People tend to associate Tennessee Williams plays with pedantic required reading for high school English classes or as suitably relegated to university production where students “learn to act” through staging fusty, outdated Classics. How unfortunate. A worthy stage experience can transport an audience into an invented world of wonder and illumination, providing unanticipated insight into … Continue reading
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This Cherry Orchard: Mostly the Pits
When I critique a stage play, I consider both the work and the production. A worthy play may get a mediocre or problematic staged treatment. A clumsy or dated, predictable play sometimes surprises with a wonderful enlivenment. It’s not often I see shows that balance out both aspects, for better or for worse. The productions … Continue reading
Dynamic Dame Creates World of Wonderful
When William Moulton Marston created the fictional Amazonian character Wonder Woman for DC Comics (first appeared in 1941), he probably had no clue of the paradigm shifting, multi-generational impact and popularity she would have. Nor could he have imagined the impact one creative, intelligent, impassioned producer/advocate, a veritable Wonder Woman in her own right, could … Continue reading
Criticalrant Best Choices 2017: Theatre in N.TX/OK Region
Best of 2017? DFW fosters a diverse, vibrant theatre community with more talent expanding its depth and range every year. Many interesting roles for women in 2017…. Despite the focus on harassment issues and the #MeToo paradigm shift, DFW theatre trends towards more parity in male/female engagement. It’s always easy to recall an array of … Continue reading
Devil’s Return: Joey Folsom’s Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce is back and looks damn good for a guy who died of a morphine overdose in 1966. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. When he stepped out on the Dallas Comedy House stage Friday August 4, he looked like a million greenbacks, sparkling with macho swagger and lady-killer grin. From the slick, … Continue reading
Colonic for the Soul: LENNY BRUCE IS BACK with Joey Folsom
Dallas Comedy House, Dallas, Texas’ premier comedy venue, declares, “Humor is subjective and comedy is personal” on their website. Salacious sage/infamous stand up comic Lenny Bruce might agree with that, with the addition of a few choice expletives sure to make somebody’s granny blush. August 4 and 5 Dallas audiences get the chance to … Continue reading
Riddle Me Alienated: Upstart Productions @ Magnolia Lounge
A thespian riddle: why would a playwright kill off the only interesting character of three at the end of Act One? Answer: to bore the audience to death in Act Two. Conflict. Character arc. Resolution. Reversal. Catharsis. Pay-off, where art thou? What is it with today’s crop of “award-winning” young playwrights? They endeavor to write … Continue reading
Gint, the Universal Man @ Broken Gears
Gint. This spooky, unsettling play, part romance, part fantasy, part anti-hero’s journey, presents a challenging undertaking for Broken Gears Project Theatre as the company’s second production in its hidden Oak Lawn venue. It possesses quite a heritage, as second cousin to a great work, several times removed. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen embarked on writing Peer … Continue reading
criticalrant.com Alexandra Bonifield 