Morning Returns
The Catastrophic Theatre’s Mickle Maher Connection If you missed The Catastrophic Theatre’s production of Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, don’t stress, it’s coming back, May 10-27 at their new digs on the docks. Catastrophic has quite an impressive track record with Maher, starting with The Strangerer, followed by [...]
A Python Primer
Spamalot Returns to TUTS The knights who say “ni”, along with killer rabbits, flying cows and other assorted antics, arrive at the Hobby Center this month when Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) presents Monty Python’s Spamalot, a self-proclaimed “rip off” of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As a self-proclaimed Python lover, I’m [...]
Bold Plays
Life Under Mildred’s Umbrella In the early days of the new millennium, while still a creative writing undergrad at University of Houston, Jennifer Decker fielded an unexpected request from one of her professors. This professor, she was told, was writing a play. And she seemed, just maybe [...]
Review: Selkie, A Sea Tale
The origin of a myth has its roots in the earth as much as the soul of a people. Thus, it makes sense that the legends of the half-human/half-seal Selkie creatures hark from the Northern British isles, a place where sea merges with land, and where sea has consumed the land. It’s no wonder then [...]
After All These Years
At 90, Miller Outdoor Theatre is still the Heart of Houston It would be hard to pick an arts venue more beloved in Houston than Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park. Rising up from its grassy hill in one of the city’s lushest oases, it’s a space that inevitably inspires warm feelings from both the [...]
Broke-ology
Broke-ology is the science of being broke and trying to survive,” says Ennis King to his younger brother Malcolm in Nathan Louis Jackson’s absorbing Broke-ology, on stage at the Ensemble Theatre (through April 14). While that may be Ennis’ self-styled definition of it all, the play is much more about ways that we’re broke: monetarily, [...]
Strings and Shadows
Getting Behind Houston’s Puppet Scene There is something incredibly uncanny about puppets. As children we are drawn to their whimsical powers; as adults they weird us out. They are inanimate objects that can magically move and talk. We know that there is someone behind them [...]
Review: Man of La Mancha
Some musicals are based on B-movies, others have even less sturdy beginnings. In contrast, Man of La Mancha is based on Cervantes’ 1605 seminal masterpiece Don Quixote, considered the very first novel. It doesn’t get much better than that when it comes to source material. The Theatre [...]
Review: God of Carnage
I’ll admit: my first reaction to the news that Stark Naked Theatre Company had inserted French playwright Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage into its current season between Body Awareness and Macbeth was, “Oh no, not that thing again!” It was only a year ago that I caught [...]
Review: The Language Archive
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Mary says to George in Julia Cho’s The Language Archive (at Stages Repertory Theatre through March 3). “I’ve never understood what you’re trying to tell me.” And right there brings us to the crux of the problem in this endearing drama [...]
Review: Catch Me If You Can
What’s not to love about a FBI song and dance man? Catch Me If You Can rolled into the Hobby Center with enough earnest energy that people might think it’s a noble thing to forge a check. The advantage about making a musical based on a film, is that most of us already know the [...]
Response: The Submission
House lights go out on dim blue work lights as the actors take their places. Scene lights come up stage left on a set platform. Two males, seated, at a coffee shop. One jabs away at a logo-glowing Apple laptop while the other plods through a pre-digital paper manuscript. For a moment I imagine that [...]
