“I hate theater,” a whiny voice in the dark says at the tippy-top of The Drowsy Chaperone. “Well, it’s so disappointing, isn’t it?” The Man in Chair, as he’s called in this creampuff of a musical, continues for a few more lines before the lights come up. He expresses his…
You can’t swing an elf without hitting a Christmas-themed play or musical in Dallas theaters this week. And for swinging elves, there’s no better one than Crumpet, the sassy alter ego of writer David Sedaris in his one-man comedy short, The Santaland Diaries. Contemporary Theatre of Dallas has produced this…
The leading role in Kitchen Dog Theater’s Charm fits actress Tina Parker like a velvet glove. But the character she plays, 19th century writer, feminist and transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, wasn’t the glove-wearing sort, though she lived in glove-and-corset-wearing times. Kathleen Cahill’s immensely satisfying 90-minute biographical comedy, getting its Southwest premiere…
Except for the title and some dropped-in references to Parkland Hospital, Neiman Marcus and the long-gone H.L. Green downtown five-and-dime, the setting of The Trinity River Plays feels as geographically generic as the towns do in daytime soaps. So scant is the sense of Dallas-ness in Regina Taylor’s new trilogy…
Kathleen Cahill’s dreamy comedy, Charm, gets a sweet production at Kitchen Dog Theater. Tina Parker stars as Margaret Fuller, a real-life early feminist writer whose pals included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The boys won’t let her swim in Walden Pond (back in that century, ladies…
Artists will make art even if they don’t make money. With a few dollars, however, they can make more art, bigger art and even take some time to teach others how to make art. For our first MasterMinds competition, which awards three grants of $2,000 to local artists, we were…
Frank Campagna Many a young artist’s career has been launched from the walls of Frank Campagna’s Kettle Art Gallery since it opened on Elm Street in November 2005. Campagna, 54, has an open-door policy for unknown, un-shown artists. Drop in, and if he likes your stuff, you’re up in the…
“Play should make you understand something new,” says a character in Nilaja Sun’s brief, beautiful play, No Child. Good plays can enlighten. Bad plays can, too, even if it’s only teaching you something about remaining politely silent and relatively still in a small, hard seat for a couple of hours…
Times are tough all around, and especially for artists. Grant money is scarce and patron support isn’t what it was during boom times. Why not offer Dallas artists and creative entrepreneurs a shot at some money and a bit of buzz-generating publicity? Dallas Observer’s first MasterMinds competition, launched in September,…
Every night of live theater is an adventure. When things go right, it’s a thrill ride. When things go wrong, as they did at the final preview of Lyric Stage’s premiere of the musical adaptation of The Night of the Hunter, it’s like stumbling through a carnival fun house. The…
What are you up for? A play about a guy who shoots a dog? A play about yuppie parents who poison a lady with pesto? How about a comedy with typists who murder lumberjacks to score men’s better-made outerwear? Let’s start with the most entertaining one (by far), The Secretaries,…
The Edward Albee one-acts that WingSpan Theatre Company is doing right now taste as bitter and icy as dry martinis. The American Dream and The Sandbox, both directed by Susan Sargeant, are bracing cocktails of absurdist humor. The production at the Bath House Cultural Center serves them with great style…
A farting contest in the middle of Shrek the Musical turns out to be one of its classiest moments. The competition takes place between the title character, an okra-colored ogre played by Eric Petersen, and the object of his affection, a rescued red-haired princess named Fiona (Haven Burton). In the…
There are cake people and pie people. Adam Carolla, headlining a special two-night event at the Addison Improv Tuesday and Wednesday (October 5-6), is a confirmed pie man. More about that in a minute. If all you know of Carolla, 46, is from the 1990s on cable’s The Man Show…
You’ve heard of Two Buck Chuck? How about three-buck Wink? The $2.99 Winking Owl Merlot is found exclusively at Aldi, the deep discount grocery store. Bottled by Gallo, it’s a thoroughly respectable little bottle of grape with hints of cherry and other sweet fruits. I dare you to put it…
Moises Kaufman, who wrote The Laramie Project, is the author of this drama (a vehicle earlier this year for Jane Fonda on Broadway) about a 60-ish musicologist (Sharon Garrison) obsessed with finding reasons for Beethoven’s years-long work on 33 short variations of a simple waltz. She has a reason to…
A full moon bathes a window in sugary white. A train whistles. Bacon curls in a skillet. These simple sensory references are part of everyday life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, the United States, Western Hemisphere, the Earth, the solar system, the universe—the way one character addresses the fictional village…
If you’re not Tweetin’, you’re not in on the eatin’ from the The Green House Truck. Every day the gourmet grub lunch truck tweets out highlights of the day’s menu. This week, with the air feeling crisp and fall-ish, they’re making lots of soups, all from organic produce. When they…
At last, a way to feel virtuous while stuffing your gullet with chili cheese fries and “Triple Dippers” at Chili’s restaurants. On Monday, September 27, the 25-year-old burger chain will donate 100 percent of its profits for the day to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the world’s leading…
Photo by Elaine LinerLalani Amin makes juice. Lots of juice. Fresh juice from Louisiana-grown sugarcane mixed with fresh-squeezed lime and kiwi, a cold, green kiss of a juice that tastes just sweet enough to be a treat instead of a health drink (though it is). Amin also makes falooda, a…
What Hamlet says about mothers and sons, Henry IV says about fathers (and father figures) and sons. Shakespeare’s drama about medieval kings, now getting a handsome, if gimmick-strewn, production at Dallas Theater Center, presents a troubled royal son, Hal, the Prince of Wales, and his uneasy relationships with his father…
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer winner from 1938 is on few critics’ lists of plays they’d love to see again. It’s usually done with heavy doses of quaintness and really bad New England accents. Not so in the new and surprisingly fresh production at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Director Terry Martin, who also…
