Reviews for Penfold Theatre Company Performances

Review: Now Then Again by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: Now Then Again by Penfold Theatre Company

by Michael Meigs
Published on September 23, 2014

We all like ‘What if?’ That’s really the essence of theatrical art, isn’t it?  In simplest terms, we gather to witness the presentation of a story. No, it’s not real. . . but what if it were? A romantic comedy, say — where the protagonist is a brilliant theoretical physicist who’s incredibly shy and socially inept, and he meets this incredibly gifted woman, an undergraduate intern who somehow has gotten a summer assignment to this cutting-edge lab, recognizes …

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Review: Ordinary Days by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: Ordinary Days by Penfold Theatre Company

by Michael Meigs
Published on March 26, 2014

Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days is a fairytale, and an appealing one, set firmly in the city that O. Henry once called "Baghdad-on-the-Hudson."  He gives us the portraits of four yearning young folk in their late 20s or early 30s, all unattached, all working to sort out their own identities and places in the world (or in the City).  A couple of them are lonely singles who'll eventually meet one another; the other two characters, a man and …

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Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company

by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2013

Penfold's It's A Wonderful Life amply justifies its title. This production is an entertaining, reassuring and lively enactment, set in a simpler time. It's just the right tonic for the overdramatized complexities of our present day.

This is a warm, simple entertainment for the chill of the holiday season -- and it was so chilly in the Old Settler's Park in Round Rock last week that park employees had turned off the water at Rice's Crossing Store to prevent damage to the pipes.  Penfold folk, using that recreation of a village gathering place for their third annual staging of Joe Landry's adaptation of the 1946 Frank Capra film with Jimmy Stewart, …

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Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company

by Michael Meigs
Published on December 04, 2012

Penfold's It's A Wonderful Life is a charmer and a thoroughly feel-good performance, particularly recommended for the holiday season.

Frank Capra's film It's A Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart captured the yearning, optimism and nostalgia for small-town U.S.A. in 1946, a time when millions of American men were returning from the war.  The film made an unpromising start and was considered something of a failure in its first release, but yearly television showings of this black-and-white tale of redemption and grace set it deeply into our collective consciousness.  Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed as his sweetheart, Lionel …

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Review: Moonlight and Magnolias by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: Moonlight and Magnolias by Penfold Theatre Company

by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 09, 2012

. . . fast-paced and funny. Director Robert Faires was inventive in his blocking and scrupulous in keeping clear sight lines and audible diction.

Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson is a romp and a challenge for comedic actors.  Penfold Theatre Company is giving it a go in the City Theatre behind the Shell station on Airport Boulevard, exciting the audience members who actually manage to find the venue.    The play is relatively new, published in 2004, but it is set in Hollywood, 1939, specifically in the the executive office of Producer David O. Selznick (Ryan Crowder). Shooting of Gone …

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Review: Red by Penfold Theatre Company

Review: Red by Penfold Theatre Company

by David Glen Robinson
Published on September 22, 2012

After much discourse on the meaning of red and many other art topics, the actors actually painted a large canvas, priming it in red, I wanted to give them a standing ovation. They demonstrated the craft and skill of painting, giving us the goods at last, a rare theatre and art moment.

Red is a tragedy, make no mistake, but it is one in love with life, and most especially with the color red.  As with the very best plays, Red tells everything plainly to the audience.  The promotional material for the play is full of piquant quotations from the script, by way of Mark Rothko, the central character.  My favorite, not in any of the cut-lines is: “There is tragedy in every brushstroke.”    And so the tragedy played itself …

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