Pretty Sweet

Take Neil Simon, throw him in a big gay musical stewpot with the greatest choreographer ever--Bob Fosse--and stir in that chick Paige Davis from TV's Trading Spaces and what do you get? Well, besides a pretty strange-tasting stew, you get Sweet Charity, a really weird musical about a girl who starts off as a "private dancer" in the Tina Turner sense of the term and ends up looking for love in all the wrong places. She has several close encounters of the romantic kind where she ends up (for some reason) falling into not one but two lakes. Two lakes!!! That's two more lakes than most people ever fall into. Maybe it is some kind of symbolism for taking the "love plunge." Nobody knows for sure. Bob Fosse is, unfortunately, dead, and Neil Simon ain't talking. During the course of Charity's quest for true love, she's dumped by her steady boyfriend and (almost) swept away by a famous and glamorous Italian film star, all while singing a couple of famous show tunes along the way. Even the most hardcore nü-metal dude has heard "Hey, Big Spender" at some point in their miserable lives. So why not spend a little time with Sweet Charity, opening Tuesday and running through August 5 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. Tickets are $11 to $69. Call 214-631-ARTS for sweet info.
Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays, 2 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 2, 2 p.m. Starts: July 24. Continues through Aug. 5