Reviews for Penfold Theatre Company Performances
Review: Miracle on 34th Street by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 10, 2014
Christmas and the holidays are a time for comfort. Jingle bells, tinsel on the tree, Santa Claus everywhere as image, in real life and in our imagination. We were far from the United States when our children were growing up, but we shared the joy and comfort of the season with VHS tapes of It's A Wonderful Life (1946) andMiracle on 34th Street (1947), both in glorious living black and white. I hadn't seen them …
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 …
Review: Ordinary Days by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 26, 2014
Ordinary Days is a vigorous, sharp and entertaining ninety minutes of uninterrupted entertainment, a clever piece that touches the heart.
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …