Reviews
"Reckless Reviews"
Mercury News
Myrvold’s Theatre Notes
Stark Insider
Theater Reviews and Links:
AMERICAN NIGHT THE BALLAD OF
JUAN JOSE, DENVER CENTER THEATER
“His supporting cast is headed by the utterly winning Dena Martinez, who steals the show as sure as America stole land from the natives. She’s a scream playing a wide array of characters, all of whom are incarnations of Juan José’s much-missed wife, Lydia.”
Read more: Theater review, “American Night”: Our shameful history, Monty Python style – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/theater/ci_19115846#ixzz2H219D1dV
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
NEW FIRE, BRAVA THEATER
“Dena Martinez‘s finely focused performance invests that central story with more drama than the writing may merit.”
“Martinez traces Vero’s arc from repressed emotion through relived trauma to healed wisdom with an understated intensity that infuses it with real-life drama.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/New-Fire-review-Healing-burns-2560080.php#ixzz2H228PE9M
RECKLESS, SAN JOSE STAGE
“The ensemble also rises to the occasion with Navarra, O’Bryon and Miller all doing fine work. And Martinez is terrific as all those doctors, giving all of them their own personalities and quirks.”
Gibraltar, San Jose Stage, Thick Description
“Amy, played with sharply observed conviction by Dena Martinez, is a painter whose husband, Daniel, has disappeared at sea, having fallen or perhaps jumped from his boat beyond the Golden Gate.
Martinez and Moreno embody the metaphorical struggle with passionate immediacy, pitting his charismatic, feral edge against her vital but vulnerable life force.”
BLADE TO THE HEAT, THICK DESCRIPTION
Dena Martinez‘s Sarita, Mantequilla’s lover, adds still more with her denial of her Chicana roots and her insistent female presence in an unrelentingly male world.”
“…though the coiled intensity of Callender’s and Martinez’s performances, and the wary yearning of Ponce’s and Coleman Domingo’s, convey more than their lines.”
ELECTRICIDAD, TEATRO VISION
“Martinez’s attractive but speed-freak thin Clemencia oozes callousness and neurosis (“Say ‘I love you, Mother’”), yet she’s hardly the vicious Medea that Electricidad imagines. And as Electricidad’s paternal abuela/grandmother warns, “Even cholos have standards. You don’t kill the mother.”
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/03.22.06/electricidad-0612.html
STOP KISS, BRAVA THEATER
“Martinez is engaging as the new arrival from Missouri, buoyantly optimistic about teaching in a Bronx slum and brashly insecure in the unspoken awkwardness of her attraction to Callie. She’s even stronger, acting only with her eloquent eyes, in the hospital after the attack. “
THE BALLAD OF PANCHO AND LUCY, CAMPO SANTO
“Furthermore, it makes my desire to call particular attention to Mr. Wolohan and the sheepishly magnetic Ms. Dena Martinez — who reminded me in equal measure of Tracey Ullman and Steven Tyler — and played a crusty male drunk for much of the show.”