The future of theater in Dallas should be what The Drama Club is doing with Faust. This all-local consortium of disgustingly talented writers, actors, directors and designers has created a fresh and contemporary version of the old Goethe tale (with shades of Christopher Marlowe) of a doctor who sells his…
There never was a Jack the Ripper, you know. Between 1888 and 1891 in London’s Whitechapel, 18 women were killed by sharp instruments. Some victims were prostitutes. Five were thought to have been murdered by the same person. He, or she, was never found, never brought to justice. Suspects…
In The Mountaintop, the provocative one-act about Martin Luther King Jr., now playing in the sixth-floor studio at the Wyly Theatre, we learn that the revered civil rights leader smoked Pall Malls on the sly and had smelly feet. He also had a thing for hot coffee and a wandering…
Don’t let the title fool you. Fix Me, Jesus, the new play by Helen Sneed that just got its premiere at Theatre Three, isn’t about religion. Not unless you put your faith in shopping as an answer to prayer and think of the NorthPark Center Neiman Marcus as the Vatican…
Travel now back to the 5th century B.C., to the Theatre of Dionysus in ancient Greece. In the shadow of the Parthenon, a couple strolls out of opening night of a new satirical comedy (with satyrs) by early Greek playwright Aristophanes. Scowling, the woman turns to her date and says,…
The message of Matilda the Musical is that words have power. How awful then that at the London-to-Broadway-to-national-tour production that opened Thursday night at the Winspear Opera House the audience was powerless to understand most of the words coming off the stage. It’s not a microphone issue; they actors are…
This is your bat signal. If, like me, you need rescuing from the dumbed-down high-dollar hillbilly hogwash passing itself off as an important “world premiere” right now at that shiny Arts District venue, then The Adventures of Flo and Greg at the humble Bath House Cultural Center is here to…
Pause now to consider The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter. The 1957 one-act opens the 25th season for Kitchen Dog Theater, now working in its new (temporary) home at The Green Zone on the edge of the Design District. The smaller theater is an awkward fit for a company used…
Not much dialogue, but wow, what sizzling drama in Matthew Posey’s latest play, Buñuel Descending, which enjoyed a short sold-out run at Ochre House. A revival is a must, the sooner the better for this sexy one-act that let music and flamenco dance take the place of words. This is…
There was some yelling but nobody got punched at this year’s DFW Theater Critics Forum luncheon. Nobody left angry either, which might be a first. Every September the print and online theater critics of Dallas and Fort Worth eat chicken and brownies together and hash over the previous year’s productions…
The way is clear, the light is good and the singing, acting and comedy in Lyric Stage’s to-the-hilt production of Into the Woods are absolutely enchanting. From the frantic overlapping lyrics of the opening prologue to the sweet, soaring poetry of “No One Is Alone,” the hopeful ballad at the…
“True always trumps clever,” says character actor and podcast raconteur Stephen Tobolowsky at the top of his one-man show The Tobolowsky Files, playing through the end of August at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Speaking directly to a crowd of about 50 in a small corner cabaret bar at…
Benedict Cumberbatch may be getting heavy ink for his Hamlet at London’s Barbican Theatre. But 400 miles north in Edinburgh, Lake Highlands High School grad David Carl, 34, is playing all the roles, plus one, in his hit solo comedy Gary Busey’s One-Man Hamlet as Performed by David Carl at…
Amanda Wingfield, 1930s tiger mother. The matriarch in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, now playing at Theatre Three, fits the profile: overbearing, controlling and obsessed with pushing her adult children toward her idea of success. She wants son Tom to work his way up in the St. Louis warehouse where…
WaterTower Theatre in Addison has trouble getting musicals right and just about every aspect of its current production of Sweet Charity is wrong. That’s being charitable. Actors who can’t sing. Dancers with no sense of rhythm. A set better suited for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. So much dark lumber…
What has 54 legs and flies? Catch Me if You Can, the 27-person musical now cruising along at high altitude at Uptown Players at Kalita Humphreys Theater. What a show! What a cast! What a way to close out the strongest season yet for the little company out-producing the Dallas…
Be afeard, the aisle is full of noises. Also the stage, the exits and the stairwell in Second Thought Theatre’s slam-bang-hollerin’ production of Othello at Bryant Hall. What’s with all the Shoutspeare going on this summer? Shakespeare Dallas put microphones on all the actors in its outdoor Romeo & Juliet…
Three of Dallas’ oldest theater companies — Kitchen Dog Theater, Theatre Three and Dallas Theater Center — are undergoing major transitions that could usher in dramatic changes as their shows go on. For Kitchen Dog, it’s a new temporary home inside the Green Zone, a smallish stand-alone performance space on…
At last, some performances to get goose pimply about at the Festival of Independent Theatres, going on two more weekends at the Bath House Cultural Center. The first weekend brought forth Danielle Georgiou’s lively demi-dance-musical The Show About Men, which is exactly that and a lot of fun, and the…
So many elements are sublime in the world premiere production of Brenda Withers’ The Quixotic Days and Errant Nights of the Knight Errant Don Quixote at Fort Worth’s Amphibian Stage. Director Matthew Earnest has put together a superb ensemble of local actors: Kitchen Dog star Jeremy Schwartz as Don Quixote,…
There are no prizes given to the best shows in the Festival of Independent Theatres, now in its 17th year at the Bath House Cultural Center at White Rock Lake. But there clearly were winners and losers among the first four of the eight productions that compose this year’s fest…
A whole lot of “yeehaw!” and yodeling goes on in The Kountry Girls, a new musical that just debuted at Theatre Three. That’s right, “Kountry” with a K. Because misspelled words are the hallmarks of great komedy. The “girls,” Dee Dee (Alexis Nabors) and May (Kelly Silverthorn), sling hash in their…
