Legally Blonde meets Glee meets Xanadu in Dallas Theater Center’s latest, the world premiere of the hyperactive musical Give It Up! (forced exclamation point theirs). The show reflects obvious influences of those and other pop-infused Broadway and TV phenoms, but its actual source material is Lysistrata, a comedy from 411…

“This situation is fraught.” It is, it is, it is. August: Osage County, the Steppenwolf production finishing its two-week run at the Winspear Opera House, is a festival of fraught-ness. Tracy Letts’ prize-laden three-act masterpiece finds the Weston family of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, about as frightfully fraught as any family ought…

Nobody ever accused Pocket Sandwich Theatre of being too sophisticated. Tucked into the corner of a shopping strip across from Mockingbird Station, the cozy little dinner playhouse serves terrible food and puts on plays aimed at beer-and-nacho appetites. Pocket’s latest, Fangs for the Memories, revives one of its old comedy…

The most exciting moment in a show done by Pegasus Theatre is that first glimpse of the set and actors as the curtain goes up. Performed in the company’s trademarked “Living Black and White,” Pegasus’ tributes to vintage whodunit movies are designed to fool the eye of the viewer into…

Art happens. And against all predictions of doom and gloom for the arts in 2009, theaters in and around Dallas and Fort Worth kept making it happen. The opening of the Wyly Theatre and the Winspear Opera House, and the emergence of small, daring companies such as Level Ground Arts,…

South Pacific cuts right to the chase. Moments after the orchestra plays the overture, ex-patriot Frenchman Emile de Becque begins making overtures of his own, playing up to pretty Navy nurse Nellie Forbush. They’re at the end of their first real date. Under the influence of good brandy and the…

Matthew Posey does things with puppets no child should ever witness. Posey’s Balanced Almond troupe is at it again over at The Ochre House performance space by Fair Park, with the fourth and filthiest installment in a series of X-rated comedies built around a puppet character named Coppertone. Is it…

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol for quick cash. Dallas Theater Center stages it every December for the same reason. Lots of theaters depend on this family-friendly chestnut to subsidize their seasons. It’s that dependable a moneymaker. Moving permanently in 2010 to the Wyly Theatre on Flora Street downtown, DTC…

Many wishes are granted in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s much-loved musical Into the Woods, now playing at Richardson Theatre Centre. Prince Charming finds Cinderella’s foot. Rapunzel’s haircut frees her from a witch’s spell. Jack becomes a killer of giants and procurer of golden eggs. The nicest wish fulfilled, however,…

The hardest words for some playwrights to type: The End. Two new plays on Dallas stages right now—Bill Fountain’s Crushing Grain at The Dallas Hub and Allison Moore’s Slasher at Kitchen Dog Theater—each clock in at less than 90 minutes, but both suffer from pernicious run-on syndrome. Here are single-act…

Small theaters around Dallas once again are brimming with big ideas and hot talent. The show to see right now—one that will make you excited about live theater, even if you haven’t been to a play in years—is Upstart Productions and Project X’s staging of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio. Launching…

As opening nights go, Dallas Theater Center’s October 30 season premiere of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a resounding dud. Before a house stuffed with local dignitaries, board members, trophy wives, donors and press, the show started nearly a half-hour late, delayed by dull speeches from portly millionaires congratulating…

“It’s not easy having a good time,” moans Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the glam-rock, cross-dressing mad scientist diva of The Rocky Horror Show. So true. Seeing three different productions of this rock ‘n’ roll musical on the same weekend offers a dizzying, exhausting six-hour hop through the good-time warp of kitschy-goth costumes,…

The time is 1950. The place is the St. George’s Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth, the Detroit of South Africa. On a rainy afternoon free of customers, the tiny café’s black employees, Sam and Willie, kill time practicing choreography for an annual ballroom dancing contest. Willie, the younger of…

For the creators of The Road to Qatar, the giddy little musical getting its world premiere at Irving’s Lyric Stage, a real-life deal to write a made-to-order spectacular for a Middle Eastern emir turned out not to be such a big break. Instead, it was more of a sheik-down. So…

Not until the second act of the musical Grey Gardens, now playing in a rather splendid production at WaterTower Theatre, do we see the Edith Bouvier Beales whom we know from the Maysles brothers’ 1975 documentary. The images we have of Big and Little Edie, as they were known, are…

Those high school misfits who sing and dance their way to higher self-esteem in the new TV series Glee could be the older siblings of the six middle-school oddballs who compete for the trophy in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Now playing in a B-plus production at Theatre…

Enjoy a tasty plot twist in your drama? With Mauritius, running one more weekend in a crisp little production by Echo Theatre at the Bath House, playwright Theresa Rebeck serves up a two-act mystery so yummy you could eat it for dinner. Check out her recipe for suspense: Problem: Jackie…

Funny Girl, now running at Irving’s Lyric Stage, is Broadway’s great musical comedy Cinderella story. Up from the ash heap of cheap vaudeville arises a gawky nobody, comedian Fanny Brice. She sings and clowns her way into the glossy Ziegfeld Follies, marries a charming prince of a fella and reigns…