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

Every year, Summer Stock Austin presents repertory productions of several musicals, classic and new, starring and crewed by the best and brightest of Texas’ young performers from throughout the state’s high schools and colleges. This summer, the series includes “Annie Get Your Gun,” a charming production that introduces a bright new star to the Austin stage, running through Aug. 12 at the Long Center.

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 Addams Family” has some phenomenal performances, though. Benjamin Roberts, as Gomez, is charming and witty in the harried, sitcom-esque role of the family patriarch, while Keaton Brandt is delightfully wacky as the masochistic Pugsley. David Peña is a pitch-perfect Fester (the amorphously asexual uncle with a big heart who serves as a partial narrator) and can switch from gags to earnestness with lightning quickness.

Loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson story of the same name (which brought toys to life a century and a half before Pixar did so), “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” tells the story of Lucas, a tin soldier in love with a ballerina princess, and Zoey, a rag-doll who chafes against being at the bottom rung of the toys’ caste system simply because of the material she is made out of. Together, the two embark on a quest out of the workshop where they were created, with Lucas looking for a cure to the disease that threatens to kill the princess and Zoey searching for a place where she will be valued and loved.

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.

Summer Stock Austin’s family musical “Tortoise and Hare” is really fun. You’ll be rocking to the reggae, calypso, and rap beats of the music and lyrics by Allen Robertson, of the Biscuit Brothers. Robertson and Damon Brown wrote the book, and Robertson directs the show.

Similar programs charge high school students tuition, but Summer Stock Austin not only offers the experience to all participants free of charge, many of the college students work as mentors throughout the process. Led by a host of professionals with experience ranging from Austin to Broadway, students begin making invaluable connections as they embark on their professional careers and gain firsthand knowledge of working in a professional setting.

As a self-proclaimed theatre nerd, I have a bit of an embarrassing confession: I have never seen Chicago on stage. I’ve belted the soundtrack, seen the movie countless times, and even walked past the Ambassador Theater on Broadway (that counts-right?). But I had not yet seen this musical favorite live, until Wednesday night at the opening of Summer Stock Austin’s Chicago.

And yes, was it all that and a side of jazz.

The musical, which proved to be a modest success on Broadway back in 1998, is based on the 1998 film of the same name. Teenager Ren McCormack (Donelvan Thigpen) moves from Chicago to a small town which, due to the prodding of the town’s minister (Vincent Hooper), has outlawed dancing. It’s up to Ren to get the town dancing again, and in the process, he attracts the attention of the Reverend’s rebellious daughter (Mariel Ardilla).

This summer’s crowning glory just might be Summer Stock Austin’s production of “Footloose,” playing now through Aug. 10 in the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center – unless, that is, their production of “Chicago” that opens later this week proves to be the cherry on top.

SSA’s “Footloose” has everything there is to love about musical theater: big, boisterous dance numbers, catchy, unavoidably familiar music, and enough dramatic pathos to tug at the heartstrings.

Adults could learn a lot by paying attention to children’s stories. They tend to teach valuable lessons about sharing and caring and treating people well – which it seems like a lot of us forget by the time we go off to college.

“Stone Soup,” the Theater For All production of Summer Stock Austin’s season, playing through Aug. 9 at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre, is a classic folk tale turned into a charming piece of musical theater.

Perhaps because it’s a journey most of us can relate to, theater loves to tell the story of an individual’s search for happiness and fulfillment. And with a bit of music, dancing, and pizzazz, that story stays fresh even decades after it first hit stages.

As part of its three-show repertoire this season, Summer Stock Austin brings us “Pippin,” playing at the Rollins Studio Theater at the Long Center now through Aug 10.

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