Recent Reviews
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 …
Review: KING LEAR by The Baron's Men, Austin
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 10, 2024
The Baron's Men's KING LEAR, a first, marks their 25th anniversary with eloquence and precision—a beautiful production of an enduring tragedy. They've scaled Everest.
Shakespeare's great tragedy is a fable that dares portray in resounding verse some of mankind's most common but most harrowing issues. The tyranny of the selfish old, set against the arrogance of the selfish young; the toxic dissolution of family ties and family hierarchy; the horror of ageing and senescence; the inevitability of human downfall; ambition, evil, and the sacrifice of innocents. These huge and inescapable issues are rooted in the human condition. We huddle …
Review: Lyric & The Keys by Magik Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 09, 2024
The parable Lyric & the Keys appeals to different levels of understanding—while entertaining, Roxanne Schroeder-Arce's story shows great empathy both for children and for the adults trying to nourish them.
The title of Roxanne Schroeder-Arce's play Lyric & the Keys prompted expectations of group of second-grade musicians, something gentler than, say, the cohort around Jack Black in School of Rock but lengthier and more coherent than the cutely pedagogical television series Schoolhouse Rock. But no; though protagonist Lyric is a beginning musician able to strum guitar chords, the keys of the title aren't session musicians at all. Her teacher Miss Reed (Clarissa Ramos) valiantly explains …