Recent Reviews
Review: HAMLET by Trinity University, San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 14, 2024
The Trinity University cast of 39 had no doubts at all about the language, the length, or the deep themes of Shakespeare's most famous work. Anna Kate Vaughan's Hamlet is contemporary, swift, articulate, and intentional.
Trinity University's Dr. Stacey Connelly has taken on an audacious challenge: staging Shakespeare's Hamlet for the first time in the theatre program's 56-year history. This is Shakespeare's longest play, with texts published postumously in quarto and folio editions that hardly matched at all. Combining these, editors constructed the revered "complete text." Connelly appears to have staged that version, which runs three and a half hours, including about twenty minutes of break for intermission and scene …
Review: Brand by Lighthouse Theatre
by Charles Ney
Published on November 09, 2024
Lighthouse Theatre faced the many challenges of BRAND, Henrik Ibsen's rarely performed first drama. Zach Gamble in the title role and director Chase Wooldridge dug deep, and their work with the capable cast paid off beautifully.
What a pleasure to see a rarely performed Ibsen play fully mounted. In all my theatre travels, I have never encountered Brand, the playwright's first work. So what a treat it was to have the chance to see this piece on stage! As I watched this production unfold, I realized why this piece is so rarely done. The challenges are many. At the core is an icy uncaring protagonist who lives by the motto …
Review: Booger Red by Jim Loucks
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 23, 2024
In his portrait of a fundmentalist preacher father and an unwilling son, Jim Loucks uses quicksilver changes of voice, face, stances, emotion, and movement. And provides some spiritual insight, as well.
Any performance of material derived from one’s family has great authenticity. Jim Loucks emphasizes that his story is “loosely derived” from his life experiences with his father Booger Red, but the depths of feeling and insight revealed in this presentation cannot be gained other than by direct experience. Louck’s talent and commitment to the performance are heightened by the theatrical values of Booger Red. His movement, highly important and sometimes lacking in one-person …
Review: MJ, the musical by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 22, 2024
This jukebox yields forty spectacular greatest-hit numbers and a shallow portrait of the superstar.
The first album I ever bought was Michael Jackson’s Thriller, on vinyl no less, which was all the more significant because I didn’t even own a record player. Like many who saw the birth of MTV, the advent of the music video for the titular song, a mini-horror film, was momentous to me. Like many at the time, I had stopped following the outrageous exploits of Jackson’s career which had inarguably become more about …
Review: POTUS by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 21, 2024
POTUS won't explicitly instruct you how to vote, but director Karen Jambon and this high-energy female cast will leave you in stitches.
Jarrott Productions' staging of Selina Fillinger's farce comedy POTUS is extremely well-timed for this presidential election season. Directed by the highly regarded Karen Jambon, the lavish production takes place inside the cozy, comfortable and accommodating Trinity Street Playhouse. POTUS is farce verging on slapstick,a boundary somewhat hard to define. For example: a character enters and immediately vomits into a wastebasket. You decide. The play finds its edge in several offices and rooms …
Review: I'm Proud of You by Penfold Theatre Company
by Vanessa Hoang Hughes
Published on October 15, 2024
Sit back and enjoy the story of Mister Rogers in Penfold Theatre's sweet, low-stakes show with some fine actors.
You’ve probably found yourself enveloped in the wondrous world of Fred Rogers. Whether you watched his original show or the animated spin-off Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, you remember the kindness, wisdom, and love Rogers shared with his audience. As a proud Daniel Tiger kid, I can testify to the effect Mr. Rogers had on my childhood and how his themes of friendship and important feelings shined in my five-year-old eyes. I’m Proud of You by Tim …