Along the Way

Reviews

New York International Fringe Festival

(Original a cappella musical by Bob Ross Juice Box. Co-developed, directed and choreographed by Shawn Churchman)

“Shawn Churchman's staging efficiently transforms settings from a Queens-bound N train to a Broadway casting call and more, and his choreography provides a spirited visual complement to both the musical numbers and the transitions.”

Terri Galvin, nytheatre.com

“The vocal group Bob Ross Juice Box has created a fast-paced, frankly charming a cappella musical about six twenty-somethings trying to make it in the big city…looks like a sleeper hit to us.”

New York Magazine

The Big Bang

Reviews

Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre

"Like an older and younger brother, Reed and Fields have comic timing that is so in sync it appears to be inbred. Expert director Shawn Churchman taps into this synchronicity to effect taut, imaginative stage business and frantic pacing that keeps the audience immersed in the show".

Clif' Warrren, Edmond Life and Leisure

"CityRep Theatre continues its strong season with the opening of "The Big Bang" this past weekend to a packed house. With music by Jed Feuer and book and lyrics by Boyd Graham, this two-man, fast-paced comedy starts off running and never lets up."

Bob Smith, The Edmond Sun

Photographs

Dames at Sea

Reviews

The Hangar Theatre, Ithaca NY

(Choreographed by Ron Gibbs)

“Much of the credit for this production's triumph goes to the fast pacing by director Shawn Churchman…”

David Feldman, Syracuse New Times

“Dames at Sea, now at the Hangar Theatre, is glitzy, campy, and full of delightfully unmotivated singing and dancing…Director Shawn Churchman keeps things hustling with great tap dancing, joyously overblown production numbers and witty quotes…”

Judith Pratt, The Ithaca Journal

Dames at Sea is 1930's Americana seen through rose-colored glasses of a Busby Berkeley musical, and the Hangar Theatre's vision of it excels in every respect.”

Laurel Saiz, Syracuse Post-Standard

Photographs

The Fantasticks

Reviews

The Hangar Theatre, Ithaca N.Y

“If you’ve put off seeing THE FANTASTICKS all these years…then now's the time to stop postponing. The Hangar's third production of the season is a lively, well-staged, highly visual and satisfying melodic version of the 39-year-old work. Shawn Churchman provides a very tight, energetic production…Churchman's version keeps the simplicity yet dazzles us with details.”

Barbara Adams, The Ithaca Times

“Hangar Theatre's production of THE FANTASTICKS is a warm-hearted, giddy, pretty, cheerful, funny, sly, engaging, tender, sassy, lovely little jewel of a show. Director Shawn Churchman and his appealing cast have taken this dingy and dowdy old heir-loom of a high school drama departments and bad dinner theatre, polished it up, reset it and made it seem brand-new without losing any of it's original, old-fashioned charm. Temptations for cheap sentimentality are embedded throughout the script…Churchman slips right past, never allowing himself to get suckered in. THE FANTASTICKS is about the joys of young love, and one of those joys is that young lovers are funny. Hollywood, TV sitcoms and most teenagers in love don’t know that. Churchman does. He also knows the difference between laughing at someone and making fun of it.”

David Reilly, Syracuse Post-Standard

“Reviving a classic is an easy job compared to scraping the mildew and fungus off a moldy fig. That's what Ithaca's Hangar Theatre, one of the region's most innovative companies, faces in trying to put a fresh look on THE FANTASTICKS, that 40-year-old done-to-death piece of lyrical whimsy. A thousand mediocre mountings of THE FANTASTICKS cannot diminish the luster of a show that this Hangar production restores. Churchman's interpretation corrects the lazy director's vision that all the fun is in the first act and the second is only an interval before the inevitable happy resolution.”

James MacKillop, Syracuse New Times

Photographs

Forever Plaid

Reviews

The Mac-Haydn Theatre, Chatham N.Y

“Director Shawn Churchman, a veteran of several Forever Plaid national tours, has learned his lessons well. The production he has crafted for the Mac-Haydn is smart, stylish and has a shrewd sense of proportion. The production is loaded with wonderful sight gags, none of which is pushed too far… Simplicity is a real virtue. When you combine it with talent and intelligence, as this production does, it will carry you a very long way.”

Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle

The Hangar Theatre, Ithaca N.Y

“Certainly Churchman succeeds in getting bigger laughs out of the dorky humor that has risen out of the last five or six productions… it's not just that Churchman's timing is good, always necessary for comedy, but also that he takes an acute angle toward all that now very dated close harmony.”

James MacKillop, Syracuse New Times

Photographs

The Happy Prince

Reviews

New York Musical Theatre Festival
The Beckett Theatre, 42nd St.
The Happy Prince

“The production itself is immensely attractive, one of the more opulent of this year's NYMF shows. There are numerous, gorgeous, and imaginative costumes (by Cindy Capraro) and colorful storybook sets (by David Esler), but Churchman also has plenty of creative staging concepts – often involving the use of shadow and silhouette that lighting designer Bobby Harrell assist him with – that give the show a magical, improvisatory quality and a look and feel all its own.”

Matthew Murray, Talkin’ Broadway Review

“Well directed by Shawn Churchman.”

David Finkle, TheatreMania.com NYMF Round-up

How to Succeed in Business...

Reviews

Depot Theatre, Westport, NY

There is not a weak link in the entire cast of 18, so cleverly directed by Shawn Churchman with Frank Schiro as musical director and Daniel Baldwin Hess as choreographer.

Bob Rose, Glen Falls Post-Star

Lend Me a Tenor

Reviews

Doors slammed, identities mistaken in riotous 'Tenor': The show is a fast-paced, old-fashioned farce.

