Posted in March 2011 …

Stop Kiss Stops Short @ Sundown Collaborative

Some stage productions get directed, others just blocked. In the case of Diana Son’s 1998 comic drama Stop Kiss, now playing at Art Six in Denton, a project of Sundown Collaborative Theatre, it’s the latter. Produced Off-Broadway in 1998 at New York City’s The Public Theater to critical acclaim, the play weaves themes of coming … Continue reading →

Origames: Amphibian’s Animals Out of Paper

Heading to New York City for Robin Williams’ Broadway debut in Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre? Not this week? If you’d like to sample this wunderkind playwright’s work (a 2010 Rockefeller Fellow, winner of Vineyard Theatre’s 2008 Paula Vogel Award for emerging playwrights), jaunt to … Continue reading →

Playing Foote-sie: Stage West & Dallas Theater Center

North Texas’ iconic Horton Foote Festival established itself on solid ground this past two weekends with entirely different productions opening at Stage West in Fort Worth and at the Dallas Theater Center’s Wyly Theatre. Running the full gamut from intimate to epic, these productions demonstrate eloquently why Foote’s work is worthy of a celebration festival … Continue reading →

Grandpa’s Home Videos: The Dalai Lama’s Pyjamas

So often stage productions that incorporate elements of video do so in a manner that fails both media. The film aspect feels tacked on as additional exposition (distracting and boring) or as gratuitous, self-congratulatory tech expertise (“See, we can use a camera!”). It interferes with the play’s plot and character development to the point that … Continue reading →

Spic and Span with One Thirty Productions

One Thirty Productions has a real knack for finding and producing lesser-known theatrical gems. It’s that wee, spunky theatre company tucked into an odd corner of the Bath House Cultural Center and managed by a tight-knit, congenial group of professional artists with at least 200 years’ worth of genuine theatrical knowledge and experience between them. … Continue reading →

Loopy Lite 2011

Where is 2010’s Mike Daisey when we really, really need him? On stage fare at the 2011 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at WaterTower Theatre in Addison leans towards the peculiar, superficial and unfinished as opposed to the substantial, relevant and artistically thought provoking. C’est dommage. Maybe if we reviewers trying to critique the … Continue reading →

Believin’ On A Jetplane @ Circle Theatre

I am woman, hear me roar…. There is something so satisfying about watching four gorgeous, deserving women get exactly what they want from two conniving, exploitative men who think the world is their oyster. Seeing it performed as stage farce, by a fine acting ensemble with an daring female director at the helm, makes it … Continue reading →