Reviews for Jarrott Productions Performances

Review: The Shark Is Broken by Jarrott Productions

Review: The Shark Is Broken by Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on February 12, 2025

It's about an unseen fish—but also about the epic clashes between three moviemakers becalmed by delays, frustrations, and booze. Exceptional character work and lots of hilarious schadenfreude!

Comedies about the making and unmaking of famous movies are extremely rare. Other than The Shark is Broken about the making of Steven Spielberg’s 70s blockbuster Jaws, this reviewer can recall only Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson about the desperate writing of the 30s global gamechanger Gone with the Wind.     Comparisons are inevitable, but The Shark is Broken stands up well to Moonlight and Magnolias. Inside jokes are rife, their authenticity assured by co-author Ian Shaw, …

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Review: POTUS by Jarrott Productions

Review: POTUS by Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on October 21, 2024

POTUS won't explicitly instruct you how to vote, but director Karen Jambon and this high-energy female cast will leave you in stitches.

  Jarrott Productions' staging of Selina Fillinger's farce comedy POTUS is extremely well-timed for this presidential election season. Directed by the highly regarded Karen Jambon, the lavish production  takes place inside the cozy, comfortable and accommodating Trinity Street Playhouse.   POTUS is farce verging on slapstick,a boundary somewhat hard to define. For example: a character enters and immediately vomits into a wastebasket. You decide.   The play finds its edge in several offices and rooms …

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Review: A Million More to Go by Jarrott Productions

Review: A Million More to Go by Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on June 18, 2024

A hugely funny and thought-provoking comedy, Max Langert's A MILLION MORE TO GO is swift and vivid with an outstanding cast of now familiar multi-talented Austin actors.

  Cinnamon Path Productions and Jarrott Productions have premiered Max Langert's new absurdist comedy A Million More to Go at Trinity Street Playhouse in downtown Austin. The conjunction of forces by these two companies has salutary effects for theatre audiences: satisfying entertainment and, oddly, thoughtful commentary on current social and political issues.   Langert has written much, including theatre pieces Gibberish Mostly, produced by Ground Floor Theatre, and The Pact, recently presented by Jarrott Productions, …

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Review: Home, I'm Darling by Jarrott Productions

Review: Home, I'm Darling by Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 29, 2024

Will Gibson Douglas's fine directing stitches together a cartoonish plot, strengthened by excellent actors. Do YOU want to go back to the Ozzie-and-Harriet 1950s?

  The first act of Home, I’m Darling stamps Ozzie and Harriet, British edition on our minds. The saccharine preciousness of the set is matched by the opening caricatured scenes of action. Later, with a line serving to cover the embarrassment of the play at having done that to us, one of the characters denounces the principals, Judy (Martina Ohlhauser) and Johnny (Tobie Minor), as having turned their lives into cartoons.   Right, cartoons. But …

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Two CTXLT Reviews: DEATHTRAP by Ira Levine, Jarrott Productions

Two CTXLT Reviews: DEATHTRAP by Ira Levine, Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on November 08, 2023

Playwright Ira Levin displays his hubris by mocking his own cliché-loaded genre in approved Ivy League haute-snobbery while still entertaining and frightening audiences.

 Death Trap is well-regarded as a model murder/thriller potboiler with plot twists and reversals presented to the audience at every peak of its impressive dramatic action. Of great enjoyment is the fact that in all the excitement, the play takes its time. Contrast that pacing to stand-up comedy's effort to deliver a punchline every six seconds. Still, the stage is strewn with many bodies after just two and a half hours playing time. What’s less …

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Review: Mother of the Maid by Jarrott Productions

Review: Mother of the Maid by Jarrott Productions

by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 29, 2023

Jeanne d'Arc's mother Isabelle faces the extreme test of faith of losing her child due to events she cannot understand. Isabelle's is a tale of strength, survival, perseverance, and searching for the transcendent.

You already know how it ends. Here it is, no spoiler: Joan of Arc, teenager, war leader, visionary, sheep herder, innocent, über feminist, and pivot of history, suffered execution by burning at the stake by the French and the English, May 30, 1431. The high drama of her story in Mother of the Maid by Jane Anderson is foregrounded by the story of Joan’s mother Isabelle d’Arc. Anderson’s play focuses upon Isabelle in the extreme …

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