Summer Stock Austin's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

This musical succeeds on the infectious energy of every member of its enthusiastic cast

This new musical brings Sherwood Forest's noble outlaw to our time with a message of togetherness

With Eric Idle's screen-to-stage musical spoof, Summer Stock Austin makes the Knights of the Round Table so very enjoy-able

Allen Robertson and Damon Brown's new musical reinvents "The Elves and the Shoemaker" as a timely tale of refugees but in a clever, playful way.

The company's young artists infuse the musical incarnation of those spooky, ooky Addamses with fresh blood by the buckets

I caught Into the Woods, directed and choreographed by SSA co-founder Ginger Morris, on opening night, and the cast's energy leapt off the stage – a necessity for bringing its classic fairy tale characters to life.

You’ve probably done the math by now and concluded that Fiddler premiered in 1964, toward the end of what many scholars refer to as Broadway’s “Golden Age.” Most commentators place the beginning of that period with Oklahoma!, which also happens to be receiving a revival in Austin this summer, courtesy of Zilker Theatre Productions. But that’s not all, folks: At least 11 – count ‘em, 11 – musicals are running on area stages during August. That’s an average of one opening every three days.

With Summerstock Austin, a gang of young performers serious about theatre get a chance to develop their craft in the old-school environment of a stock company

Summer Stock raises its degree of difficulty a bit with this show, which features tough stuff like synchronized jump rope scenes, onstage costume changes, live animals, and dozens of performers on the stage dancing and moving at the same time, but it also hedges its bets by putting on a show whose tone makes the ever-present sound problems and occasional prop malfunctions more forgivable. Bryant and Middleton, as the primary leads, are so easy to root for – and Fariss and Koudouris, as the villains, are so easy to root against – that spending too much energy worrying about those things seems like an exercise in joylessness. Who has time to care, when there are so many people having so much fun on the stage?

Set in 1979, Chess starts with an American world champion and a Soviet challenger battling for chess supremacy at a match in Merano, Italy – with all the Cold War implications that carries. That set-up is just a backdrop for the show’s forbidden love story, though: The American champion – temperamental Freddie Trumper – finds his second, Florence, falling for his opponent, Sergievsky. The two lovers leave Merano together, with Sergievsky defecting to the West.

Students sing and dance this satire at such a high level, it’s astounding

Arnold Lobel’s amphibian friends are brought to life with verve and heart.

Whenever the topic of time is broached in front of Toad, which happens repeatedly in the year we observe this peevish amphibian and his more mellow friend Frog, he may be counted on to say testily that his clock is broken. You can set your watch by it.

When you see Summer Stock Austin’s staging of “Springtime for Hitler,” the outrageous signature number from the 1968 film made more outrageous in the 2001 stage musical, that’s what you get. The chorus line of tap-dancing goose-steppers, the showgirls fresh from a Berchtesgaden beer hall, the Busby Berkeley-style twirling human swastika – they provoke guffaws because director-choreographer Ginger Morris (with an assist by guest tap choreographer Scott Thompson) and her young performers serve every inanity with enthusiasm and a flair for the ridiculous.