"Lend Me a Tenor” may be Stage One's first nonmusical show in its nine-year history, but this comedy/farce has enough operatic flourishes to require performers with musical chops…Tenor is a fast-paced, old-fashioned, door-slamming French farce -- literally, with six doors in constant motion…Despite all the slam-bang action, J. Branson's gorgeous, multilevel set re-creating a luxury 1930s art deco hotel room with parquet walls and marble pilasters never wobbled. Director Shawn Churchman keeps the action antic and frantic…Churchman choreographs a terrific curtain call that essentially replays the entire show in two minutes in fast-forward mode.

Bob Curtright, The Wichita Eagle

Photographs

Little Me

Reviews

Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre
Starring Jonathan Beck Reed

“Little Me audience served delicious treat”. Little Me is a banana split of a musical. It's a banana split with chocolate, strawberry and butterscotch toppings, extra walnuts, and cherries on top. A steady diet of this sort of frippery is bad for you, but, boy, it looks good, and it is good going down.…Shawn Churchman directs the show with efficiency, flair, and an eye for detail…a guilty pleasure.”

Larry Laneer, The Daily Oklahoman

“Director Shawn Churchman has gathered a large, talented cast and pulled them and all the technical elements together in capturing just the right tone and pace for this tricky show.”

Linda McDonald, The Oklahoma Gazette

Photographs

Mame

Reviews

Cohoes Music Hall, Cohoes, NY

“Mame is the best show the troupe has yet staged, and it features a talented, well-rehearsed cast under the strong direction of Shawn Churchman.”

Michael Eck, Albany Times Union

“…closing its first season with a colorful and enchanting production of Mame…Beekman Place, Mame's residence, comes alive with spirited dancing designed by director-choreographer Shawn Churchman.”

Bob Rose, Glens Falls Post-Star

“The show includes simple but suggestive sets, plenty of splendid acting, good direction and glorious musical and dance experiences…The real star of the show at Cohoes was the technical management, from Shawn Churchman's right-on direction…”

Bob Couture, The Schenectady Daily Gazette

Photographs

Naughty Marietta

Reviews

Utah Festival Opera

(Directed and choreographed by Shawn Churchman. Revised script by Shawn Churchman)

“Life's sweet mystery, (a.k.a. love) is revealed once again in the Ellen Eccles Theatre at the Utah Festival Opera revival of Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta. There is plenty of high-brow comedy and low-brow drama for an evening of stylish, most enjoyable musical theatre…the choreography by director/choreographer Shawn Churchman is particularly stylish.”

Michael Chipman, The Salt Lake Tribune

Photographs

A Trip to Bountiful

Reviews

Bountiful is a trip to remember

Stage One, has done more than rename itself in its tenth year — it has reinvented and revived itself…it has produced its first-ever play — a sleek, new look at Horton Foote’s 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, The Trip to Bountiful.

City Rep’s production works well on many levels — particularly at the performance level. The opening scenes between Cavarozzi and Henry are humorously touching yet heartbreaking. Though this play concerns itself largely with Carrie’s search for autonomy and reclaiming of self, Henry’s Ludie gives the audience a poignant critique on urbanization’s emasculation of manhood in society. The play’s conclusion is as much about Ludie’s rediscovering his manhood as it is about Carrie’s reclaiming her freedom.

The battle of wills early on in the play between Cavarozzi’s Carrie and Ford’s Jessie Mae also provides for entertaining yet tension-driven drama. Ford’s energetic Jessie Mae is both manic and officious while Joyce Cavarozzi plays Carrie as a fidgety, desolate dependent who shuffles back and forth throughout the apartment. As the plot develops, so does Cavarozzi’s Carrie who transforms into a luminous spirit who regains her courage and rediscovers an inner-strength to help her live out the rest of her days.

One of the highlights of the evening that deserves much praise is the pseudo-minimalist technical and artistic design by the play’s director, Shawn Churchman, and set designer, David Esler. A raked swath of glossy planks stretching upstage provides the central space in which the actors perform. There are stunning lighting changes and visual imagery projected on suspended, overhead windowpanes. Country-bluegrass musicians as minor characters provide live, incidental music (by composer Frank Schiro) off and on-stage to underscore the production’s mood. And quick movement of props by an efficient crew comprised mainly of minor characters all work together allowing the production to shift seamlessly from a small, Houston apartment, to a bus depot, and eventually a family homestead at Bountiful.

More importantly, all these aspects work so well together to support the fine performances and a beautifully streamlined script to articulate what appears to be a nostalgic elegy to the 20th-Century rural American family that is slowly fading from America’s 21st Century techno-urbanized worldview.

Tom Davis, Wichita City Paper

"The Trip to Bountiful" is probably Texas playwright Horton Foote's most popular tale -- and for good reason…Stage One's version, which opened Friday, is a hauntingly lovely new take on the classic…This version, which was revived on Broadway earlier this year, is a streamlined 90-minute adaptation that eschews an act break to preserve the mood. It also features a beautifully surreal, evocative set by David Esler that looks like a wooden plank Yellow Brick Road extending into the distance with props denoting stops along the way. Overhead are floating windows with moving and changing projections of clouds, rain and a full moon. Helping set the mood with delicate strains of music are a bluegrass combo who occasionally wander into the action as characters themselves. Directed by Stage One's new artistic director, Shawn Churchman, the play moseys along at a natural Texas pace, unhurried so we can savor the journey but not dawdling.

Bob Curtright The Wichita Eagle

Photographs