workwalsh.com

BORN ON A SUNDAY by T.J. Walsh

Theater Review: Proving August Strindberg’s Greatness

D Magazine
By M. Lance Lusk Published in Arts & Entertainment

I am always saying I would like to see more plays by August Strindberg. His experiments in expressionist and surrealist techniques and dream-like Scandinavian moodiness are beyond intoxicating to this critic. Now, the chance to see an original work about that incomparable Swede, done in his distinctive style by an incredible director and playwright was a theatrical blessing. Theatre TCU presents Born on a Sunday written and directed by T.J. Walsh.

There is a reason Eugene O’Neill referred to Strindberg in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech as “that greatest genius of all modern dramatists.” He was an exceedingly prolific polymath playwright, poet, essayist, novelist, painter, and dabbler in the sciences. However, he experienced a tumultuous time of psychotic attacks, paranoia, delusions, and religious turmoil while he was abroad in Paris in the 1890s called the “Inferno crisis.”

The program notes inform the audience that much of what we are seeing is “true…the rest is imagination.” And that is the special genius of Walsh’s play, that investigation of this crucial time in Strindberg’s life seen through a speculative lens that resembles his visionary experiences that straddle the real and dream worlds. From Brian Clinnin’s whimsical, bridge-like set of wood beams, rivets, curves, and elevated platforms, to the clear, fantastical, and chilling sound design and composition, and lights by Chris Hassler and Jim Rogers respectively, to Yuheng Dai’s luxurious period frock coats, gowns, and Victorian-inspired dance outfits this is a play that sets a definite mood of history and reverie.

Walsh, an Associate Professor of Theatre at TCU, is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of the excellent Trinity Shakespeare Festival. Born on a Sunday is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself, but the fact that Walsh is able to fashion a production of such superior quality with non-professional actors in training is mind blowing. They handle this difficult and unconventional material with artistic ease.

Standouts from this excellent ensemble include Bradley Gosnell as the tortured Strindberg, Gabriel Whitehurst as Dr. Horatio Christensen, the Danish psychologist who befriends and treats the playwright with hypnosis, and Shae Lynn Goldston as a fiery feminist doctor in love with Horatio. A special note of recognition too for the sylphlike Furies/Muses (Marisa Bonahoom, Caroline Iliff, Jackie Raye, Abbie Ruff, Lexie Showalter, Kelsey Summers, and Zach Gamet as The Power) who plague and inspire Strindberg. Choreography by Penny Ayn Maas contributes to this chilling ballet of intertwined and inspired madness.

Strindberg craving fulfilled.

W A T C H:
Short from the TCU Production: https://youtu.be/YAx4PDx38HY
A video of the TCU Production: https://youtu.be/hjfmeGCygg8

MELROSE STORIES by T.J. Walsh

TCU's 'Stories' has happy ending in this romantic comedy
LOVE AND LAUGHS CONQUER ALL OBSTACLES IN ADVENTUROUS COMEDY

Dallas Morning News
by Lawson Taitte, Theatre Critic

Melrose Stories has two strikes against it, right from the start. The hero narrates the story by talking to the audience. A lot. And the character is a writer - seldom a good sign.

But no inning is over until the final out, and playwright T.J. Walsh keeps swinging hard and gets a hit - maybe not a home run but definitely a triple.

Texas Christian University, where Mr. Walsh teaches, gave Melrose Stories its world premiere Wednesday under the playwright's direction. This romantic comedy dares a lot. Its tone ranges from sitcom humor to a magical ending right out of Jacobean romance. And it baldly lets you know it's doing just that. A beneficent ghost wanders through the action, and the plot involves a big secret. (The savvy will guess it immediately, yet the answer still feels unprepared for when it comes out - just as Mr. Walsh planned.)

The action mostly takes place in a Los Angeles bookstore, though it also wanders freely through space and time. The narrator, a New York novelist named T.D. Kellogg (Clint Gage), has been suffering from writer's block for more than a decade after his successful debut. His aunt (Katie O'Brien) dies and leaves him her heavily mortgaged store. T.D. falls in love with the place, the staff and - in a romantic way - the manager, Rose (Michelle Martinez).

The scenes in the store do feel a lot like high-quality TV comedy, with the employees and regulars trading quips and exuding hormones. Mr. Walsh halts objections by having the funny guy, Walter (C.J. Meeks), quarrel endlessly with Wilma (Jaclyn Napier), a feminist grad student who's writing her thesis on sitcoms.

