Audio By Carbonatix
Charlotte’s Web E.B. White’s timeless tale of life and death and unexpected miracles on the farm gets its fourth production at Dallas Children’s Theater. Forget any preconceptions about plays for kids. This is big-budget, high-quality entertainment worth seeing even if you don’t have rugrats tagging along. Equity actors Karl Schaeffer and Trisha Miller Smith play Wilbur the piglet and Charlotte the spider. He’s funny and physically adept as the puny runt of the litter, saved from the ax by a little girl named Fern (Katy Tye and Kendall Howen, alternating performances). Sharing the barn with the pig and the bug are two sheep (Jody Rudman, Deidre Huffines) who divulge the “conspiracy” about where fat little piggies go in the autumn (hint: next to fried eggs and toast). A couple of geese (Mariel Mickens and Cole Spivey) waddle in, saying everything-thing-thing three times. Adapted faithfully by Joseph Robinette, this Web, directed by Robyn Flatt, weaves real magic into a story whose themes of friendship, selflessness and the meaning of life never grow whiskers. Zak Herring’s towering steel web gleams under Linda Blase’s warm lighting scheme. Best performances are by Miller, traversing her web in a sparkly black bodysuit, and Derik Webb as that old scrounger, Templeton the rat. As all fans of the book know, the rat gets all the best lines. Stick around after the show to watch the littlest audience members pose for pix with the actors and stare with wonder at the intricate costumes by Leila Heise. Through October 23 at Dallas Children’s Theater, Rosewood Center for Family Arts, 5938 Skillman St., 214-740-0051. Reviewed this week. (Elaine Liner)
Shakespeare’s Keeper This new play by Chris Pickles, who also directs its premiere, finds one Nathan Dabbs (Matthew Gray) scuttling around backstage at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the summer of 1613. He’s a filthy, disgruntled former actor, drummed out of the company of players for stealing. Now he runs props and feeds lines to fat old Richard Burbage, the Globe’s star and reigning ego. Cute set-up, dull play. For an hour longer than necessary, Keeper keeps at it. Dabbs gets drunk, weeps, laughs and gossips. But is he talking to himself or to the audience? That’s not really clear, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. Nothing about the play or its only player, Gray, connects with the emotions of the groundlings. The script links obscure theatrical anecdotes, historical and fanciful, with long, too-familiar sections of the Bard’s best-known works. Dabbs does soliloquy after soliloquy, including some by Lady Macbeth. All’s well that ends well before this one does. To be or not to be back in the seat after intermission? Ay, there’s the rub. Through October 9 at Fannin Hall, Richland College, 12800 Abrams Road, 214-505-1655. Reviewed this week. (E.L.)