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“This comedy…satire…farce…whatever you’d like to call it…is by the author of the irreverent, saucy, devil-as-puppet Hand to God, a 2015 Tony-nominated Best Play. The Carpenter will not be nominated for anything. Ever. . . . I didn’t see the production at [last season’s] All New Festival, for if I had I wouldn’t have wasted my time seeing it now no matter how many rewrites it had undergone. There will never be enough for this mediocrity to be successful. . . . The play feels like it has been cobbled together from a playwriting manual for amateurs. . . . There’s not a lot of comedy in any of this, and after a while the whole affair turns terribly lazy. . . . Like many an Alley production, the money’s gone into the scenery. Arnulfo Maldonado’s chrsyelephantine Highland Park interior is sturdy, gaudy, and will inevitably revolve. It’s a thing of beauty, yet empty and devoid of a play. What are we to make of this world premiere?” – Houston Press
“Audiences coming to the Alley Theatre’s world premiere production of “The Carpenter” find themselves staring at an intricate and overwhelming set: two floors of a Dallas mansion, all white and gold, paintings of horses and family patriarchs, and a spiraling staircase . . . And behind this Tower of Babel wanna-be, they can just catch glimpses of some glass doors that lead out to something. Squint, and between glances at the program, they just may notice that this “something” is a gazebo under construction. . . . Alas, the gazebo will, by play’s end, remain unfinished, and the audience will never catch more than the neck-straining glimpses snatched when the action front-and-center takes a respite. This odd unfinished state ironically and surely unintentionally turns out to make that gazebo a metaphor for the play itself: work that gives itself pretensions of importance that are never realized, a carefully planned structure that ends up a pile of wasted wood. . . . Like its gazebo, the script is an uncompleted project. Askins has neglected to include any reason to care about his characters other than an ability to feel superior to them. . . . It isn’t helped by poor directing choices by Will Davis — especially trying to stage pantomime performances in the gazebo area at the back of the stage while the overwhelming staircase blocks the audience’s sight lines. . . . Askins is a talented writer . . . but “The Carpenter” is missing more than just polish and paint.” – Chron.com
“After all, this was a play about other people,” the narrator tells us. “People from Dallas.” The line is witty, passive aggressive and emotionally detached — good words to describe “The Carpenter” as a whole. . . . Modeling itself after a Shakespearean twin brother identity-swap farce, it ends up a tonal jumble. It’s a mishmash of high jinks, “SNL”-style jokes and overly extended scenes of physical comedy.” – Houston Chronicle
“Getting people to laugh in the South is definitely not an easy task. But Askins does it effortlessly. . . . And, yes, it’s a comedy, but it’s a comedy that makes the audience think.” – Broadway World
“And this is what this play is about: having a good time, enjoying the rivalries between Dallas, Houston, and the forlorn subdivisions which are the provinces of the state. . . . But when the plot veers off into the comedic, then the physically comedic, and finally to the farcical, then you have a dizzying spectrum of trajectories that always keeps things lively, even if those are not your favorite versions of humor. After intermission, things get a little too three-ring-circus-y for my taste, but I still enjoyed it, even up to the bizarre and shocking ending that threw me for a loop. But never mind . . .” – Houstonia
“Clever, amusing and dark comedy of errors, Texas-style, which would have benefited from a couple more runs through the drafting process. . . . It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the romp, but was frustrated by the fact it could have been so much better. . . . it was a payoff without adequate set up. When you call something The Carpenter, especially when the main character wags on in a homiletic fashion, it is not unreasonable to expect a few Christian themes or at least a nod in that direction, but despite the backdrop of a marriage there was none.” – Homeschool Mom Movie Maven
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