Mr. Walsh has looked past recent romantic comedies for models and gone straight to the top. The juxtaposition of low popular humor with serious characters and situations feels Shakespearean, in a nicely unpretentious way. The laughs are there, and the deeper emotions as well.

Perhaps the mystical happy ending doesn't have quite the tearful payoff it should - but it could just be that the student actors aren't always the right age or in possession of enough technique to make the improbable convincing.

A number of cast members are outstanding anyway. Ms. O'Brien radiates the right kind of hopeful aura, Mr. Meeks is hilarious, and Scott Rickels as the gay store employee has a nice offhand charm.

Melrose Stories is a real contribution to the vanishing genre of romantic comedy.

THE THOMAS PAINE PANTHER

Playscripts, Inc. Publishers
https://blog.playscripts.com/play/566

30 - 40 minutes
4 f, 4 m
Set: Unit set.

Set during the AIDS crisis. The student staff of the Thomas Paine High School newspaper has been banned from publishing their annual "Best/Worst" issue, but their headstrong editor is determined to go ahead with it. Mr. Smith, the paper's sponsor, discovers what the students are up to just as they learn a shocking secret about him -- and this triggers a high-stakes confrontation on ethics, journalism, and the rules of being a teacher and friend.

Photos from the First Colonial High School production directed by Zack Kattwinkel:
Presented at both the Virginia Thespian Festival and the Virginia High School League Class 5A Sectionals. FCHS received the following accolades:

• Best "Truth in the World" Award at Thespian Festival (an important theme or idea with relevance to the audience)
• 3rd Place and Overall Rating of "Excellent" at VHSL
• Outstanding Performance Awards for Elijah Gumm (Mr. Smith) at both
• Outstanding Performance Awards for Calix Kimel (Kirk Mayer) at both
• Outstanding Performance Award for Charlye Levine (Heather) at VTF
• Outstanding Performance Award for Lex Shoemaker (Karen) at VTF
• Outstanding Performance Award for Axel Sifuentes (Anzo - Alma) at VHSL

TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare
directed by T.J. Walsh*
Trinity Shakespeare Festival
*Outstanding Direction Award, DFW Theatre Critics Circle

BRING IT ON! TRINITY SHAKESPEARE
Dallas Morning News
by Lawson Taitte

It’s time to leap for joy, fans of classical theatre. This past week Fort Worth’s revitalized Trinity Shakespeare Festival sprang forth fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. It’s a bold birth, ready to make dynamic artistic statements and enliven the words of Western culture’s leading playwright with a vision that connects the Bard’s texts to the modern world. Under the guidance of T.J. Walsh and Harry B. Parker, the 2009 Festival employs two Texas Christian University venues to present combined professional/ student staffed and cast productions of comedy Twelfth Night and tragedy Romeo and Juliet. They both do admirable justice to the plays and provide high caliber entertainment to full house audiences. No tentative rebirth!

You won’t encounter more masterfully designed, exquisitely beautiful or performance enhancing sets at any regional venue. Twelfth Night, designed by TCU professor and union designer Michael Heil, with credentials ranging across the US, Europe and Asia, creates lyrical magical surrealism on the proscenium-style Buschman Theatre at Landreth Hall. A massive rectangular panel floats upstage at the back of the uncluttered playing space, painted in rich Mediterranean hues to look like sky. It presides over all action and opens up the space with clean linear definition. While clearly man-made, it constantly reminds the audience of the setting’s proximity to nature and the play’s contrasting themes of artifice and truth. Fanciful, stylized, Styrofoam trees frame the playing space and reinforce the clean Mondrian-like linearity of the overall design. Readily movable elements, the actors use these trees to enhance the humor of particular scenes. Like the free-floating sky painting panel, the trees visually reinforce the contrast between the artificial and the real throughout the play. All other set elements are simple and uncomplicated, either carried in and out by actors or softly flown in from above. A whimsical triumph, takes the breath away.

