Justin's Theatre Reviews

  After FOX's live televised production of Grease, I simply assumed that their production of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's musical version of A Christmas Story would be fantastic. Boy, was I wrong! I was so excited to watch this program from the comfort of my own home, but FOX's A Christmas Story: Live! was perhaps one of the most boring, uninspired things that I have watched all year. I had such high hopes for this Christmas special and it was highly disappointing. Compared to the rest of the musicals that have been broadcasted live, especially Grease and Hairspray , A Christmas Story: Live! was so lifeless and dull.    My first issue with the show came as soon as it began. When it started, I went to the bathroom thinking it was a commercial for Old Navy, Target, or one of those stores. It wasn't until I returned from the bathroom and saw the opening credits rolling, that I realized that the very commercial like song, "Count on Christmas", was the opening...

   I think that any form of holiday entertainment sets out to do two different things: Evoke nostalgia and spread holiday cheer. Without those two things, a holiday movie, special, or stage show will not succeed. Luckily, the El Paso Playhouse's production of the Christmas classic, A Christmas Story , hits all of the right marks. Given the Playhouse's previous success with a lot of the other shows I have seen there, I knew I would be in for a treat going into this production and it absolutely delivered.  This is one of those shows that just simply made my heart happy and I had such a glorious evening watching this show.   Since A Christmas Story is such an iconic movie, I am not going to waste time describing the plot. Here is the Wikipedia page if for whatever inexcusable reason, you haven't seen it.     The El Paso Playhouse production of A Christmas Story  did a very nice job of capturing the spirit of the original film and that is a huge...

  Whilst watching the national tour of the Tony Award Best Musical winner, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" , all I could think was "WOW, I would have killed myself if I was a Tony Award voter in 2014!" After Midnight , Aladdin , Beautiful: The Carole King Musical , AND A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder ?!? I could never have possibly chosen because they are all wonderful, amazing shows. I could easily see why this show won Best Musical in 2014, because I honestly loved this show.    A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is a delightful show that is about a man named Monty Navarro who has found out that he is eighth in line in the D'Ysquith family to become the Earl of Highhurst (a fictional place, I'm presuming) and he decides that he is going to have to kill all of the people ahead of him in the line of succession in order to become the Earl. I am not going to describe anymore of the plot because I think it is way better when you go...

    For the third year in a row, the UTEP Dinner Theatre has produced another student directed production in their venue. This year, the student show was Jonathan Larson's autobiographical musical Tick, Tick..Boom! . Tick, Tick...Boom! is the story of an aspiring musical theatre composer named Jon who is about to turn 30 and how he is concerned about how his life and career seem to be going nowhere. The show was written entirely by Jonathan Larson, with script consultant, David Auburn. The show has an extremely strong book and score, with songs that easily showcase the talent of whoever may be singing them.   This production was directed by UTEP student, Rachel Robins. Robins' staging was well thought out and she did a lovely job blocking the show. However, there were moments during the show where the cast members would switch characters mid scene and due to the way those moments were staged, it would take a minute for my brain to process that they had become a di...

     The UTEP Dinner Theatre opened their 35th anniversary season with the musical version of the incredibly popular property that is The Addams Family , which was originally created by Charles Addams. The musical version of the show was composed by Andrew Lippa ( The Wild Party) and the book was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The musical version of The Addams Family is about how daughter, Wednesday, becomes engaged to a "normal" boy, named Lucas, so the family invites Lucas and his family over for dinner. However, Wednesday has only told her father, Gomez, about the engagement, so they must spend the evening trying to act "normal" and keeping the secret of the engagement from the Addams family mother, Morticia. I had never seen the musical version of  The Addams Family up until this performance and although the UDT did their best with the material, I think that it is not a good musical. I'd feel that way about any production of this show, so I d...

    There are so many jukebox musicals that exist in the musical theatre canon. There's Jersey Boys, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical , On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan, and so many more. These are just a few biographical musicals that use the music of that artist and other music from their genre to tell their story and do a phenomenal job doing it...and then there's Motown .    Although the music and the talent in the show is undeniably great, it's not enough to save the craziness of a show that is Motown the Musical . Motown is about the legendary music producer, Berry Gordy, and the rise of Motown as a recording company and a studio. Major parts of the story include Gordy's relationship with Diana Ross and some of his other employees, including Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. The show is also written by Gordy, so that makes this an autobiographical musical. Based on how some of the characters are portrayed, it honestly feels like Berr...

