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Rob Curran
24 articles
Holy Cross Sucks!
Multitalented Rob Nash has reshaped his "Holy Cross Quadrilogy" -- tracking three friends through four years at a Catholic high school in Houston -- into the evening-length Holy Cross Sucks!, and while the abridgment causes too much to happen too quickly, the result is still as funny and memorable as the best and worst of schooldays.
Arts Review, May. 23, 2003
The Master and Margarita
Gaslight Theater is only the second U.S. company to stage Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, as adapted by Richard Helweg and Michael Franco, and while their faithful tribute beguiles in places like the original, it runs a little too long and treats the source a little too reverentially.
Arts Review, May. 2, 2003
Saved or Destroyed
When he wrote Saved or Destroyed in 1994, playwright Harry Kondoleon knew he was dying, and with its faithful rendering of his dreams and truths, the Mainline Theater Project keep Kondoleon's beautiful creation alive.
Arts Review, Apr. 4, 2003
Pantalone's War
In Pantalone's War, a new satire presented by the Austin Commedia Society, a heavy-handed commentary on current events drowns out the nonsensical anarchy that the company was born to perform.
Arts Review, Mar. 28, 2003
Holy Well, Sacred Flame
Irish mythology is littered with conflicts more dramatic than the material for Holy Well, Sacred Flame. Still, writer-director Bonnie Cullum makes a unique rite from sincerity, sensuousness, and outlandish vision.
Arts Review, Jan. 17, 2003
"Pertaining to Painting"
Paola Morsiani, curator of the Austin Museum Of Art's exhibition "Pertaining to Painting," fit in the show's four rooms so many -isms and nationalities that he could have called this exhibition "Now That's What I Call Painting, 2002!"
Arts Review, Dec. 27, 2002
Aidan's Bed
While each of the seven bedroom dialogues in Aidan's Bed, Blake Yelavich's tight comic subversion of melodrama, relates to a deadly sin, the play as produced by Naughty Austin, is harmless at worst and titillation at its best.
Arts Review, Dec. 13, 2002
Beyond Therapy
By billing it as a "neurotic" comedy, Naughty Austin seems to position Beyond Therapy in the Woody Allen movie genre, and its production best compares to the filmmaker's late career efforts -- one that he seemingly wrote during a spare hour in a psychiatrist's waiting room
Arts Review, Sep. 13, 2002
4th Annual Austin Latino Comedy Fiesta
All the acts taking part in this year's Austin Latino Comedy Fiesta in the Paramount Theatre on Saturday night did a great job of working the crowd, but the audience didn't demand much in the way of innovation from them.
Arts Review, Aug. 23, 2002
Boom Town
The Company's production of Boom Town, a stage thriller by film actor Jeff Daniels concerning economic development and marital infidelity, may hit the audience over the head with themes familiar from Hollywood potboilers, but unlike most movies of that kind it leaves its audience with a memorable bang.
Arts Review, Aug. 2, 2002
Making Porn
Ronnie Larsen's play Making Porn dramatizes the making of Cops, a gay porn movie, from casting calls to the spin-off calendar, and in Naughty Austin's production, director Blake Yelavich realizes the comic potential of the script and the world of porn. But a tragic subplot undermines the show's success as a satire on the adult movie industry.
Arts Review, Jul. 5, 2002
12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Family
With 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Family, playwright-performer Rob Nash elevates the unhealthy sport of impersonating the members of one's family into a fulfilling art.
Arts Review, Jun. 21, 2002
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Liz Lochhead's award-winning dramatization of the bonnie queen's reign, is an ambitious first production for Renaissance Austin Theatre Company, but producer Lorella Loftus prevails by enticing some of Austin's finest actors from the Shakespearean courts to the realm of the experimental.
Arts Review, Apr. 19, 2002
Blade to the Heat
The Nushank Theater Collective produces a cast of powerful performers for its production of Oliver Mayer's glove love drama Blade to the Heat.
Arts Review, Apr. 12, 2002
Blues in the Night
Austin Playhouse's production of the musical Blues in the Night pinpoints feelings of love and loss among three women all hurt in love, with singers Jacqui Cross, Janis Stinson, and Melanie Wilkinson blending their three strong voices into a mighty harmony and reclaiming blues music for their sex.
Arts Review, Mar. 29, 2002
Laughing Wild
Like a (Canadian) figure skating pair, actors Kirk Burg and Katie Brock provide the most entertainment in town, but in Christopher Durang's Laughing Wild, they don't get to work with the most fulfilling piece of art.
Arts Review, Mar. 8, 2002
Raised by Lesbians
In the Subterranean Theatre Company production of Raised by Lesbians, writer Leah Ryan and director Ken Webster transport the audience to the heart of The Who's "Teenage Wasteland," dealing with adolescence, lesbians, and men and women's notions of each other without laughing at teens or distorting them with nostalgia.
Arts Review, Apr. 13, 2001
Wallpaper Psalm
In Wallpaper Psalm, a strange operetta about an elderly lady in an old apartment building who appears to go crazy, writer Ruth Margraff and director Jason Neulander produce a psalm, a hymn sung in challenging style.
Arts Review, Mar. 30, 2001
'The Remembered City: Fitzpatrick's Day'
Chicago printmaker and poet Tony Fitzpatrick shares memories of his hometown in a show of his intaglio prints at Slugfest Gallery, and the images and stories make it a powerful place to visit.
Arts Review, Mar. 23, 2001
Cloud Nine
After rumbling greatness in the first act, the UT Department of Theatre & Dance production of Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine ends thin and foggy.
Arts Review, Mar. 9, 2001
Sin Fronteras
Most observers would agree that Austin has a Latino visual arts community, but within that community are many voices, many points of view, many styles -- and no borders.
Arts Feature, Feb. 16, 2001
'"Anacronistas"'
With blown glass in colors as bright as stained glass in the sunshine and materials from the city dump, Einar and Jamex de la Torre create havoc. Their uncompromising, irreverent mixed-media pieces could adorn an Internet cafe, a 15th-century Spanish altar, or an Aztec household and still be shocking fun.
Arts Review, Feb. 2, 2001
A Name for a Ghost to Mutter
In her new script A Name for a Ghost to Mutter, playwright Cyndi Williams uses the fuel for great drama: colorful writing, focus on relationships, big climax, tidy resolution. But while all the hard parts are accounted for, all the right moves taken, the play stops just short of smoking.
Arts Review, Jan. 19, 2001
Real Estate and Perfect Mates
The Year in Austin Culture
