Recent Reviews
Review: Memphis, the musical by Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 12, 2016
Attractive leads and high-spirited performances help to maintain a level of energy that rises above the clichés of Joe DiPietro's by-the-numbers book.
Continuing its ongoing tradition of tackling big Broadway musicals, the Woodlawn Theatre brings the sprawling, Tony-winning musical Memphis to its stage, marking another success for this ambitious company. Set in the titular Tennessee town in the 1950s, this is the story of Huey Calhoun, a white high school dropout who parlays his love of rhythm and blues into a career as a boundary-breaking DJ at a time when African-Americans were still treated very much as …
Review: Secrets of a Soccer Mom by AtticRep
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 09, 2016
Lockwood, DeLuna, and Tonra do the most they can with these simply-sketched characters, and their charismatic performances help to make the evening more enjoyable than it should be.
Theatergoers who will get the biggest kick out of Secrets of a Soccer Mom are, well, soccer moms — and perhaps the husbands and children who likewise have a ball in the game. For others, it’s pretty routine stuff. Kathleen Clark’s one-act plumbs all-too-familiar territory in its depiction of three young mothers who gradually bare their souls as they play a Sunday afternoon match against their sons. As they sit on the sidelines awaiting …
Review: A Flea in Her Ear by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 09, 2016
Director Michael Costello and the lively young cast do a bang-up job of producing this creaky but timeless classic. Gallic amusement at the foolishness of lust remains unbounded.
Sex farces never grow old because jealousy and foolishness are always with us. Georges Feydeau kept a table at Maxim's in Paris and produced one farce after another, some sixty in all staged over the 40 years before the First World War. A Flea in her Ear (Une Puce à l'Oreille) is by far the best known to English speakers but titles of others suggest that Feydeau knew when he was onto a good thing …
Review: Bright Half Life by Theatre en Bloc
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 06, 2016
Captured by the intensity in the Vortex 'pony shed,' one rapidly learns to accept and even embrace abrupt and profoundly disorienting leaps in time and context.
Theatre en Bloc has installed a jolting unpredictable time machine in the 'pony shed' at the Vortex, that orphaned little structure that's at the foot of the drinking deck and adjacent to the outdoor stage. Announced capacity is 15 persons, all classes of seating combined, from donors to regular admission types to the unmonied but curious who pay nothing. Director Jenny Lavery and company exercise some compassion and ingenuity, however, and Sunday evening's 8:30 p.m. …
Review: A Wolverine Walks into a Bar by Classic Theatre of San Antonio
by Kurt Gardner
Published on April 04, 2016
The content is mostly Texas-centric with some good-natured gibes aimed particularly at the Alamo City. A Luby’s cafeteria joke? Genius.
Actor/playwright Jaston Williams, whose most immediately recognizable contribution to the world of theater is as co-star and co-creator of 1982’s Greater Tuna, took the stage of the Classic Theatre last Friday night with the world premiere of his new performance piece, A Wolverine Walks Into a Bar. Introducing the show, Williams explained that Wolverine was still a work in progress, with further segments to be added. If the audience’s response to the 70-minute show …
Review: Bus Stop by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 31, 2016
You've seen this kind of setup hundreds of times: the playwright collects characters and sets them spinning and bouncing off one another.
William Inge's Bus Stop sets for its audience the classic 'closed room' story, except that it's not an Agatha-Christie style mystery. The mystery being pursued here is the quest for love. It's 1 a.m. in the morning at a crossroads cafe somewhere west of Kansas City, well before the age of the Interstates. Cafe proprietor Grace and her young teen waitress are waiting for the arrival of the night bus, and taciturn Sheriff Will is …