Do you know why the burglars at the Watergate Apartments failed that fateful night in 1972, causing their own arrest and, ultimately, the resignation of Richard Nixon? Or why the famous electrical tape discovered by the security guard, alerting him of the presence of burglars in the offices of the…
For 27 years now, the reputation of playwright-actor Christopher Durang has grown but not necessarily evolved, if that makes sense. Certainly, his best-known plays are produced by small professional and adventurous community theaters all over the country (he can probably afford a house in the Hamptons on the residuals from…
There’s a lot more about the minefield of adult dating that’s recognizable in Miss-Matched, a world-premiere production of Dallas playwright Robin Armstrong’s script that closes the “All Dallas Playwrights” season of Pegasus Theatre. The empathy factor didn’t always make this scattershot show easier to take — Armstrong’s script needs to…
I had the idea that when I graduated from college, I would tour the country, hanging out at truck stops while listening to the adventures and wisdom of truckers. This would also involve eating a lot of pie at roadside diners. When I had enough of the road, I’d stop…
There’s no way to write about slam poetry if you don’t know what it is, don’t know what it means, don’t know how it feels. I’d just as soon run naked through the streets or through a mall or through a prison or through your house As get up on…
It’s so hot in Wichita Falls that the heat almost becomes a solid. The thermometer reads 107 degrees at this moment, with the heat index creeping toward 115. Even the breeze becomes an enemy when the mercury climbs this high. Imagine a thousand hair dryers aimed in your face –…
This week, “Stage” is running a section up the flagpole titled “You’re a Fool if You Missed…” to discover whether readers will salute insults, coercion, and contempt from the theater critic. Rather than exhorting folks to see a great play during the run, we decided to try it backward: browbeating…
It has been 24 years since Jaws changed the face of the film industry and made director Steven Whatshisname moderately well-known, and it’s probably safe to say that no aquatic horror film, let alone a shark film, will ever top it. So I’d like to think that director Renny Harlin…
Runaway Bride, the reunion of Pretty Woman stars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, isn’t a sequel; it only feels like one. In everything, there is a distinct sense of predestination, of events occurring according to some irresistible force of the inevitable. This makes life especially easy for Garry Marshall, the…
Robert Wise’s 1963 version of The Haunting (from Shirley Jackson’s novel) has long been considered one of the milestones of the horror film. After 36 years, DreamWorks has bankrolled a new version under the direction of Speed and Twister director Jan de Bont — an idea that should sound unpromising,…
International film critics who have raved about veteran French farceur Francis Veber’s The Dinner Game (Le Diner De Cons), only to qualify the goings-on in this serviceable but meringuey little chuckler as “cruel” and “punishing,” clearly haven’t taken in a comedy by American filmmaker Neil LaBute. In much the same…
Leslie Jordan, the 44-year-old veteran of TV sitcoms and dramas, is probably sick to death of hearing this, but the first thing you might whisper as he strides onto the stage is: “He’s so little.” Actors who make strong impressions often seem larger under the spotlight than they do in…
Most of us like to think of ourselves as flexible, to think of the stodgy “establishment” that rejects new ideas as a thing of the past, a thing that can’t keep up with rapid change, or at least a thing that we won’t subsidize with our own fleeting prejudices. But…
It’s not very hip for a grown man to say things like “happy little trees” and “pretty little mountains” — that is, if he wants to keep his street cred. Bob Ross — with his big ‘fro, unbuttoned shirt, and virtually narcotic voice — probably never even knew what street…
Do you have the sneaking suspicion that the grossly overhyped The Blair Witch Project is about to send a spate of college drop-outs flooding into the woods across from their parents’ homes with cameras and credit cards in tow? Or that a score of video-store clerks have forced their reluctant…
On Friday, it was announced that The Dallas Morning News’ publisher, Belo Corp., purchased a minority stake in the Dallas Mavericks: 12.38 percent of the team for $24 million. The deal also gives the newspaper 6.19 percent non-voting interest in The Arena Group, Tom Hicks and Ross Perot Jr.’s company…
Feel like shooting lutefisk in a barrel? Pick on beleaguered Minnesota again as the epicenter of everything that’s square-headed and unhip in America. Want to let the world know that two plus two equals four? Take aim one more time at the vain stupidity of beauty contests. Drop Dead Gorgeous,…
For anyone who may be considering Inspector Gadget, here’s the sole worthwhile gag; read this if you want to save 80 minutes and eight bucks. Intercut with the end credits, we see one of the heavies in the film, Sikes (Michael G. Hagerty), a minion of the evil supergenius Claw…
Roughly halfway through Edge of Seventeen, the hero of this romantic comedy-drama, a very likable kid named Eric (Chris Stafford), is confronted by his mother (Stephanie McVay) in the living room of their home. “Are you gay?” she asks him point-blank. And his point-blank answer is “No.” I can’t think…
Playwright Maria Irene Fornes said in an interview that during a post-production talkback she attended at the American Place Theatre for her in-and-out-of-the-chamber-room drama Fefu and Her Friends, she discovered that the men didn’t “get” the play. She wondered whether it had to do with the fact that women are…
And now on to a quieter, sturdier, more focused, if a bit overlong account of one woman’s grappling with the forces of church, literary reputation, professional sexism, and a love for someone not her husband. And it was written by a man, no less. I can’t claim that as any…
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s circus is coming to town, and for the first time in more than 70 years, there’s going to be a grand circus parade. All the clowns, the acrobats, the gymnasts, and the sideshow stars will wind their way from Reunion Arena through downtown,…