Under Walsh's direction it is David Coffee’s show as he croons and intones composer Martin Desjardins songs as the court clown Feste. He comes across as part conjurer/ part madman, seems to spin the illusionary tale of romance and mistaken identity. Secondary characters dominate the stage, from J. Brent Alford as irreverent drunk Sir Toby Belch to scheming, lusty Emily Gray as Maria, to indefatigable Daniel Frederick, clearly favored by the audience, who makes a completely geeky donkey of himself with reckless, joyful abandon any time he strides on stage. David Fluitt creates an unforgettable, suffering steward Malvolio, Shakespeare’s satirical depiction of the Puritan opportunists running amok at Elizabeth I’s court at the time. (Stephen Colbert has nothing on the Bard in the way of incisive character assassination.) Trisha Miller Smith has some lovely moments as Countess in mourning Olivia.

Welcome back to life, Trinity Shakespeare. You’re needed; your aspirations and accomplishments are honorable. I’m delighted to see such enthusiastic, engaged audiences. Bring it on!

AS YOU LIKE IT by William Shakespeare
directed by T.J. Walsh
TRINITY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
youtube trailer: https://youtu.be/cYrpvMzGYlo

D Magazine
Theater Review: Why Trinity Shakespeare Festival Delivers the Best Bard You’ll See in North Texas
By M. Lance Lusk

Only three years into its short existence, and yet again, Trinity Shakespeare Festival continues to provide by far the best of the Bard’s work in Dallas-Fort Worth. After receiving funding from TCU for two years, they are now on their own, yet the quality is not diminished a whit as they take audiences on two disparate, yet glorious journeys in As You Like It and Macbeth.

Director T.J. Walsh, of the critically lauded Twelfth Night and Hamlet for the festival, delivers simply the most transcendent, heartfelt and clarion productions of As You Like It you are likely to see, from the inspired casting, the passionate and nuanced performances, to the beautifully simple aesthetics of the play.

The story of would-be lovers Orlando (Jonathan Brooks doing his youthful best) and Rosalind (Trisha Miller), among others, fleeing danger to the idyllic forest of Arden is merely a pretence to the many other wonders of this most theatrical of Shakespeare’s comedies.

Walsh plays up that theatricality in having the “All the world’s a stage” speech begin the play on a striking set (Clare Floyd DeVries) dominated by tall, soaring tree trunks that remain in and out of the forest scenes.

The play is quite the charmer already, however, its success hinges on the most vital of all of Shakespeare’s comedic heroines: Rosalind. The husky-voiced Miller (splendid in last year’s Much Ado) is lovely and exuberant, and blooms in her boyish weeds with a lively intellect to match. David Coffee’s Touchstone, a clown in Rosalind’s retinue, is a clever mash-up of W.C. Fields and the Mad Hatter using the patented squinty “Coffee Face,” and a thousand actorly gestures and quirks. Jakie Cabe as Jaques (recently brilliant in Theatre Three’s Travesties) is a gentleman of a ripe, sullen disposition who wallows in his melancholy with excitement.

Aaron Patrick Turner’s Edwardian costumes are a feast for the eyes, and jibe well with the vision of the courtly vs. the pastoral. Kudos for his work on the Scottish play as well.

Thank goodness Walsh is able to elicit such genuine, yet studied performances that capture that elusive and quintessential Shakespearean quality of characters overhearing themselves as if really thinking out loud.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW by William Shaksepare
directed by T.J. Walsh*
TRINITY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
*Outstanding Direction Award, DFW Theatre Critics Circle
youtube trailer: https://youtu.be/cRb4iaVMRoo

D Magazine
by M. Lance Lusk

Upon hearing that Trinity Shakespeare Festival was opening with The Taming of the Shrew, I was more than a little underwhelmed. Shakespeare’s sometimes-popular, farcical comedy has become relegated to either distant source material for the musical Kiss Me Kate or the record of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s torrid marriage writ large in Zeffirelli’s film. And though it is rarely staged, when the play does get produced, more often than not interpretations turn it into a relic fought over in the gender politics war.

But this is the Trinity Shakespeare Festival, which has already proven itself more than capable of handling the Bard’s trickier plays. In 2010, the festival has mounted a definitive version of the overplayed and little understood Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Stephen Fried), and last year’s the festival offered a revitalizing take on the oft-dismissed The Merry Wives of Windsor (directed by T.J. Walsh). They know what they are doing with any kind of Shakespeare over there, and boy does it show with this play.

Artistic Director Walsh helms a production that is impeccably paced, features razor sharp performances and possesses an intricate, yet charming sensibility. The world he creates with his staging meets the colorful, layered set by Tristan Decker (a 1900 Italian neighborhood), and Aaron Patrick DeClerk’s period costumes. David Coffee opens the play singing “’O sole mio” and delivers a winking prologue to the frequently discarded Induction that sets up the play-within-the-play aspect of Katherine and Petruchio’s rocky courtship. Coffee gets in a plug for Trinity’s other repertory show Julius Caesar, and sets Shrew’s “mirth and merriment” tone.

