Nothing depicts teenagers’ lives with less authenticity than the typical musical about teenagers’ lives. Think about the kids in shows like High School Musical, Hairspray, and even Grease and Bye Bye Birdie, all populated with nuance-free, dumbed-down stereotypes. You get your studs and duds, preps and debs, sluts and hoods,…
Meet the burnouts of Burnfield, USA. The young adults of Eric Bogosian’s play subUrbia, now being done by Upstart Productions at The Green Zone, have turned the curbside at their local convenience store into an ersatz salon. They hang there every night and sometimes on toward dawn, drinking, smoking and…
A slab of Velveeta with Miracle Whip on a slice of white bread. For 90-year-old Grace, that’s a happy meal. That’s also a pretty accurate description of Tom Ziegler’s two-hander play Grace and Glorie, a soft, bland sandwich of comedy and pathos, and the latest effort by One Thirty Productions…
Neil LaBute and Nora Ephron. Now there’s a cage match waiting to happen. LaBute, the reigning American writer of terse stage and screen dramedies about women who love men who hate women, wrote one, The Shape of Things, about a man-hating woman who does to one nice guy what LaBute’s…
When Equus, a 1974 play by Peter Shaffer, returned to Broadway in 2008 after a successful revival in London, the sensation surrounding the stage debut of movie star Daniel Radcliffe—Harry Potter! Nude!—in the role of deranged, horse-killing teen Alan Strang, outshone the play itself. And for good reason. Turns out…
Theater provides its own version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. By observing an actor in performance, we, the audience, unwittingly change the behavior of that actor as he or she plays the part. It’s an apt metaphorical fit to the experience of watching Michael Frayn’s dazzling, difficult play Copenhagen, currently running…
Where would you rather be at the end of the world? In an underground bunker with a nervous gay biologist and not quite enough food? Or in a living room with Stephen Hawking and a plate of pastrami? We get the lighter side of Armageddon in two small, odd, funny…
Sometimes the sweet nobility of a heartfelt community theater production can make its flaws forgivable. At all-volunteer playhouses such as Richardson Theatre Centre and Onstage in Bedford, where this week’s shows were reviewed, they do it all for love. Nobody receives star treatment. There’s no complicated scenery, and they sport…
Legally Blonde meets Glee meets Xanadu in Dallas Theater Center’s latest, the world premiere of the hyperactive musical Give It Up! (forced exclamation point theirs). The show reflects obvious influences of those and other pop-infused Broadway and TV phenoms, but its actual source material is Lysistrata, a comedy from 411…
“This situation is fraught.” It is, it is, it is. August: Osage County, the Steppenwolf production finishing its two-week run at the Winspear Opera House, is a festival of fraught-ness. Tracy Letts’ prize-laden three-act masterpiece finds the Weston family of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, about as frightfully fraught as any family ought…
Nobody ever accused Pocket Sandwich Theatre of being too sophisticated. Tucked into the corner of a shopping strip across from Mockingbird Station, the cozy little dinner playhouse serves terrible food and puts on plays aimed at beer-and-nacho appetites. Pocket’s latest, Fangs for the Memories, revives one of its old comedy…
The most exciting moment in a show done by Pegasus Theatre is that first glimpse of the set and actors as the curtain goes up. Performed in the company’s trademarked “Living Black and White,” Pegasus’ tributes to vintage whodunit movies are designed to fool the eye of the viewer into…
Art happens. And against all predictions of doom and gloom for the arts in 2009, theaters in and around Dallas and Fort Worth kept making it happen. The opening of the Wyly Theatre and the Winspear Opera House, and the emergence of small, daring companies such as Level Ground Arts,…
South Pacific cuts right to the chase. Moments after the orchestra plays the overture, ex-patriot Frenchman Emile de Becque begins making overtures of his own, playing up to pretty Navy nurse Nellie Forbush. They’re at the end of their first real date. Under the influence of good brandy and the…
Matthew Posey does things with puppets no child should ever witness. Posey’s Balanced Almond troupe is at it again over at The Ochre House performance space by Fair Park, with the fourth and filthiest installment in a series of X-rated comedies built around a puppet character named Coppertone. Is it…
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol for quick cash. Dallas Theater Center stages it every December for the same reason. Lots of theaters depend on this family-friendly chestnut to subsidize their seasons. It’s that dependable a moneymaker. Moving permanently in 2010 to the Wyly Theatre on Flora Street downtown, DTC…
Many wishes are granted in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s much-loved musical Into the Woods, now playing at Richardson Theatre Centre. Prince Charming finds Cinderella’s foot. Rapunzel’s haircut frees her from a witch’s spell. Jack becomes a killer of giants and procurer of golden eggs. The nicest wish fulfilled, however,…
The hardest words for some playwrights to type: The End. Two new plays on Dallas stages right now—Bill Fountain’s Crushing Grain at The Dallas Hub and Allison Moore’s Slasher at Kitchen Dog Theater—each clock in at less than 90 minutes, but both suffer from pernicious run-on syndrome. Here are single-act…
Small theaters around Dallas once again are brimming with big ideas and hot talent. The show to see right now—one that will make you excited about live theater, even if you haven’t been to a play in years—is Upstart Productions and Project X’s staging of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio. Launching…
As opening nights go, Dallas Theater Center’s October 30 season premiere of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a resounding dud. Before a house stuffed with local dignitaries, board members, trophy wives, donors and press, the show started nearly a half-hour late, delayed by dull speeches from portly millionaires congratulating…
“It’s not easy having a good time,” moans Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the glam-rock, cross-dressing mad scientist diva of The Rocky Horror Show. So true. Seeing three different productions of this rock ‘n’ roll musical on the same weekend offers a dizzying, exhausting six-hour hop through the good-time warp of kitschy-goth costumes,…
The time is 1950. The place is the St. George’s Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth, the Detroit of South Africa. On a rainy afternoon free of customers, the tiny café’s black employees, Sam and Willie, kill time practicing choreography for an annual ballroom dancing contest. Willie, the younger of…
