Reviews for Jarrott Productions Performances
Review 1 of 2: The Lifespan of a Fact by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 12, 2022
The focus of the story is the distinction between facts and truth. THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT stuns the audience with a very precise but unvoiced answer to the question inherent in the title. Perfect.
This Austin premiere of The Lifespan of a Fact marks Jarrott Productions' welcome return to live onstage performance after the debilitation of the Covid pandemic. The company has built a reputation for urban contemporary theatre and explores that esthetic further by moving for this show to the mixed industrial, suburbanized east side at Ground Floor Theatre on Springfield Road in Austin. The work was originally produced on Broadway in 2018, written jointly by Jeremy Kareken, …
Review: A Portrait of My Mother by Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, presented by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 12, 2021
We're lucky Carlo Lorenzo Garcia was willing to share this story without a scrap of sentimentality, and that his gift as an actor is the rare ability tell it so well.
I remember very clearly when I first saw Carlo Lorenzo Garcia. Curiously enough it was in another—very different—drama about family. That was in December, 2017 when Street Corner Arts presented Pocatello, directed by Benjamin Summers. Garcia was surrounded by a dozen Austin actors, including some of the very best and most vivid. I wrote, "Carlos Lorenzo Garcia, newly arrived in Austin from Chicago, is Eddie. [ . . .] [and his] performance"[ . . …
Review: The Niceties by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 18, 2020
Director Jeremy Rashad Brown tries to tease apart the issues writhing in this spaghetti bowl of despair, but he can’t. The script won’t let him. And that’s the point of the play.
The Niceties is about intersectionality, the intersections of every issue you can name: race, gender, age, sexuality, class, power, revolution, economics, freedom, history, semiotics, equity in all modes, communication theory, pronoun etiquette, and morality over all. The intersections of these issues, each to all, are touched lightly or embraced passionately in this play by Eleanor Burgess. Jeremy Rashad Brown directs. The play is set in the office of a history professor of a small, …
Review: Admissions by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 26, 2019
The real revelation — and it is one — is Tucker Shepherd as the focus and subsequently the fuse for the explosion within the family, including an astonishing, long, beautifully modulated rant that makes him a hero and a schmuck at the same time.
Joshua Harmon’s Admissions is billed as a comedy, but the only comic scenes are short and steered by the ever intriguing Jennifer Underwood in the role of Roberta, a superannuated staffer directly related to the founder of a prestigious New England prep school. Underwood stands knee-deep in tradition and loyalty to the school's meritocratic mission to affluent and keenly honed offspring of alumni and potential donors. She sees no need to be apologize for …
Review: The Children by Jarrott Productions
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 01, 2019
THE CHILDREN offers, once again, evidence of Jarrott's discerning taste in contemporary drama. By taking us away into these characters' isolation, this production brings us very much back into the human fold.
Darkness hovers over the plot, the set, and the concept of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, mounted appropriately in the Trinity Street Players’ black box theatre on the fourth floor of First Austin, a Baptist church. Jarrott Productions’ choices for this space have consistently taken the moral focus of those hosting institutions. No, not the theology. Kirkwood’s script, like many other productions in this space, examines the human condition and difficult choices facing responsible individuals …
Review: For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 21, 2019
From Davenport, Iowa, magical realism, pixie dust, and Tinker Belle, played by a shiny party ball, fling us into septuagenarian siblings' journey to Neverland.
What if Peter Pan did grow up? Sarah Ruhl in her play For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday imagines PP in a middle class Irish Catholic family in Davenport, Iowa where she found joy, success, and ennui with professional siblings. Jarrott Productions’ production of the play at Trinity Street Playhouse plumbs its complexities and offers memories for many with similar family histories. Caution: the show is for adults with considerable life experience, not …