Mike Byham’s ‘Southlake’ at The Core Theatre
—Carol M. Rice
If you aren’t familiar with Theatre Network of Texas, Inc. (TNT) and the many good works the organization does for theatres throughout the state, you should be. For one thing, it administers the TNT Production of Original PlayS (TNT POPS!) Competition every two years—and The Core Theatre in Richardson is presenting one of the winners from the past two-year cycle: playwright Mike Byham’s Southlake.
And a winner it is.
The play (yes, set in the affluent DFW suburb of the same name) shifts back and forth in time from our protagonist Randy’s long-ago tour in Vietnam to present-day Southlake. Randy is played by two exceptional actors who are well cast as each other: Dio Garner as Young Randy and Allen Matthews as Old Randy.
We get to see Young Randy when he returns from the war with his wife Rose and baby daughter. Then we see Old Randy with his adult daughter Christine and granddaughter Hope.
At first— in both timelines—all seems well. But then Cliff, an old army buddy played by Travis Cook, shows up on Young Randy’s farm. Young Randy doesn’t appear to be happy to see him, and we find out that Cliff was left for dead when they were on a mission together. Cliff’s arrival starts Young Randy’s downward spiral as he fights his demons with alcohol. Cook plays Cliff with just the right amount of mystery, which contrasts nicely with Garner’s confusion.
In the modern timeline, Matthews effectively shows us that while Old Randy’s battles may be smaller on the surface, he’s still fighting them, especially when Hope (played by Caera Flood) is diagnosed with kidney failure and Christine (played by Kristin Sutton Ford) wants to try to find her mother. You see, Rose left when she was just a baby, and this brings back unwanted memories for Old Randy.
Ford as Christine gives a powerful performance ranging from protective daughter to concerned mother and more. She is very natural onstage, and her range of emotions is outstanding. I completely believed her love for her father and daughter throughout.
As Hope, Flood makes the most of her few scenes, going from typical peppy teenager (so ready to go off to college) to a sick and weak young adult—though still strong-willed. Her love for Old Randy (she calls him Pop-Pop) is evident from the beginning, and Old Randy remarks how much Hope reminds him of her grandmother Rose. The two actresses do a nice job of bringing out the similarities.
Young wife Rose, portrayed by Melanie Peterman, is plucky and strong, especially for the time period. She’s not afraid to disagree with her husband, but her love for him is always there as well. Peterman and Garner have excellent chemistry as a young couple struggling to make it on their little farm out in the mostly-empty countryside between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Jeff Garlish rounds out the cast as Larry, a local policeman. He is polite yet firm and totally believable as a small-town cop having to deal with minor skirmishes.
James Hansen Prince’s stunning set provides the perfect setting for the play, both in the past and the present, aided by Cliff Taylor’s lighting design.
Theo Moers’s costume design is spot on. It was always easy to tell when we were just by what the characters were wearing, and each costume suited the character perfectly.
Sound designer Bri McKay has done an excellent job bringing us from wartime to the farm, complete with an isolated sound of the baby crying from backstage instead of running through the theatre’s main speakers.
Southlake is beautifully co-directed by Staci Ingram and Ashley Collum. They’ve cast the play flawlessly, and their directing styles work seamlessly together to create a unified vision of playwright Mike Byham’s award-winning world premiere. [Editor’s note: Byham, according to online sources, is a Pittsburgh native who settled in Southlake some years ago. He has a long list of plays to his credit, written both before and after a 20-year hiatus from playwrighting (mostly “as a soccer dad”).] It’s certainly impressive to have Southlake selected by TNT POPS! from over 100 internationally submitted scripts.
The submission dates for the 2025-27 TNT POPS! New Play Project are August 1 through September 30, 2025. Each play selected will be produced between March 2026 and December 2027 by a TNT member theatre company. Visit https://texastheatres.org/pops/ to learn more.
New plays are always a risk, even with the support of organizations like TNT, so kudos to The Core Theatre for taking a chance on Southlake and bringing their excellent production of this wonderful new work to the stage.
WHEN: July 4-20, 2025
WHERE: 518 W. Arapaho Road, Richardon TX
WEB: thecoretheatre.org
