It’s probably not a coincidence that February, the worst month of the year, becomes the busy season in Dallas theater. The post holiday hangover has passed but it’s still not spring. We need something to do, to invigorate us into leaving the couch. New works and premieres are popping all…
Even if you aren’t familiar with the drunken, poetic stories and words of comedian Kyle Kinane, you’ve at least heard his voice. The Chicago native who has three very funny comedy albums and two Comedy Central specials to his name has also done voices on animated series such as “Aqua…
Familial dysfunction and tales of addiction reign supreme on two Dallas stages currently. I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard a 2015 two-hander at Kitchen Dog Theater owes a lot to Long Day’s Journey Into Night the classic Eugene O’Neill play at Undermain Theatre. Similarly both plays feature star turns…
If you’re looking for a rowdy night out, there’s one more weekend to catch Ochre House Theater’s latest Brothers’ Harvest. Writer and director Matthew Posey’s off the wall comedy digs into the life of a small town girl named Indigo Sue (an irresistible Cassie Bann). It’s a musical romp through…
Endless plays have been written about the brittle matriarch; the woman whose vulnerability intertwines with a vitriolic instability. Many, many playwrights it seems struggle with the mother-child relationship, or perhaps more accurately, the mother-son relationship. But as the work of female playwrights reaches more stages, it follows that new dynamics…
When the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival hits stages at WaterTower Theatre February 25- March 6, there will be numerous shows to choose from. A particularly interesting production at this year’s festival arrives via Brooklyn from the minds of Daniel Robert Sullivan and a handful of New York teenagers…
Eric Bogosian does not suffer fools gladly. The theater veteran from New York City commands a room like few others. He has a tremendous confidence and loose delivery that only comes with serious chops. Occasionally he glanced stage side at a list of characters unique to each particular performance; he…
Somewhere in our apartments, we’ve all got one — a box filled with written mementos, whether they’re old diaries, letters from sleep-away camp or lyrics for that career as an acoustic singer-songwriter that never took off. But the difference between most of us and the cast of Mortified, a confessional…
Arts writer Katy Lemieux falls in love all over again with the actor playing Paris in Romeo & Juliet at Dallas Theater Center. Sure, he’s her husband and all, but based on his performance in this show she’d marry him twice. Wedding planning is super hard. Like, really hard. Sometimes…
You may recognize him as Captain Danny Ross from Law & Order: Criminal Intent or from his appearances in films directed by Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Atom Egoyan. But Eric Bogosian is also a playwright, novelist, and historian. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Talk Radio, a…
There’s something special about Ochre House Theater, the small experimental company in Expo Park. Helmed by Matthew Posey, a longtime actor/writer/director, it’s one of the few spaces in the city consistently creating original work. This weekend, the company unveils its newest show, Brothers’ Harvest, a musical about a small town…
It’s hard to watch a group of teenaged boys screaming about who gets to lead a society and not think about the Republican presidential candidate debates. In America, it seems William Golding’s dark bildungsroman, Lord of the Flies, stays forever relevant with its portrayal of power attainment and the violent…
When Kathleen Madigan strolls out on a stage, she’s not playing a character, sticking to a certain kind of comedy or even enhancing her personality to make an audience laugh. She’s an anomaly in comedy. She’s (gasp) genuine. She portrays herself honestly in her material. She can do topical humor,…
Howard Kremer has an interesting challenge as a comedian and a musician. His shows have the structure of a concert but he also needs the response from a crowd that every comedian needs to make their shows work. A joke takes about a minute to tell from setup to punchline…
In Martyr, there’s not a likable character to be found. At least not in Second Thought Theatre’s production of it. Marius von Mayenburg’s moralistic tale of a teenager who seeks solace from adolescent confusions in the strictures of the Bible is treated without a hint of subtlety rendering it a…
Like acne scars that never fade, even as middle-age wrinkles carve tiny paths around them, the worst moments of our teen years remain etched forever on our psyches. It is the time in life most pocked by humiliation, shame and insecurity. Impulse control hasn’t yet kicked in. Mistakes are made…
Many great American plays have been written about big moments in otherwise small lives. Death of a Salesman. Summer and Smoke. A Raisin in the Sun. In these, the characters are ordinary people facing life-altering events: the loss of a job, devastating heartbreak, the struggle to rise out of poverty…
All the world’s a stage, but theaters have the most flattering lighting. Into the amber-gelled glare aimed down on Dallas stages in 2015 stepped hundreds of productions big and small. This remains a busy and constantly churning theater town. Seasons overlap. New shows open every week. Here’s a look back…
If there’s a running theme in this year’s entries in N47 Theatre’s A Very Nouveau Holiday mini-fest at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park, it’s that Christmas just isn’t the same after Mom dies. Or if you’re stuck at the airport with the Abominable Snowman. Or if a comic…
Deep in December it’s nice to remember a show as light and tuneful as The Fantasticks, now onstage for the ninth time at Theatre Three in the Quadrangle. Since 1960 the little musical love story by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt has been part of the American theater canon, with…
Ben Stevenson’s The Nutcracker is a stunning production with choreography exquisite enough to bring a Christmas dream to life and accentuate Tchaikovsky’s melodies. With athleticism and grace set to music, a story is magnificently told without words. Every performance makes use of 200 exotic costumes and there are three different…
Opening night of Le Sacre du printemps, better known to English speakers as The Rite of Spring, created one of dance history’s most infamous stories. With music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, this ballet concert opened in 1913 with the subtitle, “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts.” Both the…
