Recent Reviews
Review: Mary Poppins by Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 05, 2016
As director Dave Steakley muses in his production notes: Mary Poppins lives in a fantasy world, and the point of visiting her is to forget your cares in the real world. And there is nothing wrong with that.
“First of all let me make one thing quite clear… I never explain anything.” Perhaps my favorite line from the musical Mary Poppins, this classic one liner of delightful irony sums up the story of a magical nanny who descends from the sky to teach two unruly children (and their parents) the true meaning of family. Many things in the story are non-linear and silly for silliness sake: Any part of …
Review (#1 of 2): POSTVILLE by Don Fried, Last Act Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 31, 2016
Postville emphasizes that sources of refuge and support often lie across religions, across cultures, across voting lines, across the tracks, and sometimes just in the rocking chairs along Main Street.
The latest production of Last Act Theatre Company involves life in a small town in Iowa, based on actual events in the 1990s. Named for the town, the play Postville captures many of the events, some characters, and almost all of the feelings of the time when Hasidic Jews arrived in Postville to purchase and reopen a meatpacking plant for marketing of kosher meats. The closed plant had been the only realistic source of employment …
Review: Hold Me Well by Shrewd Productions
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on July 28, 2016
The characters are on a raft adrift upon an empty sea with no hope in sight. We the spectators are the ghosts in the room.
The Immediate Jewel of the Soul “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash. (…..) But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.” These words from Act 3, scene 3 in Othello summarize both Iago’s fiendish plan and one of the play’s largest themes. It …
Review: The Glass Menagerie by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 24, 2016
Ben McLemore's delivery of Tom’s final soliloquy, full of street wanderings and everlasting love for his sister, evokes the later concerns and sensibilities of the Beat poets.
The Glass Menagerie is a study in pressure cookers, a modernist work, and a snow globe of the 20th century age of alienation. Much has been written about the play and its author Tennessee Williams, including how the play very likely models significant features of Williams’ family as he was growing up. Many call it a memory play. None of that matters. The Glass Menagerie generalizes brilliantly the squirming discontents of North American …
Review: Lunt and Fontanne: The Celestials of Broadway by Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on July 22, 2016
Lang and Murphy are marvelous as the titular couple, as well as the other characters they morph into as the need arises by means of simple onstage costume changes. Lang delivers a particularly amusing Brando.
Prior to making its New York premiere at the New York Fringe Festival this coming August, Lunt and Fontanne: The Celestials of Broadway is making a welcome — if brief — stop at the Classic Theatre in San Antonio. Real-life acting couple Mark E. Lang and Alison Murphy play Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, another real-life acting couple who took Broadway by storm in the early years of the last century, even getting a theater named …
Review: The Little Mermaid, Disney by Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on July 01, 2016
Performances are mostly broad and intentionally cartoonish to appeal to the youngsters, but adults may find them wearying in the long haul.
Back in the ’90s, the Disney corporation began mounting phenomenally successful Broadway adaptations of their animated hits Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. So it was not at all surprising that they’d turn to their 1989 The Little Mermaid for the stage treatment. Running for 685 performances beginning in 2008, it was not quite as successful as its predecessors. A few changes to songs and characters were made to the show in 2012, …