to pick one. It’s hard to resist hearing both “Marry Me A Little” and “Being Alive” in two hours – love is too much, it’s not enough, it’s soaring and sad and hopeful in concert. Mitchell’s voice is perfect for Bobby. You’ve got […]
- ["The Winter's Tale" by Twelve Satyr Shakespeare](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-winters-tale-by-twelve-satyr-shakespeare/): Twelve Satyr Shakespeare is one of the newest theatre companies in town (they seem to be popping up overnight), a venture started by recent Shakespeare at Winedale alums Leo Weiser and Andrew Wissman. For their first performance, Twelve Satyr staged The Winter’s Tale – an intrepid choice, as it’s not one of the Bard’s more popular works due to its refusal to fit neatly into “tragedy” or “comedy” boxes. But even if you’re not familiar with the plot, you may recognize a specific stage direction found in its third act: Exit, pursued by a bear. Winter’s Tale was directed by […]
- ["Hamlet" by Walking Shadow Shakespeare Project](https://batcitystagereviews.com/hamlet-by-walking-shadow-shakespeare-project/): Hamlet is a hard show. It’s hard on the actors (title role especially) and the directors. Every choice a production makes, perhaps more than most Shakespeare plays, is going to garner an opinion – How long will an audience sit still for? Which lines are too iconic to cut? Should any lines be cut? How much extra-textual content can be added? Should verse be spoken informally or heightened? How old is Hamlet? Is he gay for Horatio? Is Horatio gay for him? Does the whole Fortinbras and his Norwegian subplot really matter? For this production, the cast of Walking Shadow […]
- ["A Christmas Carol" at ZACH Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/a-christmas-carol-at-zach-theatre/): I had heard of the ZACH’s Christmas Carol; it’s hard not to, since it happens annually – this year is the tenth anniversary! Last year was the first time I realized it was a jukebox musical, though, which I admit made me extremely skeptical. But they advertise that they update the show with “fresh music” every year, so as my husband navigated Mopac traffic this weekend, I texted my friends: going to ZACH’s christmas carol. can’t wait to see which Dickens character is brat and which is hot to go lol Well, perhaps a terminally online playlist was too much […]
- ["Grey Gardens" by Entr'acte](https://batcitystagereviews.com/grey-gardens-by-entracte/): This review is a few days later than I like – partly because of overbooking myself (just like I said I wasn’t going to!) and partly because, truthfully, it’s been a struggle to write. Entr’acte’s productions are truly one of a kind in the Austin area: they aren’t fully formed musicals, but musicals in concert. Perhaps that’s great for folks who love music more than musicals. But I know who I am, and who I am is a simple woman who loves regular dance breaks, free parking, and $5 wine. There was certainly no lack of talent on stage at […]
- ["Waiting for Godot" by Beards of Instagram at Hyde Park Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/waiting-for-godot-by-beards-of-instagram-at-hyde-park-theatre/): I have a confession: I had never seen or read Waiting for Godot until this weekend. Partly because I’ve never made it a priority, but partly because it seems to be one of those plays reserved for Big Professional Theaters with Big Name Actors Who Really Should Be Paired Together. I think of Robin Williams and Steve Martin; Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, twice; Rainn Wilson and Aasif Mandvi currently at the Geffen and even Bill & Ted next year. I think of big stages and pretentious, expensive theater-goers. I just don’t often notice it as a local production! So […]
- [OUT OF TOWN SPECIAL: "The Flick" at Gaslight-Baker Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/out-of-town-special-the-flick-at-gaslight-baker-theatre/): Community theater might be the most important art form in the world. Okay, obviously that is an exaggeration bourne from personal inclinations. But local theater is very important. I’ve seen bad community theater, I have seen middling community theater, and I’ve seen really great community theater – in the same way that I’ve seen bad, middling, and great professional theater. Theater is an art that will meet you where you are, and where I was on Friday night was 45 minutes away from my house, seeing Annie Baker’s The Flick at the Gaslight-Baker Theatre. I had never seen The Flick, and […]
- ["The Three Musketeers" by The Archive Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-three-musketeers-by-the-archive-theatre/): The Archive Theatre’s The Three Musketeers is a new adaptation of Dumas’ novel by producing artistic director Jennifer Rose Davis. The script moves along at a good clip and the show clocks in at under two hours, giving a sort of madcap romp feel to an old classic adventure. Much of this energy is also thanks to our hero D’Artagnan (Diego Arroyo Aceves), who has enough passion for the entire cast, leaping and bounding his way through the space, grinning all the while, flinging his hair around, and falling in love in an instant (with Gabrielle Smith as charming, resourceful, […]
