The less said, the better The Boxer is. The new play by Dallas writer and Bootstraps Comedy Theater founder Matt Lyles, who also directs this production, is a clear audience favorite at the current Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Cultural Center. Its brilliance lies in how it…
Enough with the meta-musicals, where are the meaty musicals? Monty Python’s Spamalot, now at the Music Hall at Fair Park, is the latest light-bite Broadway hit to make comic hash of the Broadway smash. The Producers—like Spamalot, a musical comedy based on a feature film—won a slew of Tonys clawing…
Who wouldn’t want to take Sylvia home? Talk about adorable. Young, blond, frisky—she’s every middle-aged man’s fantasy. She also has four legs, a tail and fleas. A.R. Gurney’s fluffy comedy Sylvia, currently playing at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, asks if it’s possible for a mutt to break up—or possibly save—a…
If only The Cape Grill were situated where ideally it should be. That is, a half-mile or less from a pounding blue surf, a stretch of white beach and a friendly boardwalk. Instead, this sunny indoor-outdoor seafood place sits smack dab in an ocean of concrete near the Quadrangle, where…
Hear that? It’s the happy hum of satisfied theatergoers enjoying a harmonic convergence of musical theater. At Fair Park you’ve got a stripped-to-the-beautiful-bones Chicago sporting a jim-dandy cast of singers and dancers—plus Lisa Rinna, a not-so-terrible TV personality. At Theatre Three you have the local premiere of Tony Kushner’s Caroline,…
You shouldn’t be, even if Edward Albee’s 45-year-old masterpiece of marital discord does go on well past the three-hour mark. WaterTower Theatre puts on a finely calibrated production directed by René Moreno. Lead actor James Crawford is an SMU drama prof by day, so he’s deliciously authentic as George, a…
Reality TV has left little to fear about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee’s once-shocking and still unsettling 1962 drama. The play is now getting a strongly acted, if technically uneven, production directed by René Moreno at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Imagine three and a half hours of out-of-control Real…
My, my, Michael York looks happy. Why shouldn’t he? He’s starring in a national tour of Camelot, getting away with sleepwalking through a role for which he’s 30 years too old. But he’s famous! He’s charming! He’s British! That appears to be enough for York and for his languid King…
Big title for a little gem written and performed by veteran stage and TV actress Ronnie Claire Edwards (The Waltons, Designing Women). In tiny Theatre Too, Edwards welcomes the audience into the prison cell of “Little Egypt,” not the famous belly dancer of the 19th century, but a former “cooch…
He used to see plays for a living. Now Tom Sime is writing them. The former Dallas Morning News and Dallas Observer theater critic left journalism a few years ago to work full-time in professional theater. Soon Sime will oversee the first full-scale local production of one of his plays,…
What a friend she has in cheeses. Sister Elizabeth Donderstock, member of an obscure offshoot of the Amish called the “Squeamish,” is the goddess with gouda in Amy and David Sedaris’ lactose-irreverent one-act comedy The Book of Liz. Bootstraps Comedy Theater is putting on this curds-and-way-funny little play right now…
The Squeamish are cousins to the Amish, tucked away in Quilt County, selling cheeseballs to gourmet stores to keep the sect afloat. Then one day, Sister Elizabeth (Arianna Movassagh) has her job as chief cheese maven handed to Brother Nathaniel (Jeremy Whiteker). Unfair? Uh, yeah. So she runs away and…
An oldie but a goody pops up at Theatre Three. Doug Jackson and Bob Hess play Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, divorced, middle-aged journalists sharing a big, cheap (it’s 1965) apartment on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. With their poker buddies serving as ad hoc Greek chorus, the men bicker over Felix’s…
When Petruchio pulls up his coat to reveal that he’s wearing assless pants, director Richard Hamburger, intentionally or not, makes his final statement to the Dallas Theater Center audience. To the Dallas theater community as a whole. This is Hamburger’s last production in a 15-year tenure in which his taste…
The road tour of Wicked first blew into town during the 2005 State Fair with a company that rivaled the Broadway originals for sheer gut-busting star power. The Glinda and Elphaba from that production are playing leads on Broadway right now—Kendra Kassebaum carrying on as the bubble-headed good witch in…
Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, meet in sorcery school and hate each other instantly. Then suddenly, they’re best friends, with Glinda giving Elphie a makeover to tone down her scary apple-green skin. This musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz explains how the…
Second Thought Theatre is back with a vengeance with this taut little one-act comedy by Canadian writer Morris Panych. The title characters, the only two in the play, are new friends. Lawrence (Ian Leson) is on the career track, or so it seems, at the department store where they both…
It’s about time somebody revived a Preston Jones play the right way. Director René Moreno has assembled a cast that really gets the sound of Jones’ “music.” This comedy about modest folk in a dust-dry West Texas town speaks its own particular lingo, full of colorful phrases and uniquely Jonesian…
There’s a happy, bouncy lilt to the writing of Preston Jones and Charles Busch. Their plays are nothing alike, but, man, their use of language surely is music to the ears. In new productions of Jones’ lovely 1974 comedy Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander, now playing at Contemporary Theatre of…
To die for, that’s what this Charles Busch comedy is. Coy Covington is the man in the dress as glam chanteuse Angela Arden, circa 1967. Or is it really Angela’s twin sister Barbara in that hot pink hostess gown? Director Andi Allen gets her great cast into gear in a…
When you stop by McCarty’s in Richardson—and you should—ask one of the regulars at the bar about the time a guy tried to make off with the stuffed and mounted wild boar’s head. There are two of the heads hung high in the back room of this wood-paneled Irish-themed restaurant/pub…
With friends like these—oh, boy. Two new stage productions—each disquieting, amusing and refreshingly brief—explore the absurd lengths to which some lonely souls go to find a boon companion. The surprise in both works is what happens when the relationship goes wonky. Take Lucy, a plucky 4-year-old played by adult actress…