Incredible ensemble performances are typical of Trinity shows, and this play is no exception. Alex Organ as Lucentio and G. David Trosko as his witty servant Tranio are worth the price of admission alone. They caper about in disguises and relish every syllable of their lines. Organ is a real gem of local theater, and Trosko more than holds his own alongside him. Chuck Huber’s Petruchio is an affable rascal who anchors the play’s smirking yet loveable sensibility. Trisha Miller, as the spitting wildcat Katherine, is also a delight. Her catty sis chemistry with Jenny Ledel’s Bianca is a hoot. She absolutely crushes the crucial “Thy husband is thy lord” speech at the end of the play.

Coffee (playing Grumio) is so dependably good in everything that he does that one is almost tempted to become desensitized to his full-body antics and facial expressions; however, such is his talent and charm that he never fails to surprise and entertain. Alan Shorter’s music supervision is both aptly joyous and melancholy. Lovely singing by both Coffee and Amber Marie Flores is particularly good.

Five years ago Walsh wrote that Trinity’s mission was to “produce the work of Shakespeare with clarity, creativity and conscience” and allow his stories to play out with a “joy in the story-telling, a beauty in the execution and a respect for the tradition of Shakespeare’s enduring plays.” That respect for the tradition and Walsh’s vision have remained intact.

KING LEAR by William Shakespeare
directed by T.J. Walsh
TRINITY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

TO BE CLEAR: It's all about clarity at Trinity Shakespeare Festival, where repertory productions of King Lear and Love's Labour's Lost play beautifully together.
theaterjones.com
by David Novinski

If you were looking to copy a successful Shakespeare festival, Trinity Shakespeare would be a good place to start. Just don’t expect for them to make it look easy.

Running in rep means recycling the same actors between two different shows. For some theaters that means recycling the designers, the venue and possibly the director, as well, but not at Trinity.

King Lear, directed with pristine clarity by T.J. Walsh, inhabits the Jerita Foley Buschman Theatre while Love’s Labour’s Lost, directed with comedic flare by Joel Ferrell, sits practically across the hall, fully fledged in the Marlene and Spencer Hays Theatre. These are mammoth productions with their own individual design teams, with the exception of sound designer Toby Jaguar Algya, who does double duty.

This ostentatious show of effort (especially evident in the costumes) wouldn’t be worth a hill of doublets, though, if it bogged down the Bard. Fortunately, that’s where Trinity gets it right where others just get left: clarity. Make Shakespeare accessible and the people will come.

Admittedly, the set designs do have their own flights of fancy. Bob Lavallee’s set for Love’s Labor’s Lost is a sumptuous vibrant tapestry that covers the floor and becomes the wall with tree trunk cutouts to create the forest, and Brian Clinnin’s set for King Lear has a raked stage with a backdrop of distracting seismographic squiggles. But, the clarity of the staging creates a real world the audience can enter easily.

Walsh’s opening scene of King Lear is a perfect example of the sensitive treatment an audience can expect. The beginning of the tragedy comes when the King asks his daughters to pronounce to the court which of them loves him the most. When the youngest daughter is unwilling or unable to satisfy the monarch’s demands, she’s disinherited dramatically. To a high school student reading Shakespeare’s words on the page, this comes across as the harsh behavior of kings who make their decisions through a remote and impenetrable logic.

In Walsh’s production, the throne is turned so that we are practically watching over his shoulder. Immediately, there is an intimacy that no textbook could convey. Add to that the ever-congenial David Coffee as a warm Lear and Trinity Shakes is on its way to undo years of boring English classes.

When Delaney Milbourn, as youngest daughter Cordelia, fails in her public praise, Coffee stands and closes the distance to her to give her a little private fatherly coaching before returning to his kingly seat. By turning the throne room sideways we are privy to the tender moment. Walsh’s staging makes use of the oft-neglected distinction between public and private speech Shakespeare weaves throughout his work to create a more loveable Lear. For the rest of the play the lengths loyal characters like Kent (played with an agile accent by Richard Haratine) and Gloucester (played with heart-tugging nobility by Chamblee Ferguson) go through for his sake seem reasonable in light of this opening scene. When they say that he was a great man, we don’t have to just take their word for it. We’ve seen proof.

