Recent Reviews
Review: SWEENEY TODD by Steven Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on October 13, 2016
Sondheim’s score, one of the most complicated he’s ever written, involves operatic voices, intricate harmonies, and an ensemble as talented as the leads. The Woodlawn production directed by Rick Sanchez manages to accomplish it all.
One of Sondheim’s finest and darkest musicals is now playing at the Woodlawn Theatre — and it’s a knockout. Since its Broadway premiere in 1979, the story of the homicidal barber and his pie-selling partner in crime has been thrilling audiences in numerous stage and (big and small) screen adaptations. Inspired by the “penny dreadfuls” of the Victorian age, it offers up a grim picture of London of that period — a filthy, disease-ridden …
Review: The Shift by Twin Alchemy Collective
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 12, 2016
Twin Alchemy Collective’s parody of self-help seminars is thoroughly enjoyable. If they knew their approach also had social and personal therapeutic value, they might triple their ticket prices. So let's keep this quiet, shall we?
The Shift is a wry para-theatrical parody with a good heart. The latest offering from Katie Green’s Twin Alchemy Collective colors outside the lines bigtime as we’ve come to expect, and it is billed as a devised work. Interior scripts and conceptual texts serve nonetheless as guides for the actors and producers in building this performance event. The result is a highly original, ridiculously funny, and multilevel commentary on the inspirational seminar industry. The …
Review: Marriage Play by Edward Albee, Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on October 10, 2016
Catherine Babbitt and Andrew Thornton are marvelous as the troubled couple. Director Tim Hedgepeth wisely strips the staging down to the essentials. Tony Ciaravino’s fight choreography, so startling, is terrific.
The late, great playwright Edward Albee certainly loved his games. In his most famous work, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the characters spent an entire night (and early morning) playing them. In his seldom-seen two-character piece from 1987, Marriage Play, the protagonists also seem to be playing at something. Jack (Andrew Thornton) comes home to Gillian (Catherine Babbitt), his wife of 30 years, and calmly announces that he’s leaving her. She greets the news with eye-rolling …
Review: Dust by Nicole Oglesby, Heartland Theatre Collective
by Catherine Dribb
Published on October 09, 2016
Don't brush It off. . . catch DUST while you can. This new company provides a forehead-wiping, dirty evening of stellar performances and a poetic script.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is the underlying metaphor in this touching play about the toughness of life during the Dust Bowl that plagued midwest America in the 1930s. In retrospect, it was perfect that we watched Dust by Nicole Oglesby in an un-air conditioned 'pony shed' in the backyard of the booming Vortex complex (a venue featuring live theatre, food, wine, and so much more). The shack, resembling some sort of …
Review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 05, 2016
Deprived of Brecht's framework of satirical references to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the plot of this production sways awkwardly with no real point of attachment to our current political drama.
David Long's annual choices for directing at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre usually show a clever quirkiness and the ability to make surprising juxtapositions. He has a string of successes. He takes a classic and gives it modern comic spin (Molière's The Imaginary Invalid and Tartuffe) or he chooses a modern text that tips into absurdist fantasy (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Love & Information, Overmeyer's On The Verge or The Geography of Longing, Chuck …
Review: The Drowning Girls by Theatre en Bloc
by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 04, 2016
The flood of images was created to soggy perfection by the three incomparable actresses. I never again want to hear the sentence: “He took my breath away.”
The Drowning Girls is a murder mystery told in nonlinear fashion by the murder victims. The three brides, each drowned in the bath, rise from the water postmortem and sopping wet to tell their tale.The play is definitely a strong textual dialogue play, but not one with parlor scenes in a spacious set with numerous characters, as one would expect from an Agatha Christie mystery. No, here we have a bathroom set, looking perhaps like …