- ["Bar(d)" by Walking Shadow Shakespeare Project](https://batcitystagereviews.com/bard-by-walking-shadow-shakespeare-project/): Bar(d)‘s tight, clever script by Stephanie Crugnola is both a love letter to Shakespeare and lighthearted goof on him. Shakespeare’s works are given gravitas and honor…and then they’re mocked, because seriously, as the characters at the Butterfly Bar tell each other, there’s no way all of these stories could just wrap up so nicely. Clearly, Crugnola and director, Leah Luna really want the audience to understand the plays and characters they’re poking fun at, which is why each character (Romeo, Juliet, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Olivia, and Viola) tells their stories in several ways – through karaoke, through Shakespeare’s words, […]
- ["Emma" at Austin Playhouse](https://batcitystagereviews.com/emma-at-austin-playhouse/): It’s not that loving Jane Austen is a competition. If it was, I certainly wouldn’t win. (But I think I would be pretty high up there.) It’s also not that Jane Austen’s books are so precious that they shouldn’t be played with. She’s super dead, so do whatever you want! I had high hopes going into Austin Playhouse’s new production of Kate Hamill’s Emma, directed by Lara Toner Haddock. The Barbie-inspired branding, bright colors, and the strawberry cottagecore decor all throughout the theater all cued that I was in for a nice, romantic time. The props design (Ismael Soto III) […]
- ["Clyde's" at Ground Floor Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/clydes-at-ground-floor-theatre/): Ground Floor Theatre is one of my favorite venues in town. I like the cozy lobby and the chardonnay they offer. I honestly even like going down the outdoor hallway to the bathrooms. I like that parking is easy (if it is a little Wild West in the backside of the buildings). Mostly, I love that the black box gets used as a black box should: it looks different every time I see it. For their production of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, Carl and Lacey Cannon Gonzales have put the audience on three sides of the stage and dressed it as […]
- ["Aurora" at Bottle Alley Theatre Co.](https://batcitystagereviews.com/aurora-at-bottle-alley-theatre-co/): Where did we come from? Where do we belong? What if we never find out the answer to either of those? Or what if we do – but only once we’ve realized how nice the place we are is, after all? These are all questions I think Aurora asks, and questions I came away from it pondering. I love the dichotomy between the last play I reviewed in Austin – downtown, produced within an inch of its life, polished til it shines, air-conditioned – and Aurora, performed way up where MoPac becomes a toll road, in front of a shipping […]
- ["The Prom" at ZACH Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-prom-at-zach-theatre/): The Prom follows a group of failed actors (plus a non-union touring cast of Godspell) who rush from Broadway to Indiana to the aid of a teenage lesbian named Emma who’s been told she can’t attend prom with her girlfriend. They mean well, sort of, but they’re ultimate Liberal Buffoons — clumsy, overly ambitious, and out of touch with life in small-town America. While each of them eventually figures out how to really help (be it with money, fashion advice, or dance lessons), it’s Emma who brings her school to her side by being truly, honestly, perfectly herself. Each of […]
- ["Born With Teeth" at Austin Playhouse](https://batcitystagereviews.com/born-with-teeth-at-austin-playhouse/): Liz Duffy Adams’ play Born With Teeth is predicated on the idea that Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe did indeed collaborate on the writing of the Henry VI trilogy, and asks: so, what did they talk about while they worked? “Imagined conversations between two real people” is a well established theatrical genre; Born With Teeth fits neatly alongside plays like Peter and Alice, Red, or Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Stick two people with different personalities, desires, and worldviews in a room together and see what happens. The differences between the two men here (William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe) are […]
- ["The Twilight of the Golds" at City Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-twilight-of-the-golds-at-city-theatre/): If you are (like I was until last week) unfamiliar with Jonathan Tolins’ Twilight of the Golds, the main conflict of the story is a woman who contemplates terminating a wanted pregnancy after finding out via experimental in-utero DNA testing that her baby is 90% likely to turn out gay – shocking and offending her gay brother David, as well as any millennials in the audience. I found out later that Twilight of the Golds premiered in 1993, the same year Tony Kushner’s epic Angels in America hit Broadway and Philadelphia hit movie theaters. The AIDS crisis in America was […]
- ["The Library" at Different Stages](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-library-at-different-stages/): Scott Z. Burns’ The Library is heavy. I guess it would be silly to suggest that any story about a school shooting and its aftermath could be anything but heavy. Different Stages’ current production of The Library (directed by Carl Gonzales and Lacey Cannon Gonzales) is heavy – but not oppressively so. Some hard topics and hard roles are easy to overshoot, and become melodramas. But this cast is authentic and natural.  Lucky Cantu shoulders much of the show’s emotional burden as Caitlin Gabriel, a teenage survivor of a school shooting whose life comes under a different kind of fire […]
