Cinematic Virtuosity
International piano competitions and glitzy film festivals make for interesting bedfellows. The mix seemed uneasy at first but slowly coalesced into a memorable evening...
In the Heights: Community Theater
Artes de la Rosa, the performance and visual arts group housed at Rose Marine Theater, had originally planned to produce Andrew Lloyd Webber and...
Texas Ballet Theater Mixes It Up
Mixed repertoire programs can be a tough nut to crack. Without the unifying music and storyline of a full-length work, success depends on lining...
Texas Ballet Theater’s Best
For lovers of story ballets, there’s none more entertaining than Don Quixote, at least the version created by Texas Ballet Theater director Ben Stevenson,...
Seven at Circle
One of my favorite theatergoing experiences in recent years was Circle Theatre’s 2008 holiday production of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant. If...
Agile Acting
Famous playwrights don't offer succinct explanations of their plays very often. Of course, Steve Martin was famous as an absurdist comic star long before...
Bear the Predictability
“I’d rather have a bear in my lap than a pregnant liberal!” snaps Kyle (Duke Anderson) to his wife Nan (Taylor Staniforth) after she’s...
Electricidad: Still Scary
Yvonne Duque first encountered playwright Luis Alfaro’s Electricidad –– a contemporary version of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Electra set in an urban gang milieu ––...
Is He Blue?
Back in 1992, Jubilee Theatre artistic director Ed Smith saw a Los Angeles production of Sheldon Epps’s jazz and blues revue Blues in the...
Big Tops
Operas by Richard Strauss aren’t staged that often, not because they’re unpopular but because they’re expensive: enormous casts, huge orchestras, lavish scenery and costumes,...
