Theatre Britain’s annual British “panto” fairytale at the Cox Playhouse in Plano is always a holiday treat. This year Beauty & the Beast, not the talking furniture Disney musical, but a campier comedy by Jackie Mellor-Guin, uses all the traditional gimmicks we now know to expect. Kiddies will latch onto…
Settle in for a long winter’s nap at A Civil War Christmas at Theatre Three. It’s a mournful 150-minute drama with music, all public domain stuff (“Silent Night,” “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” and even “The Yellow Rose of Texas”). Author Paula Vogel won a Pulitzer Prize for How…
The latest production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by Dallas Theater Center at the Wyly Theatre will make you forget ghosts of Carols past. DTC artistic director Kevin Moriarty has adapted the familiar story his way, with pointed political commentary about the plight of the poor and a noticeable…
Thanksgiving is over and you’re stuffed to the brim. But all you can think abut is that delicious Christmas dinner waiting to fill you up again in just a few weeks, and probably what you’re going to do with all that free time you’ll have since vacation time is just…
December means Nutcrackers galore Yes, it’s true, pretty much any weekend this month you can find a showing of The Nutcracker at your neighborhood theater, any regional theater, or down in the Arts District. We’ve selected our top picks here, so get out your calendars and start planning. But if…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. Gavin Mulloy knows music, knows pretty much everyone in Dallas, and wants to put on some seriously good shows that get you out of your house, away from the TV and your favorite reality stars,…
The Zombies are back. The back-alley-crawling, crack house-dwelling immersive theater company currently inhabits an abandoned ice house, and they’ve redecorated it to look like a motel designed by Norman Bates – basement and all. Karaoke Motel is creepy choose-your-own adventure theater with a disjointed narrative about what it means to…
Brian Brooks. Maybe you’ve heard of him; maybe you haven’t. Don’t be surprised if you find your self in the latter category. Even the dance world is still getting acquainted with the choreographer coming to the Dallas City Performance Hall this week as part of TITAS’ 2014-2015 dance season. Though…
The new Elevator Series in the sixth-floor performance space at the Wyly Theatre allows plenty of space for the dancers to run in NICE, the fascinating new piece by Dallas choreographer Danielle Georgiou and her company, DGDG. “It’s nice to be nice,” croons singer-pianist Paul Slavens, who composed the score…
Tasty baked goods, glowing ovens, scary beasts, flying witches and dark forests. This is the stuff of classic children’s fairy tales. Throw in 6-inch stiletto heels, push-up bras and glossy lips, and it’s also the stuff of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, a toothsome play by Meg Miroshnik about…
The Canadian comedy trio known as the Trailer Park Boys are something of an anomaly in my pop culture family. My brother and I became absolutely obsessed with the drug dealing antics of Nova Scotia’s most famous white trash as soon as we saw our first episode buried deep in…
Most of the shows on this list require little to no explanation. You’ve likely seen A Christmas Carol before, but the holidays return every year and with it, the same shows, the same music, and the same garland your mother’s been hanging on the bannister for 30 years. So Scrooge…
One of the biggest regrets of this comedy nerd’s life was not taking the opportunity to see The Second City during my only two visits to Chicago. The first missed opportunity took place during a Boy Scout trip when landmarks like the Museum of Science and Industry and Comiskey Park…
In the second act of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, our protagonist, Annie, realizes that her fairy godmother is a blue-haired prostitute. Studying abroad in her native country, the American-raised Annie doesn’t believe in evil eyes, and she doesn’t believe in witches. Which is a shame, because she might…
What if you knew the truth but refused to believe it, even if denial meant certain death? Kitchen Dog Theater’s latest production, the regional premiere of Swiss playwright Max Frisch’s prescient 1958 absurdist comedy The Arsonists, sparks a low flame under that question and lets it sizzle for a couple…
For fans of the overwhelmingly funny, sometimes depressing, always deranged stick figure world of Cyanide & Happiness, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for — the world premiere of its new show. This first season will feature 11 weekly episodes (with a depressing one mixed in — an…
Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury, the comedy music video that gave comedian and writer Rachel Bloom a career, smashed an untapped nerve with a sledgehammer. The NSFW ode used a teen pop sound to celebrate one of the greatest sci-fi writers (he always called himself a “fantasy” writer) of all time…
I never thought the DVD would fall from grace so quickly. The digital media revolution was inevitable but who knew it would happen so fast? Places like Netflix, Crackle and Hulu haven’t just eliminated the need for a DVD player to watch movies. Traditional broadcast and cable television may very…
Unfasten your seatbelts. There are no bumps on this ride. Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, that quaint morsel, is on at Dallas Theater Center. That’s because this fall Dallas Theater Center is doing big things with old shows no one has been clamoring to see again. Consider this: For its…
This past weekend, the fall season of dance in Dallas started off with two very different shows from two very different companies. In the Arts District, Dallas Black Dance Theatre opened its 2014-15 season with The Director’s Choice series; in Deep Ellum, Muscle Memory Dance Theatre opened its season with…
SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts dance program is known for putting on really good shows. The college’s dance program not only teaches its students form and choreography, it also brings in celebrated guest artists, whose work challenges both the students and any outsiders who can weave their way through…
The first time Flip Orley got on a stage and used his hypnotic powers to make people do his bidding, he himself had to be coaxed into doing it. Of course, it wasn’t with a swinging pocket watch or a spinning spiral. Sometimes, nagging someone enough is its own form…