Words can be false, after all.

The sisters Goneril (Lydia Mackay) and Regan (Sarah Rutan) are the first to thrive through empty words. Their pronouncements of love are so convincing that it makes their later treachery jarring. But two-faced characters shouldn’t shock after the subplot-summing soliloquies of Edmund (Montgomery Sutton).

The illegitimate son of Gloucester sets out in detail how he will use forged letters and lies to overthrow his brother Edgar (Bradley Gosnell). As his plots succeed no one is safe, even the two-faced sisters. When the wheel of tragedy makes its inevitable way around, the conclusion is, of course, sad, but the way the web of treachery ensnares the perpetrators makes it also satisfying.

On the balance, the audience leaves with a surprising sense of resolve. It’s an evening of high tragedy that isn’t shattering; a Lear that quivers the lip but leaves it stiff. That’s a rare achievement.

There are quibbles, of course.

The aforementioned set backdrop of squiggles and Michael Skinner’s lights, beaming through thick haze, can sometimes distract. Algya’s multi-layered storm also battles the players for attention at times. Aaron Patrick DeClerk's costumes make up for any design shortcomings, in amount and intricacy, at least, and also surprisingly subtle palettes. It’s only because of the moments when all the elements are working perfectly that draw attention to the times when they are out of sync, like all the signal lights in a turn lane flashing at the same time. They serve their turn regardless, but occasionally, when blinking together, their combined brightness makes the darkness that follows darker.

Late in the play, Lear reunites with Gloucester, who has had his eyes torn out. It’s here that Coffee and Ferguson shine together. With Lear fully mad, Coffee is freer to play to his comedic strengths. As these men, blind to their offspring’s treachery, one now literally, rediscover each other, these two actors coax all the levels of tragedy and tenderness out of the encounter without wringing it out of shape. It’s as if they know that the blades of irony are sharpest when handled gently. By the end, no one escapes uncut.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE by William Shakspeare
directed by T.J. Walsh
TRINITY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

criticalrant.com
by Alexandra Bonifield

T.J. Walsh directs Shakespeare with a defining, comprehensive understanding of the works and unwavering affection for them. He solves the challenges inherent in the so-called “Problem Plays” as if they are child’s games. Last year’s production of The Winter’s Tale, an odd mix of performance styles with a convoluted plot, hateful characters, a man eaten by a bear, a pastorale and the surreal transformation of a statue to life became a poignant love poem of redemption and reconciliation under Walsh’s tender, clearly delineated guidance. So it goes with this year’s production of the problematic Measure For Measure, bawdy comedy interwoven with examination of lust and power that rivals the savagery of David Mamet. With the same sterling cast from Richard III, Walsh balances the incongruities into a thought provoking, entertaining unity that reaffirms love, commitment, wise governance and the fun of tomfoolery. Life flows in endless samsara cycles. Richard Haratine excels at playing characters on odysseys or in search of personal illumination. His soulful Duke, wandering the countryside disguised as a simple friar in order to observe his established rule of law enforced by a zealot, functions intriguingly as the play’s deus ex machina and unexpected hero. Montgomery Sutton suffers silent torture of the damned as the “principled” zealot tripped up by his own humanity and abuse of power. His character Angelo is one of Shakespeare’s most despicable villains. Under Walsh’s direction Sutton’s Angelo undergoes a vivid trial of self-loathing for his grievous misdeeds, suffering the consequences with humility and dignified resignation. Angelic and composed, Kelsey Milbourn’s Isabella glides ultimately into true love with her bandied about virginity intact. “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” Propriety carries the day, which could become saccharine and boring if it weren’t for the marvelous clowns.

