These days James Crawford gets only the best roles
Dallas Morning News theater critic Lawson Tate reviews SMU Professor James Crawford's performance in 'Shooting Star.'
By Lawson Taitte
Theater
ADDISON — Every time James Crawford gets on a stage these days, it’s something special.
The actor doesn’t take on as many roles as he used to, before he and his partner adopted a son. Crawford is also now a tenured professor teaching acting at Southern Methodist University, which puts more limits on his time.
Still, about once a year, he has been turning in a sensational performance at an area theater. Last summer it was as Benedick in Trinity Shakespeare Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing. Before that it was a scary Marley in the Dallas Theater Center’s A Christmas Carol, a menacing poet in Kitchen Dog Theater’s Sick, a moving George in WaterTower Theatre’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“All I want is to act in a good play with good people,” Crawford says. “I’m in a position now to make that happen. It’s an incredible luxury.”
Now he’s back at WaterTower in the two-character comedy Shooting Star opposite Diana Sheehan. They play college sweethearts who reconnect at a snowed-in airport after 25 years.
# # #