Cabaret The Kander and Ebb musical about the demimonde of sexy singers, writers and hangers-on at Berlin’s Kit Kat Club in the 1930s doesn’t quite come together in WaterTower Theatre’s production. If only the performers were as good as the gloomy, subterranean set by Michael Sullivan. Instead, we get a…
The hot tomato juicing up the new comedy Pico de Gallo: The Return of the Queen is one “Chula Cholula,” a spicy little slice of womanhood who just happens to be played by a man, Oscar Contreras. Chula is a favorite recurring character in shows written and performed by the…
I loved the University of Texas, but college was expensive, and there was a lot of crap to deal with–student loans, expensive housing and a bus that smelled like a baby’s diaper. The Zooniversity, on the other hand, costs next to nothing, and the faculty is nice enough to take…
Thursday, July 28 Some movies alter the way we see daily life. Try not thinking of The Rocky Horror Picture Show when you meet a transvestite alien and his blond boy toy. Naturally, when you hear of a girl unwittingly kissing her twin brother, whom she’s never known because they…
I’ve just heard Richard Lewis tell a story about walking through a terminal at LAX, hearing some little 4-year-old girl yell, “There’s the Jew!” and wanting to run terrified like the Marathon Man. I’m laughing my ass off because there’s no doubt in my mind that this really happened. We’re…
Cooking class is nothing to sneeze at 8/3 If you’re one of those taste bud-challenged people who dumps a mound of salt and pepper on your food before you even take the first bite, then Central Market has a class for you–The Basics: Salt, Pepper & Oil. The Central Market…
Drag queens and dancers and drinking–oh my! 7/31 There’s blood in the water and the sharks are circling. Sometimes it’s too easy. Sometimes the joke writes itself. “So some drag beauty queens and senior tap dancers walk into a bar…” And sometimes even a shameless opportunist has to blink when…
Literature, out of bounds 7/29 Writing may be a solitary activity, but being a writer certainly is not. You sit alone and slave away over your iBook/typewriter/notebook/pile of Post-it notes, but when the creation is done, it’s time to hold court and share. Some of these salons are legendary, such…
Behind the wheel with BMW 7/31 “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” BMW’s time-honored slogan, could be interpreted in a couple of different ways. It could mean that the company’s sports sedans offer the pinnacle of ground transportation pleasure. It could also mean that the last moment you spend on this earth…
“Hit me,” says Mark Zupan–begs, actually, like a kid clamoring for a new toy. “I’ll hit you back.” He means it, too, and his ripped pecs and buzzed scalp and tattooed back and arms and bushy gangster goatee promise just as much menace. The dude’s bad and doesn’t need to…
Going to the theater this summer has been like stepping into a time machine where your fondest childhood memories are retooled by cynics and sadists. Bewitched, Herbie: Fully Loaded, last week’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and now Bad News Bears are meant to be gobbled like comfort food by…
Concentrations 47: Jim Lambie Jim Lambie has recalibrated the architecture of the Dallas Museum of Art, sheathing the floors of the museum’s main corridor with multicolored tape in an installation work called “Zobop.” Lambie has transformed the blasé postmodern interiors of our local hall of culture into a funhouse for…
Festival of Independent Theatres Small theater companies present one-hour plays in rotating repertory at this seventh annual showcase of local talent. Try to catch Caryl Churchill’s haunting Far Away, an allegory set in the near future. Theatre Quorum’s Amanda Wright, Rhonda Boutte and Joey Oglesby play characters related by ominous…
They’re naked and wet at Theatre Three, where the in-the-round stage becomes a burbling swimming pool for the production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses. Based on myths set down by Ovid in A.D. 1, the play revisits the stories of Phaeton, Halcyon, Poseidon, Orpheus, Midas and other figures invented by the…
Joel Grey–sweetly menacing with slicked-back hair, red doll-like lips and a tiny black suit–ruled the Kit Kat Klub like a sexed-up, slightly demonic ventriloquist’s dummy in both the original Broadway run of Cabaret from 1966 to 1969 and the 1972 movie version. Alan Cumming reinvented the role of the Emcee…
Thursday, July 21 It’s summer. It sucks. The sweat thing? No good. Just getting in the car is like passing through the gates of hell. The sweat forming along the scalp, along the waistband and, for the ladies, in that special crevice just under the bra. In the course of…
Anyone who has visited the Dallas Museum of Art over the years has a favorite from the permanent collection. The space around Jackson Pollock’s “Cathedral” is like a time warp, halting passers-by with swirling spatters of orange, white and black paint on a cream- and gray-colored canvas. The first time…
Bridal show is one-stop shopping 7/23 It must be so tiring to shop in France. A patisserie for cakes, a boulangerie for bread, a boucherie for meat–and all this without the benefit of an SUV to carry everything home. This is why in America we have places such as Grapevine…
Old world and new combine in art 7/22 One of the poorest nations in the world today, Haiti was once a jewel of colonial wealth and multicultural influence. This rich history has found a “channel” through modern artist Wilson Bigaud. A master at communicating culture through canvas, Bigaud is a…
Bowl knocks down closet doors 7/24 Gay bingo was so last month. It’s all about gay bowling these days. The camp value of old women plunking down chips on bingo cards is downright geriatric compared with the kitsch factor of white-trash suburban couples in polyester shirts and borrowed shoes chunking…
Comedians congregate in West End 7/27 Dallas’ landscape features giant boobs on tiny bodies, monstrous Hummers in MINI-sized parking spaces and sprawling McMansions on lots where teensy Tudors once sat demurely. This town is one big punch line, so how did it take so long for the first Dallas Comedy…
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hungover. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s fistful…
