Best Designer
Kirk Markley for Orange Flower Water
Kirk Markley's set for Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water was not beautiful -- it was devastating. The script told the tale of badly behaving married folks, most notable for their ordinariness. And Markley's set, with its looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving, captured the terrible banality of their suburban world. Stacked along the metal shelves were toilet paper, a pair of shoes, a teapot, towels -- the stuff of dull daily life. These details, wrought from the detritus of living a middle-class life, brought Wright's story of infidelity home. They made it real, almost too real for comfort. And at center stage stood a bed, sprawled like a battlefield, where the players fought. It became the central, unforgettable image of Wright's domestic war story.
           -Houston Press, September 29, 2005.

Best Actor
Josh Morrison in Orange Flower Water
Playing the cuckold has never been easy. Just ask Josh Morrison, who played one such loser in Stages Repertory Theatre's production of Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water this past spring. Hard as it may be, Morrison was somehow able to make the ordinary meathead named Brad into the most memorable male character on any stage this past season. Morrison's Brad was not the sort of man any self-respecting wife would want. He ogled other women and bad-mouthed his bride, and everywhere he went, gloom seemed to follow. He absolutely deserved it when his wife shacked up with another man. But still, when Brad found out what his wife was up to, the forbiddingly muscular Morrison filled up the stage with an animal rage that felt so painfully real, it was hard not to weep for the bastard. Morrison paced around the bedroom looking at his faithless wife, howling out his broken heart in a scream of profanity that felt so primal, it shook the very ground he stood on.
           -Houston Press, September 29, 2005.

Set designer Kirk Markley's looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving captures the banality of this world. Stacked along the metal shelves are toilet paper, a pair of shoes, a teapot, towels -- the stuff of dull daily life. These details bring the story home. They make it real, almost too real for comfort.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, March 24, 2005.