Email Author Jim Tommaney

2012 Stories by Jim Tommaney

• Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks

  published June 14, 2012

  A comedy with music and dance Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri trots its way into Houston’s Theatre Suburbia.... More >>

• Panto Mother Goose

  published June 14, 2012

  The rhymes and stories from Mother Goose have delighted children for centuries, spawning many adaptations. Houston's own Kenn McLaughlin, artistic... More >>

• Macbeth

  published June 14, 2012

  William Shakespeare's acclaimed tragedy of ambition and regicide Macbeth is given new treatment by the Eklektix Theatre Company and... More >>

• Four Maps to Bethlehem

  published June 14, 2012

  In Four Maps to Bethlehem by Marion Arthur Kirby, ten-year-old Joseph has no desire to be cast in the Christmas play. He certainly... More >>

• Your Family Sucks But This Play Is Pretty Good

  published Dec 12, 2012

  The setup: Another play about a dysfunctional family -- they are legion -- comes to Houston, this one the world premiere of the first play by Abby Koenig, a Houston Press contributor, and structured... More >>

• Kimberly Akimbo: A Hybrid Play of Humor and Deepening Depression

  published Dec 06, 2012

  The set-up: Award-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire has crafted a hybrid play, part would-be zany comedy and part poignant exploration of a rare medical condition, now receiving its Houston p... More >>

• UH's The Snow Queen Needs More Reindeer

  published Dec 03, 2012

  The set-up: This fable by Hans Christian Anderson had delighted children, and adults as well, since its publication in 1844. It has appeared in many forms: in films (anime, animated, live, and a com... More >>

• Love Goes to Press: Frenzy Without Humor

  published Nov 23, 2012

  The setup: Love Goes to Press was a hit in London's West End in 1946, and a flop on B'way in 1947 -- five performances. The Mint Theatre Company in Manhattan specializes in unearthing forgotten plays... More >>

• Crazy For You: Song and Dance Delivered With Enthusiasm By Talented Young Actors

  published Nov 19, 2012

  The set-up: Crazy For You is an 1992 musical; comedy version of B'way's 1930 Girl Crazy, with a revised book by the prolific award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig, and with the music by George Gershwi... More >>

• Home For the Dysfunctional Family: Skirting the Edges of Bawdy With a Christmas Comedy

  published Nov 19, 2012

  The set-up: The Houston-born best-selling motivational speaker, John Bradshaw, once wrote that 80 percent of families were dysfunctional, but later corrected this to 100 percent. This dismal statist... More >>

• The Beebo Brinker Chronicles: An Earnest, Well-Intentioned Play That Falls Flat

  published Nov 08, 2012

  The set-up: Celebration Theatre specializes in gay theater, and brought to Houston the award-winning play The Temperamentals, followed up with the sensitive drama Next Fall, and now brings to the st... More >>

• Fleaven: Imagining an Entire Town Contained Within a Huge Shopping Mall

  published Nov 05, 2012

  The setup: After Miki Johnson's first play, American Falls, received the Best Play Award at the Houston Theater Awards this year from the Houston Press, her next play has been eagerly anticipated by ... More >>

• Mother Courage and Her Children at the University of Houston: A Courageous Undertaking

  published Oct 30, 2012

  The setup: Mother Courage and Her Children is acclaimed as Bertolt Brecht's best play, often described as an antiwar play but more accurately labeled by Brecht as an anti-business play. It chronicle... More >>

• The Oldest Profession at Theatre Southwest: A Turkey

  published Oct 29, 2012

  The setup: In The Oldest Profession, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel has turned her attention to prostitution, and created a play about four women of a certain age who turn tricks in a... More >>

• Travis Ammons Nails the Role of Sadistic Psychopath in Texas Rep's Suspenseful Drama When You Comin' Back, Red Ryderr

  published Oct 19, 2012

  The setup: In Mark Medoff's award-winning play, a sleepy roadside diner in southern New Mexico awakens with a bang when invaded by a sadistic psychopath. The execution: The action begins in a decep... More >>

• Spot-on Performances Make UpStage Theatre's Much Ado About Nothing Must-See Theater

  published Oct 19, 2012

  The setup: For its second foray into Shakespeare, Theatre UpStage presents much-loved comedy Much Ado About Nothing, in which romantic misunderstandings lead to delightful conflicts and much confusi... More >>

• Missionary Position: A Swiftly Paced Search for Identity

  published Oct 16, 2012

  The setup: Theater LaB brings playwright/actor Steven Fales to Houston in his one-man show, Missionary Position, the second in his trilogy of autobiographical plays, after the sold-out success of th... More >>

• Houston Family Arts Center Makes Theatrical Magic with The Glass Menagerie

  published Oct 08, 2012

  The set-up: The Glass Menagerie was Tennessee Williams's first successful play, opening in Chicago on December 26, 1944, then opening on B'way March 31, 1945, and playing through August 3,1946. It w... More >>

• UH's Serious Money: The 1987 Play About Financial Sharks Is Still Timely

  published Oct 05, 2012

  The set-up: Serious Money, Caryl Churchill's satire on insider trading in the London stock market won Britain's Laurence Olivier Award in 1987, and the Obie Award in 1988, as Best New Play. The Un... More >>

• Awesome America! from Ohana Theatre Company: A Most Entertaining Evening

  published Oct 02, 2012

  The set-up: In its inaugural production Awesome America!, the Ohana Theatre Company is presenting four short plays, unrelated, but with each representing a singular geographical idiosyncrasy, a landm... More >>

• Miss Julie from Classical Theatre Company Lacks Essential Sexual Chemistry

  published Oct 01, 2012

  The set-up: Miss Julie, August Strindberg's ground-breaking psychological drama originally set in Sweden in 1874, is transferred to New Orleans in the 1920s, but a valet engaged to the cook still bed... More >>

• Disney's Beauty and the Beast: The Enduring Fable Comes Through Houston with All Cylinders Clicking

  published Sep 26, 2012

  The set-up: In 1993, almost two decades ago, the stage version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, an animated musical film, premiered in Houston, opened on B'way in 1994, and ran for 13 years and 5,46... More >>

• Boom from Black Lab Theatre: A Blissful Evening of Humor and Big Ideas

  published Sep 18, 2012

  The set-up: In Boom, a man and a woman are locked, not in an embrace, but in a bomb shelter, seeking to escape a meteor heading for earth. They are strangers to each other, newly met courtesy of a d... More >>

• Girls Only -- the Secret Comedy of Women: Just Like a Very Good Pajama Party

  published Sep 11, 2012

  The set-up: Two gifted female improv actors in Denver, Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein, discovered a golden lode of material in their high-school diaries, and mined it into scripted vignettes of wha... More >>

• Theatre Southwest's Superior Donuts: A Mixed Success, with Some Tasty One-Liners

  published Sep 10, 2012

  The set-up: In Superior Donuts, the taciturn owner of a donut shop in Chicago with few customers hires an African-American male to assist him, and they develop a prickly relationship, while assorted ... More >>