Reviews for Penfold Theatre Company Performances
Review: Clybourne Park by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 30, 2016
Penfold Theatre's staging is superlative, off the top of any scale you might use to rate this important and fiercely relevant work of theatre art.
Plays and performances are complex works of art, and the impact upon those watching even the same staging may be wildly different. That's why I chose very early on -- eight years ago -- not to resort to inevitably misleading numerical rating scales in these reviews. One man's meat is another man's poison, of course, but more importantly, a reductive number is just as misleading as a dutiful standing ovation delivered by friends of the …
Review: The Last Five Years, by Penfold Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
Published on March 29, 2015
David Gallagher’s songs drew applause while Burke’s songs, presented superbly, stimulated thoughtful reflection. But Burke brought down the house in one line in a song declaiming the woes of auditioners.
The Last Five Years is the story of a relationship that proceeds through attraction, dating, marriage and beyond, all in the span of less than two hours in stage time and five years in narrative time. The elapsed time is unimportant to the relationship and the production. The show seems like about thirty minutes and gone too soon. Attribute this to the deft and efficient direction of Michael McKelvey, surefooted and fresh from numerous successes …
Review: Miracle on 34th Street by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 10, 2014
Christmas and the holidays are a time for comfort. Jingle bells, tinsel on the tree, Santa Claus everywhere as image, in real life and in our imagination. We were far from the United States when our children were growing up, but we shared the joy and comfort of the season with VHS tapes of It's A Wonderful Life (1946) andMiracle on 34th Street (1947), both in glorious living black and white. I hadn't seen them …
Review: Now Then Again by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on September 23, 2014
We all like ‘What if?’ That’s really the essence of theatrical art, isn’t it? In simplest terms, we gather to witness the presentation of a story. No, it’s not real. . . but what if it were? A romantic comedy, say — where the protagonist is a brilliant theoretical physicist who’s incredibly shy and socially inept, and he meets this incredibly gifted woman, an undergraduate intern who somehow has gotten a summer assignment to this …
Review: Ordinary Days by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 26, 2014
Ordinary Days is a vigorous, sharp and entertaining ninety minutes of uninterrupted entertainment, a clever piece that touches the heart.
Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days is a fairytale, and an appealing one, set firmly in the city that O. Henry once called "Baghdad-on-the-Hudson." He gives us the portraits of four yearning young folk in their late 20s or early 30s, all unattached, all working to sort out their own identities and places in the world (or in the City). A couple of them are lonely singles who'll eventually meet one another; the other two characters, a …
Review: It's A Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 11, 2013
Penfold's It's A Wonderful Life amply justifies its title. This production is an entertaining, reassuring and lively enactment, set in a simpler time. It's just the right tonic for the overdramatized complexities of our present day.
This is a warm, simple entertainment for the chill of the holiday season -- and it was so chilly in the Old Settler's Park in Round Rock last week that park employees had turned off the water at Rice's Crossing Store to prevent damage to the pipes. Penfold folk, using that recreation of a village gathering place for their third annual staging of Joe Landry's adaptation of the 1946 Frank Capra film with Jimmy Stewart, …