matthews playhouse

Matthews Playhouse is a treasure to be shared in downtown Matthews. Productions are quality, entertaining and family friendly. We recently saw Aladdin Jr; the children were so talented and the costumes were amazing.Besides from attending productions, our 9 year old son started their Broadway Kids musical theater class last year and cannot wait for this year's class to begin. Each class has 2 performances per year for them to showcase their talents. He also choose to attend 3 summer camps at the Playhouse this year and loved (plus learned) each one. We are lucky to have a local playhouse in our community!

We took our son to see Aladdin this past Sunday. The playhouse is very nice on the outside as well as the inside. We purchased our tickets through the internet (service charge) and when we walked in there was someone with a list with our names on it. The cast was made of young people. They did a fantastic job. I was very impressed especially when were told that they only had 10 days to rehearse. The stage is small, but it fits with the style of the room. I believe that most of the seats were full. It was a bit chilly in there, I'm assuming because the cast members were under hot lights. Next time I will bring a sweater with me. We plan to attend more plays here in the future. The play lasted for 1 one hour which was a great for the young children in the audience. Not too short and not too long.

We recently attended the Aladdin Jr. production put on by Matthews Playhouse, "a theater for young people". The playhouse is a nice small venue, but we were sadly disappointed that the production was really not intended for "young people".We attended with our 2 young children, ages 4 and 2, thinking this would be a wonderful opportunity to introduce them to the arts and musical theater, especially given the show is based on a Disney cartoon. Before the show even started, the audience was told during a 5-10 minute long pointless speech that this was not a Disney movie and we were to be quiet, not talk and not sing along. As the show progressed and our children voiced their excitement over seeing Princess Jasmine, we were shushed by surrounding audience members. We decided to leave with one or our children so as not to disturb anyone and another audience member proceeded to make a snarky comment about children making too much noise. We were told that following the show, Princess Jasmine would be in the lower level of the theater signing autographs. Many kids waited to see her. When she appeared 15 minutes after the show ended, she had changed out of her Jasmine costume and was unrecognizable by many kids. Many others were asking why she didn't have on her princess clothes. We were quite surprised by the costume change and sad that our kids were confused and disappointed.The entire experience was disappointing. We feel that it's important for our children to grow up appreciating the arts and we thought attending a youth theater would be the most appropriate place to do so. Apparently, this "youth theater" isn't really intended for that at all. We hope the theater will reconsider their approach to encourage young audience members, and their families, to feel welcome.

While in Matthews we went to see Shrek the Musical at the Community Theatre. The theatre is small, so there is no bad seat in the house. The performance was very professional and the music was terrific! Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We would definitely come back for other performances. It was a lot of fun and work a visit.

I had the pleasure of seeing Sweeney Todd recently. The cast is made up of various high school drama students. The performance was superb! The music, the singing and story line all fell into place as did the stage and lighting and set.This was an absolute delight to see!Easy to find and truly and asset to the community of Matthews.