As foils to all the sad souls searching for Buddha-like transformation, Garret Storms as a scalawag dandy, David Coffee as a pimp named Bum, Sarah Rutan as the brothel madam, Richard Leaming as dissolute jailbird Barnardine and the enchantingly versatile Blake Hackler as witless constable “Elbow” conspire with madcap bawdiness and delicious comic timing to bring the audience’s attention back to solvable, silly earthly matters. Their endeavors reveal how humor can indeed function as best medicine for the soul…. The overwhelming cruelty of the character Angelo tends to dominate most productions of Measure For Measure. His issues and sins are egregious, but ultimately justice prevails. This Measure For Measure is a lively and loving, in balance production under Walsh’s guidance, pleasing to view with the resplendent Renaissance costumes procured by Lloyd Cracknell and under Michael Skinner’s soft, warm lighting. Almost the star of the production without uttering a word is scenic designer Will Turbyne (Resident Technical Director and Scenic and Lighting Designer at University of Dallas). He graces the production with a magnificent, oversized, slightly off kilter ornate church window through which projections of blue sky or lush gardens can be glimpsed, pulling the audience through the proscenium into the sometimes sanctimonious, sometimes scandalous, sometimes blessedly pure, environment and underscoring the mood of the play with vibrant physical dramatic effect.

Thank you, Trinity Shakespeare Festival, Directors T.J.Walsh, Stephen Brown-Fried and Managing Director Harry Parker for another brilliant pairing. I can’t wait until we celebrate your first decade in 2018.

ROUNDING THIRD by Richard Dresser
directed by T.J. Walsh
THEATRE THREE, DALLAS

"Richard Dresser's delightful new comedy, Rounding Third, examines American notions of competition, parenting, friendship, love and grief through the eyes of two polar opposite coaches. The play's first North Texas staging has landed in Theatre Three's ballpark where director T.J. Walsh and two MVP caliber actors Doug Jackson and Jeffery Schmidt, belt a four-bagger." Perry Stewart, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

* * * *

"In Rounding Third, Richard Dresser's warm little comedy about baseball and friendship, two coaches -- one a veteran (Doug Jackson), one a newbie (Jeffrey Schmidt) -- watch their Chicago Little League team progress through a season. And we watch them watching baseball games we can't really see. Somehow it works, making for a winning play about wanting to win. This production has nice subtle work from the two actors under the direction of T.J. Walsh." Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer

CRIMES OF THE HEART by Beth Henley
directed by T.J. Walsh
CIRCLE THEATRE, FORT WORTH

'CRIMES' BELLES CHARM
Crowd-pleaser has brains and heart
Dallas Morning News
by Manuel Mendoza

Crimes of the Heart is an evergreen. WIth its just-right blend of dramatic tension, humor and poignancy, Beth Henley's Pulitzer-Prize-winning play is a showcase for young actresses. Jenae M. Yerger, Trisha Miller and Dana Schultes -- all making their Circle Theatre debuts under the crisp direction of T.J. Walsh -- show why the SMU-trained Ms. Henley's 1979 play is so audience-friendly. Their demonstrative Magrath sisters, post-feminist takeoffs on the Southern belle, are impossible to resist.

Ms. Yerger, in the most nuanced part, does wonders with youngest sibling Babe Botrelle, who's been arrested for shooting her prominent lawyer-politician husband when the action opens. For two hours, she peels back Babe's hidden layers of strength and will, creating a complete human being from what initially looks like a ditz. With Babe in trouble, middle sister Meg (Ms. Schultes) rushes home from Los Angeles, where she's been struggling to launch a singing career. The comely popular girl for whom everything always came easy, she pays a price for daring to leave the familiar bosom of Hazlehurst, Mississippi. They come together at their sick grandfather's house, where lonely heart Lenny Magrath (Ms. Miller) is celebrating her 30th birthday alone. The drama is immediately leavened as Lenny repeatedly rams a candle into a cookie so she can make a wish.

Set in 1974, Ms. Henley, a Mississippi native, knows how to put words in these Southern women's mouths. Her dialogue is convincingly naturalistic, and director Mr. Walsh and his actresses make the most of the writer's gift for close observation. For long stretches, you can forget you're watching a play because the exchanges seems so real. Crimes is about how the Magraths come to terms with their baggage and their conflicts during Babe's hour of need. It's a crowd-pleaser, certainly, but one with brains as well as heart.

Babe's lawyer and potential love interest (David Fluitt) is a winning character in his own right, a combination of goofy smarts and boyish naivete. Ms. Schultes, in the least showy role, has a crackling scene with Mr. Fluitt when he first arrives to take the case. As we get to know Meg, Ms. Shultes bring her melancholy to the fore. And th gangly Ms. Miller, too attractive to be playing the old maid, pulls it off with a wide-eyed take on the possibilities of overcoming obstacles, even Lenny's shrunken ovary.

