The author of more than 30 plays, recipient of three Tony Awards and a U-Haulful of dramatic accolades, and the next likely Pulitzer Prize winner, playwright Terrence McNally possesses a keener ear for dialogue than any other celebrated American dramatist now alive. The language he creates is a pure theatrical…
thursday july 25 Deborah Henson-Conant: Critically adored harpist-singer Deborah Henson-Conant has become famous in jazz and classical circles because she treats her instrument of choice like everything but a harp. She pounds it, plucks it, caresses it, massages it, and does everything short of establishing onstage carnal knowledge with it…
Ticket buyers should know there is a controversial presumption behind Trainspotting, the remarkable new feature by director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge–that drugs are fun. Specifically, heroin. The synthetic morphine substitute that keeps creeping back into ’90s headlines–most recently, with the overdose death of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Danny Melvoin…
The program for Kitchen Dog Theatre’s latest production, the racial-sexual drama Porcelain, contains some astute notes by director David Irving, who is the newest member of Kitchen Dog. His essay reads: “‘Shocking plays’ always seem to raise a question of validity in people’s minds, as though the plays want to…
thursday july 18 First-Annual Texas Film and Video Awards: The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics’ Association, which boasts 30 highly opinionated men and women (and one purehearted calendar editor), has decided that all this talk about the expanding Texas film-production scene deserves its own seal of approval–something that only folks who…
A month into its much-heralded summer release, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame has begun a slow limp down the box-office ladder. Everybody who harbors ill will toward this film–and there are a surprising number who do–want to take credit for its (relatively) poor performance with the public. Southern Baptists…
Watching the latest production by Theatre Three, a pair of one-acts from reigning theatrical neurotic Christopher Durang aptly dubbed Disgraceful Acts, the viewer is intrigued. In one evening, Dallas’ 35-year-old theater company offers the simultaneous experience of watching a skillful satirist at his prime and said writer floundering for inspiration…
thursday july 11 Porcelain: Two years ago the Dallas Theater Center staged Chay Yew’s Porcelain as a reading for its “Big D Festival of the Unexpected.” You could’ve heard a pin drop in that basement space as an Asian-Anglo hustler meets his Anglo lover during sex in a public rest…
Legendary New York theatrical producer Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival are generally credited with the idea of “restaging” Billy the Shake’s comedies and tragedies. This was a decision both commercial and artistic from a man and a company for whom those considerations were rarely in conflict. Papp…
thursday july 4 Old-Fashioned Fourth: The venerable downtown Dallas historical site known as Old City Park advertises its Fourth of July celebration as “first on the Fourth for families.” This constellation of consonants is correct only insofar as the city of Dallas goes (see Arlington Parade below). Should you be…
There’s good news and bad news from the Great White Way. The good news is that, after years of premature closings, skyrocketing ticket prices, and dismal press, Broadway is enjoying its best season in years. The massive crossover success of Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk and the…
thursday june 27 Wake-Up Call ’96: Some of the statements made by the Christian-based men’s movement offshoot Promise Keepers sound like empty whining when you consider that males have ruled Christianity and just about every other cultural institution for countless centuries now. Men are suffering a collective identity crisis? They’ve…
Anyone who thinks the films of 50 years ago placed the virgin/whore shackles on female characters should check out Molly Haskell’s perpetually irritated book, From Reverence To Rape. Given the obvious gender constraints of that time, Haskell insists, actresses at the height of their careers–women like Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn,…
thursday june 20 Sappho’s Symposium: Dallas’ nonprofit Extra Virgin Performance Cooperative is fully aware that naming its latest play festival Sappho’s Symposium is bound to keep droves of the Dallas curious-but-conservative away. (“Sappho? Didn’t she live on the island of Lesbos, enjoy women’s professional tennis, and own every Indigo Girls…
When asked if there’s anything he’d like to discuss about his hot new indie flick, Welcome to the Dollhouse, writer-director Todd Solondz doesn’t hesitate. It’s not the movie itself that comes to mind, but his experiences publicizing it. “Some of the journalists I’ve spoken to for this movie have said…
thursday june 13 Linda Ronstadt: Linda Ronstadt has notched 25 years in the music business, worldwide album sales of 30 million, and grown a thick hide to protect herself from the critical thorns that have scraped her along the journey. She’s also periodically grown a face: earnest country-rock girl, slick,…
thursday june 6 Spring Gallery Night: The title of the simultaneous night of receptions in the so-called Gallery District–around Fairmount and Cedar Springs–around Deep Ellum, and at other galleries around town is “Spring Gallery Night.” Technically, it’s still spring, although if temperatures persist toward the 100-degree mark, you may wish…
Writer-director Hal Salwen may be only now releasing his feature-film debut Denise Calls Up, but he is no neophyte to filmmaking. The New York University Film School graduate worked for years on spec as a screenwriter in Hollywood, and it was during these uncertain, lean, lonely years that Salwen conceived…
thursday may 30 Dreamers and Demons: The World of Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Dallas literary series “Arts & Letters Live” presents a tribute to an international icon of letters whose voluminous body of work denied the existence of national borders. Like most great writers who manage to tap universal wellsprings,…
There are a couple reasons why director John Schlesinger’s Cold Comfort Farm should have made no splashier an American debut than Masterpiece Theatre. For one, Schlesinger filmed the project early last year to be broadcast on BBC-TV. Only a strong, favorable response from film festivals worldwide led to a chance…
thursday may 23 Shadow of a Man: The Bath House Cultural Center hosts the premiere production of the Cara Mia Theatre Company, a brand-new Chicano theatre troupe whose aim is both to honor the Chicano experience in Dallas and offer that experience to anyone who enjoys the catharsis of live…
The camera loves 30-year-old French actor Olivier Martinez, but it doesn’t do him justice. In Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s deliriously romantic spectacle, The Horseman on the Roof, he wields heavy-lidded eyes that can make an offhand glance look like an invitation to hit the sack, yet there’s not an ounce of self-consciousness…
