BWW Reviews: ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY at Austin's Long Center is Out of This World

The force is strong with this one. I'm sure it's been said before, but praise is often worth repeating. With One Man Star Wars Trilogy, the show's star and creator, Charles Ross, takes us on a crazy 75 minute ride that both respects and reveres the classic original Star Wars trilogy while also playing up the series's unintentional camp, humor, and numerous implausibilities and plot holes. This love letter to nerddom is a must see for any fan of the films.

Clad only in black and without any set or props, Ross creates the entire Star Wars universe down to John Williams's score, George Lucas's iconic characters, every sound effect and explosion, and even those floating yellow narrations that open each movie. In a little over an hour, he acts out Episodes IV, V, and VI (each episode clocks in at roughly 20 minutes), milking some jokes and moments all fans seem to gravitate towards (Admiral Ackbar's "It's a trap!" line is repeated several times).

At times the show feels like a young boy acting out Star Wars in his bedroom, but anyone would be hard pressed to find someone who could act out the entire saga as successfully and with such imagination and humor. Ross switches from characters and scenes at light-speed pace, and each moment and character, though they may pass by quickly, is fully-formed and brilliantly portrayed. Some are eerily true to the source (his R2D2 and Chewbacca voices are spot on), some are brazen exaggerations (i.e. the super whiney Luke Skywalker), but all are brilliantly executed and wonderfully effective. His performance is a daring tour-de-force of comedy, and his 10 minute epilogue in which he tells us his story of how The One Man Star Wars Trilogy began, how it's continued for 12 years, and what happened when Lucasfilms found out about it is a fun way to close out the evening.

With his wit, attention to detail, and breakneck pacing, Charles Ross's A One Man Star Wars Trilogy is a fanboy's dream come true. This is a brilliant and hysterical send-up of one of the greatest film franchises of all time. If you're a fan of other Star Wars parodies like Mel Brooks's Space Balls and Seth MacFarlane/Family Guy's "Blue Harvest" trilogy, you'll love this show.

May the farce be with you.

Run time: 75 minutes with no intermission.

ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY plays the Rollins Studio Theater at the Long Center for the Performing Arts at 701 Riverside Drive, Austin, TX now thru Sunday, March 3^rd. Performances are Wednesday 2/27 and Thursday 2/28 at 7:30pm, Friday 3/1 at 8pm, Saturday March 2^nd at 3pm and 8pm, and Sunday March 3^rd at 3pm and 7pm.

Tickets are $34-$39 regular and $24-$29 for students.

For tickets and information, please visit www.thelongcenter.org

Jeff Davis is a graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television where he obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Theater with an emphasis in Directing.

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