DEFIANCE by Patrick Shanley
directed by T.J. Walsh*
THEATRE THREE, DALLAS
*Outstanding Direction Award, DFW Theatre Critics Circle

'DEFIANCE' intellegently delves into military moral dilemma
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
by Mark Lowry

In the first two of John Patrick Shanley's plays in the projected trilogy, Doubt and Defiance, the playwright tackles profound moral questions about once-unassailable institutions. Defiance, which opened in an astutely acted production at Theatre Three on Monday, it's the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. The story could easily unfold in court-room-movie-of-the-week style, but Shanley is too smart for that. The audience knows just enough to stay on seat's edge.

Directed by T.J. Walsh, Bryan Pitts, David Fluitt and Drew Wall give stirring performances. Steven Pounders as Lt. Col. Littlefield creates a likeable human out of a stern military ladder-climber and hero whom others are afraid to challenge. We also honestly believe his is head-over-heels for his wife. Speaking of which, Diane Worman as Margaret Littlefield might be the star here. She gives us a smart woman whose heart-breaking final scene drives home what has already be a riveting production.

The Diviners by Jim Leonard, Jr.
directed by T.J. Walsh
Buschman Theatre, TCU

a youtube look at the "drowning" scene from our production of The Diviners.
https://youtu.be/8uTfQ00_j44

a video trailer from The Diviners at TCU
https://youtu.be/mLYTQmm_-kI

a youtube look at our production of The Diviners
https://youtu.be/8uTfQ00_j44

GUYS AND DOLLS
directed by T.J. Walsh
Scott Theatre, Fort Worth

a video short from Guys and Dolls at TCU
https://youtu.be/UroqZLCi1C0

BORN ON A SUNDAY by T.J. Walsh
directed by T.J Walsh
Hays Theatre, TCU

BORN ON A SUNDAY by T.J. Walsh

Theater Review: Proving August Strindberg’s Greatness

D Magazine
By M. Lance Lusk Published in Arts & Entertainment

I am always saying I would like to see more plays by August Strindberg. His experiments in expressionist and surrealist techniques and dream-like Scandinavian moodiness are beyond intoxicating to this critic. Now, the chance to see an original work about that incomparable Swede, done in his distinctive style by an incredible director and playwright was a theatrical blessing. Theatre TCU presents Born on a Sunday written and directed by T.J. Walsh.

There is a reason Eugene O’Neill referred to Strindberg in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech as “that greatest genius of all modern dramatists.” He was an exceedingly prolific polymath playwright, poet, essayist, novelist, painter, and dabbler in the sciences. However, he experienced a tumultuous time of psychotic attacks, paranoia, delusions, and religious turmoil while he was abroad in Paris in the 1890s called the “Inferno crisis.”

The program notes inform the audience that much of what we are seeing is “true…the rest is imagination.” And that is the special genius of Walsh’s play, that investigation of this crucial time in Strindberg’s life seen through a speculative lens that resembles his visionary experiences that straddle the real and dream worlds. From Brian Clinnin’s whimsical, bridge-like set of wood beams, rivets, curves, and elevated platforms, to the clear, fantastical, and chilling sound design and composition, and lights by Chris Hassler and Jim Rogers respectively, to Yuheng Dai’s luxurious period frock coats, gowns, and Victorian-inspired dance outfits this is a play that sets a definite mood of history and reverie.

Walsh, an Associate Professor of Theatre at TCU, is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of the excellent Trinity Shakespeare Festival. Born on a Sunday is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself, but the fact that Walsh is able to fashion a production of such superior quality with non-professional actors in training is mind blowing. They handle this difficult and unconventional material with artistic ease.

Standouts from this excellent ensemble include Bradley Gosnell as the tortured Strindberg, Gabriel Whitehurst as Dr. Horatio Christensen, the Danish psychologist who befriends and treats the playwright with hypnosis, and Shae Lynn Goldston as a fiery feminist doctor in love with Horatio. A special note of recognition too for the sylphlike Furies/Muses (Marisa Bonahoom, Caroline Iliff, Jackie Raye, Abbie Ruff, Lexie Showalter, Kelsey Summers, and Zach Gamet as The Power) who plague and inspire Strindberg. Choreography by Penny Ayn Maas contributes to this chilling ballet of intertwined and inspired madness.

Strindberg craving fulfilled. 

THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES by John Guare
directed by T.J. Walsh
Buschman Theatre, TCU

a youtube short - "end of play" from the TCU production:
https://youtu.be/dQi62g7gaCY

a youtube short - "four corners" from the TCU Production:
https://youtu.be/omTzycfNNxM

a youtube look at the TCU production of The House of Blue Leaves
https://youtu.be/b_zApG-XCqI

a look at Artie's prologue of The House of Blue Leaves at TCU
https://youtu.be/zPKUDFWbYJk

"At once dark and zany, House is one of Guare's most powerful works, presenting timeless, dramatic themes – the power of celebrity, the desire for fame, and the longing to escape to a better life – in a screwball comedy plot."

OUR TOWN by Thorton Wilder
directed by T.J. Walsh
Buschman Theatre, TCU

a youtube slideshow look of TCU's production of Our Town
https://youtu.be/49zTVxOdWDA

a brief youtube look at a Sunday rehearsal of Our Town
https://youtu.be/zatAZerp2CA

a trailer for OUR TOWN - read thru
https://youtu.be/LSwLP2sgnkk

GETTING OUT by Marsha Norman
directed by T.J. Walsh
Hays Theatre, TCU

W A T C H:
youtube short "the closing" from TCU production
https://youtu.be/7OwtKmB1qrM
video short from Getting Out at TCU
https://youtu.be/AodvjYkogzk


"Getting Out is a remarkable play about an ex-convict — but looking back, it also feels like a watershed moment in the history of plays about and by women."

THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams
directed by T.J. Walsh
Hays Theatre, TCU

a youtube short from the TCU production: https://youtu.be/MNDGpbdybmE

a youtube slideshow look at TCU's producton of The Glass Menagerie
https://youtu.be/zu8w1uvo1OE

W A T C H:
Short from the TCU Production: https://youtu.be/YAx4PDx38HY
A video of the TCU Production: https://youtu.be/hjfmeGCygg8

MELROSE STORIES by T.J. Walsh

TCU's 'Stories' has happy ending in this romantic comedy
LOVE AND LAUGHS CONQUER ALL OBSTACLES IN ADVENTUROUS COMEDY

Dallas Morning News
by Lawson Taitte, Theatre Critic

Melrose Stories has two strikes against it, right from the start. The hero narrates the story by talking to the audience. A lot. And the character is a writer - seldom a good sign.

But no inning is over until the final out, and playwright T.J. Walsh keeps swinging hard and gets a hit - maybe not a home run but definitely a triple.

Texas Christian University, where Mr. Walsh teaches, gave Melrose Stories its world premiere Wednesday under the playwright's direction. This romantic comedy dares a lot. Its tone ranges from sitcom humor to a magical ending right out of Jacobean romance. And it baldly lets you know it's doing just that. A beneficent ghost wanders through the action, and the plot involves a big secret. (The savvy will guess it immediately, yet the answer still feels unprepared for when it comes out - just as Mr. Walsh planned.)

The action mostly takes place in a Los Angeles bookstore, though it also wanders freely through space and time. The narrator, a New York novelist named T.D. Kellogg (Clint Gage), has been suffering from writer's block for more than a decade after his successful debut. His aunt (Katie O'Brien) dies and leaves him her heavily mortgaged store. T.D. falls in love with the place, the staff and - in a romantic way - the manager, Rose (Michelle Martinez).

The scenes in the store do feel a lot like high-quality TV comedy, with the employees and regulars trading quips and exuding hormones. Mr. Walsh halts objections by having the funny guy, Walter (C.J. Meeks), quarrel endlessly with Wilma (Jaclyn Napier), a feminist grad student who's writing her thesis on sitcoms.

Mr. Walsh has looked past recent romantic comedies for models and gone straight to the top. The juxtaposition of low popular humor with serious characters and situations feels Shakespearean, in a nicely unpretentious way. The laughs are there, and the deeper emotions as well.

Perhaps the mystical happy ending doesn't have quite the tearful payoff it should - but it could just be that the student actors aren't always the right age or in possession of enough technique to make the improbable convincing.

A number of cast members are outstanding anyway. Ms. O'Brien radiates the right kind of hopeful aura, Mr. Meeks is hilarious, and Scott Rickels as the gay store employee has a nice offhand charm.

Melrose Stories is a real contribution to the vanishing genre of romantic comedy.

12 ANGRY MEN - 12 ANGRY WOMEN by Reginald Rose
directed by T.J. Walsh
Hays Theatre, TCU

A youtube slideshow of the TCU Production
https://youtu.be/B83ZlVNNJ0U