- ["Back To You" at Austin Rainbow Theatre](https://batcitystagereviews.com/back-to-you-at-austin-rainbow-theatre/): Everyone wants to be an auteur. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with being an auteur, as long as you have the talent. I would even argue that the fellow artists an auteur surrounds themself with are just as important as their own sensibilities. Back To You is a two-character play about two gay boys named Diego and Manny from McAllen, Texas who love each other, lose each other, and find each other again. It was written by Chris Rivera. It was also directed by Chris Rivera, and stars Chris Rivera. He had no assistant director. The consequence of this is […]
- ["The Ghosts of Christmas Past": A Staged Reading at Archive Theater](https://batcitystagereviews.com/the-ghosts-of-christmas-past-a-staged-reading-at-archive-theater/): The Ghosts of Christmas Past seems to have had a fraught (though brief) history. It was intended (as a full production) to be Archive’s winter show when they announced their 2023 season, but in the middle of October it was cancelled due to a lack of “spirit/force/resources” and actors. Then three weeks later, the show was re-announced as a staged reading for one weekend only. In true Archive fashion, of course, the actors were still costumed, the set was designed and dressed, and live musicians underscored the performance. Most of these elements were fine and I don’t have much to […]
- ["Miss Lulu Bett" at Different Stages](https://batcitystagereviews.com/miss-lulu-bett-at-different-stages/): Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett was written 100+ years ago, but the script is fresh, rich, and modern. It is maddening and hopeful. It’s been a long time since I have felt such real indignation and frustration for a fictional character. (Maybe since I first read Ella Enchanted 20 years ago?) The brief synopsis from Different Stages’ marketing lead me to believe it might be a charming but old-fashioned feminist meditation. I was wrong! Lulu Bett (Bethany Harbaugh), never married at the old age of 33, is kept as a cook and general housemaid by her own sister and brother-in-law, […]
- ["El Cid" at Austin Shakespeare](https://batcitystagereviews.com/el-cid-at-austin-shakespeare/): At one point in the first act of Austin Shakespeare’s Friday night performance of El Cid, an audience member on stage left started to unwrap a loud snack. The crinkling of the plastic paused, then continued. Paused, then continued. Heads turned from the stage towards the sound. Crinkle, crinkle. A woman a few rows in front of me stood up and looked in their direction. The sound stopped, the woman sat down, the audience turned back to the stage. It was one of the more thrilling moments that would happen in the Rollins Theater that night. Bad community theater holds […]
- ["Ride the Cyclone" at Texas Theatre and Dance](https://batcitystagereviews.com/ride-the-cyclone-at-texas-theatre-and-dance/): When I first read the online blurb for Ride the Cyclone at UT Austin, I wasn’t very interested. The plot seemed fine, but the marketing line about every song being in a different genre and having “something for everyone” seemed overdone. I’m a documented pop-concert-musicals hater! Who wants to see a musical with no consistency to its sound? But a friend of mine was going, so I went. Turns out my ick was unfounded. Cyclone is a sweet show and UT’s production was a fun, sparkly way to spend an afternoon. Ride the Cyclone was originally performed in 2008, but […]
- ["Deathtrap" at Jarrott Productions](https://batcitystagereviews.com/deathtrap-at-jarrott-productions/): Deathtrap is a witty, self-aware, tightly packed script. No line is a throw-away. It’s a play that knows what it is and invites each actor to really dig their teeth into their roles. I found, however, that though Jarrott Productions’ current run of Deathtrap is almost technically perfect and enjoyable to sit through, it seemed to lean away from the tension and the thriller of it all and chose instead to understate the melodrama. Each of the actors is well-spoken and well-cast. It’s a perfectly fine show put on by a perfectly talented team, but it lacks intensity. There are […]

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- [Contact](https://batcitystagereviews.com/contact/): If you have questions, concerns, if you’d like me to see one of your shows, or if you just want to chat, you can email batcityreviews@gmail.com, message me on instagram, or fill out the form below!
- [About](https://batcitystagereviews.com/about/): Shannon G. (me, Bat Girl) has been studying and performing theater for 20+ years in California and Texas. I started Bat City Stage Reviews as a personal project with the core belief that no individual artist or theater community at large can thrive and grow without honest examination and artistic critique. Questions? Comments? Want me to see your show? Reach out!


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