WRAITH RADIO is the latest offering from Bottle Alley Theatre Company. An original script by writer and Bottle Alley artistic director, Chris Fontanes, WRAITH RADIO was immediately intriguing due to its premise. Two wounded soldiers barricaded in a small, windowless room face certain demise or perhaps are already dead. They broadcast their final moments hoping in vain to reach their fellow comrades. Time isn't linear in this reality and the women cannot be sure if what they're seeing is in fact happening. Is it their minds playing tricks on them or have the ghosts of their pasts come to haunt them in their final hours? Intricacies of the plot make further explanation impossible without giving away this play's secrets.
Playwright Eva Suter has taken tropes from 70's sci-fi and plot elements from Shakespeare's Othello to create HOLD ME WELL. In her play, making it's World Premiere (outside of the UT production a few years back), Suter has crafted a dystopian tale of a desolate Central Texas inhabited solely by women after a catastrophic war has eradicated the male population and the Y chromosome. The threat of another war with an unseen and vaguely described outside force looms in the future as these five women struggle to save 'the stock' which is the future of humanity.
Last year, I saw Penfold Theatre Company's annual production of It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play for the first time. I loved the show and gave it a rave review. My reaction this year is no different. Now in its 3rd year, Penfold's It's a Wonderful Life is just as delightful as ever.