   In honor of Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead" in English), El Paso's Kids n Co presented a lovely show called Dolores , which is an original play that was written by Lluvia Almanza & Orlando Rodriguez. Dolores told the story of a young boy named Jose Luis, whose sister died of an illness (presumably cancer based off of dialogue in the show) and how he visits her in heaven and other spirits, all while we learn a little bit about Dia de los Muertos.    Dolores was truly a wonderful little show that I truly enjoyed. The show's writing was quite exceptional and the cast did a wonderful job bringing the show to life. Director, Eurydice Saucedo, did a wonderful job casting all of the young talent in the show, in addition to making a very good use of the church that the show was performed in. The shows leads were played by Pilar Gutierrez (Dolores), Tyler Spoon (Jose Luis), Julia Davis (The show's main La Catrina), Aiden Aguirre (Juan, a mischievous spirit ...

   After witnessing Sun City Musical Theatre's production of Into the Woods , I wasn't sure what to expect from their production of Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Show. Anyone who knows anything knows that this show has a huge cult following. So, every time a new rendition of the show is performed, everyone is eager to see what each individual company does with the material and physical production. The Sun City Musical Theatre chose to make their production a replica of the London Playhouse production that was aired in cinemas in the United Kingdom.    The SCMT production  of The Rocky Horror Show was a straight up copy of the London's Playhouse Theatre production (Which can be viewed on YouTube ), even down to simple acting choices. Normally, I wouldn't care about straight up carbon copies, but I am saying it now because as far as I'm aware, no credit was given to this production that they took almost every single move from. Not supplying the creative t...

   For the past month or so, the El Paso Playhouse has been performing a wonderful production of Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves. Unfortunately, by the time this review is published the production will be closed, so everyone will have to take my word that it was such a lovely production with a legitimately talented cast.   Real Women Have Curves is a play by Josefina Lopez about 5 immigrant women (one of them, Estela, is undocumented) who work in a dress factory. Throughout the course of a week, we see the women bonding, arguing, and gossiping, all while working to meet a very difficult deadline for a large order of dresses. Real Women Have Curves really is an entertaining show. It was so easy to become invested in the story and all of the characters because of the excellently crafted script and the sublime performances of all of the women in the cast. The cast consisted of Abgail Moreno (Ana, the protagonist), Claudia Yoli Ferla (Estella), Lorena Soto (Carmen,...

   The 2017/2018 Broadway in El Paso season got off to a great start when the national tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical began it's week long engagement at the Plaza Theatre. As implied by the show's title, the show tells the story of Carole King from the time she was a young songwriter getting her start in the business, all they way up until her first concert at Carnegie Hall. A large plot point in the musical is her relationship with her first husband, Gerry Goffin, and her friendship with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. The show is a jukebox musical that features the music written by Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, with a book by Douglas McGrath.   The show is extremely entertaining and it's hard not to become invested in the story and all of "the characters". In quite a few jukebox musicals, you could really tell that they are trying too hard to fit as many songs as they can in the show, but in this show all of the songs are s...

   Although Hello, Dolly! might not have been the very last musical of the golden age of Broadway, in a way it was. This is because the creator of the title role, Carol Channing, played the role on and off from 1964 to 1997, totaling in over 5,000 performances for Channing in the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi. Every time Carol Channing returned to the role, she was able to restore a small piece of the golden age of Broadway. Towards the end of Channing's final run as Dolly Levi, her final touring production of the show was professionally filmed in Melbourne, Florida. Although this filmed version of the show was never commercially released, it can be viewed on YouTube for ages to come.    Hello, Dolly! is a musical comedy that is based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker and tells the story of a widow named Dolly Gallagher Levi who intends on marrying the well known half a billionaire, Horace Vandergelder. Also in the mix are Vandergelder's employees, Cornelius Ha...

  It can be very nerve wracking to work with iconic material, especially when adapting for the stage. You want the material to stand out on its own, but you also don't want to stray too far away from your source material because some adaptations tend to go downhill when you do. The musical version of Sister Act (based on the 1992 film which starred Whoopi Goldberg) does a very nice job of working with its source material, but with the wrong cast, things might not go well . Luckily enough for the UTEP Dinner Theatre's production, everything fell into place. The cast was perfect, the direction was perfect, the sets looked great, the costumes were fabulous, and the end result was AWESOME. Sister Act was easily one of the best shows I have seen at the UTEP Dinner Theatre. With all of these things in place, the show was an absolute blast and if I hadn't attended the production's final performance, I very easily would have gone again.   Sister Act tells the story of a ni...