Justin's Theatre Reviews

    There is nothing sadder to me than having to sit through a production of one of your favorite shows that does not meet its full potential and winds up being rather disappointing in more ways than one. Unfortunately, I found this to be the case with the touring production of Evita that played at The Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas on March 9. Evita has been one of my favorite shows for years. I was in a production of this brilliant Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with the UTEP Dinner Theatre back in 2013 and I have been in love with the show ever since. I could sing the entire score for you right now if I wanted too. This touring production was the first time that I ever actually got to experience a live production of the show. The cast of this production was incredible and the show's writing remains simply impeccable. These two things allowed me to genuinely enjoy the show and not sit in misery for two hours. However, the production was so poorly directed an...

  Although the New York production of Kinky Boots is nearing the end of its Broadway run, a touring production of the show is still making its way across North America. Despite the fact that the show has been playing for over 5 years, I never got around to seeing it until this past Saturday night, when the tour played The Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas. The show certainly did not disappoint and very firmly justified their six Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and long run on Broadway. With a score by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Harvey Fierstein, Kinky Boots (based on the 2005 film of the same name) is a wonderful show about a man named Charlie Price (Connor Allston) whose father is the owner of a shoe company, known as Price and Son. After his father's sudden passing, Charlie inherits the shoe factory and upon discovering that the shoe factory is starting to go under, Charlie struggles to keep the shoe factory alive. After befriending a drag queen (Lola, played by understudy, J...

   Revisiting Jersey Boys was like visiting an old friend. I was excited to see this friend again, but when you began visiting you started to think that you do not have that much to talk about. You begin to wonder why you wanted to hang out with this person again in the first place, but the more time you spend together, the happier you are and the more you have to talk about. By the time you leave, you are more than thrilled that you visited this friend and you remember how much you love seeing them. Jersey Boys is that kind of a friend for me. Seeing the show for the third time (and first time since 2014) was a true nostalgia trip for me. Jersey Boys , which tells the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' rise to fame, was actually one of the very first professionally done shows that I saw. I caught the show in Cleveland in 2011 and my parents LOVED it. I loved it too, but my mother especially loved it. To this day, it is one of the only musical cast albums that she...

  I don't know about the rest of you, but the annual live broadcasts of musicals on NBC and FOX have become a lovely tradition that I truly enjoy. Say what you will about the quality of some of the productions, but I simply find it thrilling that musical theatre is being broadcast into the homes of millions of people. I have actually liked all but two of the live musicals put on by either NBC or FOX. Despite those two productions, at no point did I ever wish for either networks to discontinue their live musicals because I think that they are incredibly necessary and do adequate jobs at bringing people into the world of musical theatre, even if it is only via their television screens. When FOX announced that they would be bringing Jonathan Larson's Rent to the small screen, I was excited and scared. I was excited that this great musical was going to receive yet another major screen adaptation (following the 2005 movie and the taped version of the final Broadway company), but sca...

   Finding Neverland was an evil show. Throughout the last thirty minutes of the touring production of the 2015 musical, I was mesmerized by the endearing, adorable, heartbreaking, and genuinely great scenes that I was witnessing before me. As I was sitting there in my seat watching the last thirty minutes of the second act, I said "Wait a second, the other two hours of this show were painfully mediocre. How come the show is acting like it was really good, all of a sudden?" That is the evil of Finding Neverland . For two hours I sat through a generic and bland family musical and left feeling positive about it. It's not that I thought the show was terrible by any means, I just found it to be so subpar that it hurt. But then all of a sudden, I am so completely entranced for the final thirty minutes, that I was almost convinced I was seeing a good musical. However, when the houselights came up at the end of the show, I quickly remembered everything else I didn't like abo...