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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 15, 2023
A rule-breaking student asks his creative writing professor to read a dark novella, a twisted take on Catcher in the Rye. Intimacy and intimations of suicide color this vividly produced story.
The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp shakes the earth without arrogance or condescension. With this and recent productions Jarrott Productions has found its stride on a high plateau of excellence in production and theatrical art. Much is due to the dramaturgy of Producing Artistic Director David R. Jarrott. In The Sound Inside, much of the excellence is brought to the audience by actor Rebecca Robinson, who plays fictional Yale faculty member Bella Baird. All of …
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on October 14, 2022
It's easy to imagine a continuation of THE PACT in which these characters go on forever jabbing, sneering, and sniping at each other, all the while with love in their hearts.
Jarrott Productions describes The Pact by Austin playwright Max Langert, as “a play about family, pizza, climate change, dating apps, and fringe religious sects...in that order!” Put this way, it sure sounds like a zany farce, and in truth, it is that. However, it manages to be so much more, due to the fact that all of the characters are delightfully three-dimensional. This evening of theatre feels like the pilot of runaway hit television …