Brett Cullum - Page 3

Michelle Britton seems to be an actor’s director, and DANCING LESSONS allows her artists to be showcased for what they do best. You get a sense that her assured hand simply guided everyone into the right notes, and she orchestrates this truly lovely play.

It's about a man with Asperger's and his, what I like to say, his dogged determination to learn to dance, because he has a very public, potentially horrifying public event coming up, an awards dinner.

It is about a family living through a dystopian future that's only a few years into our future, the year 2029. In which… try to follow me on this, see if you can imagine America in this way. It's an America run by right-wing conservative Christians who oppress anyone who isn't like them, to the point of deporting them to other countries, maybe, like, El Salvador?

Arthur built such a great crescendo that there's no stepping off the train, as, if you will, anywhere where you lose momentum by taking a break. So we just push right through the 90 minutes. Just one act, and you're out of the theater.

Broadway, film, and television star Robert Lenzi (THE HAPPENING and THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL) is Patrick Bateman for this Houston run. He plays Patrick as an apex predator, but one that surprisingly gets lonely or feels isolated. There is not just the cold killer, but also a sense of what’s killing him.

Playing this character has been so, so fun, mainly because we're sort of reinventing him, me and Joe Calarco, who's our incredible director.

The level of professionalism and the sheen on The Chosen Ones is gobsmacking. This is a very heartfelt musical that you can sense through every second means so much to this cast and its creators.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION will probably hit hardest with those of us who took drama classes at some point, and were subjected to this uniquely silly torture that acting teachers come up with just to knock us all down a few pegs. I imagine those lucky enough to have evaded that will be giggling at the fate they dodged.

It probably helps that Domenico Leona is a poet, and that Ashley Galan just knows theater so dang well. They and this cast pull off a really radical, well-realized regional premiere for a play by a complex and compelling force in American Theatre.

The Sankofa Collective has always done ambitious projects, including THE BODYGUARD, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, and a collaboration with the Garden Theatre, resulting in an amazing production of THE COLOR PURPLE.

And I realized that this is a subject that I feel like we've stopped talking about, even though it's still a really big deal. The big national organization, Exodus, had been dissolved. And that's a really interesting story, actually, about how that ended. And they had so much more presence in the media when there was this big national group over it. They fragmented into all these different pieces.

What starts off as this well-intentioned self-help seminar becomes this brutal disintegration of all of their egos and the way they live their own lives.

Strip away the horror and the Patrick Bateman of it all, and it's ultimately a story about identity. The whole show is really about the bastardization of the American dream. It's about glamour, money, who's got the best clothes, and who goes to the best restaurants.

Joel Sandel has been referred to as the “Energizer Bunny” of Houston's acting scene, and this captures him perfectly. He’s acted in so many shows that we couldn't even name them all, and even when faced with a medical emergency, he just bounces right back on the stage.

It’s fascinating. I remember the first time I was introduced to the show, and, like my mind, was blown by the device. If you read Jason Robert Brown, it's almost like he just kind of stumbled on it. I thought it would be a cool thing to do. But it's so novel.

So I started as a dancer. At age eleven, my sister was taking classes, and she came home and was showing me moves and stuff from her solo because she was a competitive dancer, and I started picking all that stuff up.

So what’s the deal with all of these CRABS running around Midtown and terrorizing folks in the area? It is all part of one of the MOST talked about pieces in Houston right now. In my ten years of writing for BROADWAYWORLD, I have never gotten so many emails requesting we cover a show.

PARADE asks a lot of its audience. There are moments when a song is so rousing and well-sung, but then you realize the material is uncomfortable, and you wonder if you should cheer or stay absolutely quiet.

So the challenge with this show is, it is not just one location. It's like Miss Marple's cottage. It's a movie studio. It's a dressing room and a soundstage in the filming studio. And then there's this enormous manor called Gossington Hall.

We know this is a vaudeville production from the start, and the cast revels in the buffoonery. THE 39 STEPS is perfect summer theater fare for fans of silly spies and inventive theatrical staging.