Lone Star (13th Street Repertory Theater) NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (21)
See it if If you want a backwoods play. Acting is good. Ms Rideout singing before the dhow was entertaining.
Don't see it if If you do not like this king of genre, the hillbilly type of play.
See it if 1 hr country music send-up followed by unrelated 1 hr dark comedy relationship play. Both funny & heartwarming w/twists. Good characters.
Don't see it if You dislike small scale production values & lack of polish. You want a more serious experience. Includes some audience participation.
See it if The Chalks are highly entertaining w/audience participation (American history questions, make a tambourine on stage). Lone Star well acted.
Don't see it if Runs a bit long & I'd trim a song from The Chalks & make a slight trim to Lone Star, to get the show under 2 hours 30 minutes. Fun show!!
See it if Skip seeing it.
Don't see it if Skip it and you will feel better!
See it if you get to see The Chalks perform the opening act. (ends June 9. Leena Rideout (Belva Chalk, here) should be as good next week.
Don't see it if you don't want to see a satire that fails as satire. Read more
See it if you're a fan of Leenya Rideout. Was hoping to see the Chalks, no longer appearing. Songs of heartache, a la Parton, Wynette, Cash, et. al.
Don't see it if you're looking for a well-developed play.
See it if I found this entertaining but ran way too long . the chalks performed the first act for an hour and the second act was the play itself.
Don't see it if You have trouble sitting for almost 3 hours.
See it if you like "small," simply staged dramas with realistic plots and all too believable characters. The acting was a bit uneven, but overall good
Don't see it if You don't like plays with lots of violence & profanity, unlikeable characters.
Critic Reviews (4)
“By virtue of simply treating it as a period piece, Battista's new production...does hold a certain sociological and historical fascination. And when the text itself is performed as sensitively as it is here, it's enough to temporarily pulverize any reservations one might have about the play's dated qualities...’Lone Star’ may feel slight in the moment, but only in retrospect does the inner pathos of the material become apparent."
Read more
“Feels like two separate pieces rather than one coherent and connected show...The script is the weakest point; the plot is strange when it seems to exist at all...A real conflict doesn't show up until almost the end...The characters are very two-dimensional and we're never really given a reason to care about any of them...The second act of the show seems to drag by as the play's plot feels underdeveloped. As entertaining as The Chalks are, the actual play achieves far too little.”
Read more
"Roy enumerates for Ray the ugly atrocities against Vietnamese citizens that he saw during the war, in essence bragging about his capacity to endure it all. In a culture that has become increasingly sensitive about the horrors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, there's little room now for humor surrounding such content. Perhaps, too, audiences are simply less amused than they used to be by depictions of rural Texans as dung-kicking buffoons, which is probably a good thing."
Read more
"The play drags on and on, with no focus or direction. The actors wander, the story wanders, our minds wander. It inspires no interest in the material. Ironically, the musical send-up of our country cousins charms while the serious play insults Texans with its campy portrayal of hicks with overly emphasized twangs and complete lack of self reflection. The Lone Star state deserves better."
Read more