In two separate moments of release from the steamrollering epic plot turns of Dreamlandia, offered as the main-stage production of Dallas Theater Center’s Big D Festival of the Unexpected, onstage characters directly implicate audiences. They spot us, identify us, and accuse us. The first happens when a supposedly retarded young…
Dial the number of the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts, and a recording tells you it’s no longer a working line. Step into the cavernous Commerce Street space on an upcoming weekend night, though, and you will discover the center is still very valuable in its dying gasp. Between…
A recent cover story in American Theatre discussed how the national network of prominent children’s theater in cities such as Minneapolis, Seattle, St. Louis, and Dallas was beginning to generate plays without “blue or pink plaid (and) fake furry animal costumes.” Issues of race, sexuality, and mortality had been introduced…
There appears to be quite a bit of flux in the Dallas theater scene now, with the ultimate destination for at least two companies still unknown. Right on the heels of the Theatre Three opening of Mizlansky/Zilinsky, or “Schmucks”, the regional premiere of a comedy by Jon Robin Baitz, a…
It’s easy to compound details and build an ominous “trend” for a whole scene, but one sad development I can confirm in this space: New Theatre Company, which since 1994 has produced some of the most disciplined and adventurous state, regional, and national premieres for Dallas audiences, is moving. Not…
Pegasus Theatre ought to be aware that one of the most successful Dallas Theater Center shows of this current season was, for all practical purposes, a Pegasus production. Of course, departed director Jonathan Moscone brought in out-of-town actors and designers as well as professional multimedia folks to soup up the…
If time past and time future all point to the present, wrote T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets, then “all time is unredeemable.” World War II gathered like a flock of vultures as the great poet was scribbling this in England, but the idea that what we regret and what we…
There is an unsettling quality to the laughter — luckily, quite a bit of it — in the WaterTower Theatre’s regional premiere of Golf With Alan Shepard. Separation, the burden of memory, and the loneliness that too often descends on the aged are bound to rattle the nerves of anyone…
There are at least three people trying to ignore the truth in what has become a defining moment of their lives in Man of the Moment, the sometimes sad, sometimes acidic 1988 comedy by Alan Ayckbourn. The fact that this moment — a 17-year-old bank robbery thwarted by a meek…
“The only things the United States has given the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails” is a quote attributed to the martyred Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. “And they make better cocktails in Cuba.” This assessment was made after a two-year stay in New York City, during which his most…
Last October, when I was a guest on KERA 90.1’s The Glenn Mitchell Show discussing the 1999 Dallas Theater Critics Forum awards, a woman called in and bluntly asked, as per my solitary pan of Dallas Theater Center’s South Pacific, “What’s wrong with Jimmy Fowler’s mind?” Was this Richard Hamburger,…
There is so much good will straining against the levees of Tomfoolery, a buttoned-down revue of satirical tunes by 72-year-old smartass Tom Lehrer, that you don’t mind when, midway through, it floods over the songwriter’s self-conscious cleverness and cuteness. Because, after a while, the charisma of three men and three…
There are two scenes in One Flea Spare, the Southwest premiere of playwright Naomi Wallace’s pressure cooker of class and sexuality served up by Kitchen Dog Theater, that seem to be especially close to the heart of Adrian Hall, the show’s director and a nationally lauded stage visionary for more…
At or soon after the start of the 20th century, the almost mythical George Bernard Shaw became a vegetarian; a socialist who believed property ownership amounted to public theft; a fervent (and minority) defender of Oscar Wilde during that playwright’s gory public dismantling; and a champion of working women who…
About a month ago, the Dallas Theatre League held a meeting of theater reps from Theatre Three, Dallas Theater Center, Our Endeavors, Echo Theatre, and Lyric Stage, among others, and various media types, including yours truly and Tom Sime from The Dallas Morning News. Several topics were introduced and then…
The action in most of Edward Albee’s plays are lips flapping, fingers pointing, and people pacing and occasionally changing seats. His plays — from 1966’s A Delicate Balance to 1994’s Three Tall Women — are all talk. This includes Seascape, his 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Circle Theatre is currently producing…
It’s a movie cliché that when someone is possessed by a spirit or Lucifer himself, the bewitched one takes on the mannerisms and speech patterns of the possessor. The effects can be subtle: demon-possessed victims singing a Rolling Stones tune in Fallen. Or they can be a bit more, um,…
If you have read this space before, you know that I advocate theatergoing as a habit rather than as a secular, arts-patron version of the token-church-visit-every-Easter kind of attendance. While the best theater is more visceral than anything in a multiplex or on DVD, many folks are unprepared for that…
I’ve spent some long evenings in the theater recently, but rarely has the time sailed by as intelligently and harrowingly as it did in Inexpressible Island, a U.S. premiere courtesy of Dallas Theater Center. And we’re talking about a situation, however based in reality, that seems like a gimmick manufactured…
At this point, the chance of scoring a ticket to Don Juan in Chicago, the new show by Lean Theater in Theatre Three’s Theatre Too basement space, is about as likely as finding an unwrinkled sheet on Don Juan’s heart-shaped bed. Word of mouth has spread throughout Dallas theatergoing circles…
“Fuckin’ long life, ain’t it?” Two characters in two different scenes of Jim Cartwright’s Road express this sentiment, not so much with weariness but as bitterly humorous testimony to all the ways they must distract their senses to make it through another night. Alcohol remains the diversion of choice, to…
Theatre Three prides itself on being the Southwest’s most frequent showcase for the works of Stephen Sondheim since 1969. The program for their newest effort, the complex and obtuse Company, features a photo of Sondheim onstage with artistic director Jac Alder. When the now 70-year-old composer came to Dallas in…
