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
Tagged with upstart productions …
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
Game On: WAITING FOR LEFTY by Upstart Productions
“The world is supposed to be for all of us…Hello, America!” Waiting for Lefty Delighted to see that the frequently conservative Dallas Morning News has not blacklisted Upstart Productions for producing Clifford Odet’s Waiting For Lefty and that the production will continue its run through April 1, playing to full houses. That’s exactly … Continue reading
WHAT THE DEUCE! A Dreamy Double-Dose of Drama
Double your pleasure, double your fun. Double your impact? With the NEA, NEH and PBS funding at risk under a wildcat Republican administration in DC, it’s hard not to worry how the arts will survive and thrive. Two Best of the Region theatre companies have linked resources to offer audiences a special two-fer deal this … Continue reading
2013-14 DFW Theater Critics Forum Awards
Some of these shows I did not see. A number I would not honor with awards. EVER. I am disappointed that neither Ochre House’s Christhelmet (directed by Matthew Posey) nor Diana Sheehan’s Full Gallop or her sophisticated cabaret, Searching for Gertrude Lawrence at WaterTower Theatre met the critical popularity threshold. I am quite thrilled for other wins. Call it a draw…. Direction: … 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
FIT 2012: Night of Your Screaming Deadly
What just happened on stage, and why are my arms all goose-bumpy? One of the most delightful aspects of Dallas’ Festival of Independent Theatres is recognizing elements of pure risk-taking in certain productions and the artists who create them. Unrelated elements combine in unique ways. Uncomfortable moods sustain, creating prolonged suspense or examining the human … Continue reading
Almondine Antidote: Upstart’s Un-melancholy Play
Nothing melancholy about Sarah Ruhl’s Melancholy Play. It’s mostly exuberant. Billed as a contemporary farce, this whimsical fairytale romance for adults with a hint of mystery rolls merrily along in dreamy absurd-ville. What a relief to realize it exhibits none of the pretentious gimmickry of Ruhl’s highly praised and uninteresting domestic device dramedy The Vibrator … Continue reading
Get Your Summer FIT On!
Ready to get FIT? Every summer for the past twelve years an array of intrepid theatre artists from all across north Texas converge on White Rock Lake, but it’s not to bike its perimeter or run a marathon. They meet to create, invent, percolate, explore, perform and produce some of the region’s most unusual, seldom … Continue reading
criticalrant.com Alexandra Bonifield 