Believe the man in the purple pants when he says he cannot tell the truth. He is the title character in The Liar, a 400-year-old comedy by Pierre Corneille remade in 2012 into a rip-snortin’ rhyming farce by Venus in Fur playwright David Ives, working on a commission from the…
A comedian without a dark side is a rare thing. “There’s not one that comes to mind,” Clint Werth admits. A local standup comic who skipped comedy classes and jumped right into open mics, he pauses and gives the topic further consideration. “Some are not necessarily dark, but still troubled.”…
Do you remember when Michelle Obama cut her bangs? Of course you do. This inane conversation topic was part of our national dialogue for weeks. Did she look better with or without? What did it say about her femininity? And more important, her blackness? Playwright Meridith Friedman finds this microscopic…
The last day at the Dallas Comedy House’s old Commerce Street location in March was also the final day of the 6th Annual Dallas Comedy Festival, a five-day showcase of local and national stand-up, sketch and improvisational talent. The gathering didn’t end when the festival’s headliners TJ & Dave took…
A sweeping novel like Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility isn’t one that travels easily to the stage. Too many picnics, rainstorms, carriage rides and strolls down country lanes in the 19th-century classic. The 1995 film did it right. Director Ang Lee had an all-star British cast led by actress Emma…
One of the country’s most interesting theater troupes resides in Austin. Just a quick ride down 35 will guide you to the backyard of the Rude Mechanicals, a group that creates off-the-wall, intellectually challengingly and wildly fun theater. It’s worth the drive every time, whether they’re workshopping a piece, or…
Watching Danny O’Connor’s new dark comedy one-act The Down Low, set in a 956-square-foot house on East Mockingbird Lane, is like living inside a Tarantino film for 75 minutes. Bad things happen to people just inches away from where you’re sitting. Hilarious things, too. Every time there’s a knock on…
Perhaps one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a ballet dancer pirouetting on water. It doesn’t happen everyday. But in honor of the Soluna festival sashaying into our lives this week, we present the graceful ladies of Avant Chamber Ballet, along with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s cellist,…
When Matthew Posey, the creative genius at the tiny Ochre House theater, decides to get silly with a new play, he gets crazy-silly. That’s a good thing right now. We need some lighthearted whimsy to ward off the heavy bad-news blues, and The Egg Salesman, Posey’s ova-easy new comedy, is…
Newsies is Annie with boys. And not young boys either, at least not the cast of the touring production currently tapping, back-flipping and flexed-foot kicking across the stage at the Winspear Opera House. These aren’t moppets or teenagers. This is a bunch of cute but short-statured young men pretending to…
Dance nerds, classical music fans, and even lovers of the fairy tale should have their tickets in hand already for this weekend’s productions of Cinderella by French company Malandain Ballet Biarritz. For a night of stunning entertainment, it falls in the 10-zone. But…on a scale of one to 10, just…
There are just a few truly classic works of theater. Plays or musicals that don’t just remain relevant, but the characters continue to introduce new worlds to an audience, the language continues to dance, and the ideas continue to ignite discussions. Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is one such play…
You don’t have to be in love with the old play-with-music Lady in the Dark to appreciate its artful sophistication. It’s an odd one, more psychodrama than full-out musical; there are only 65 minutes of singing spread out over two and a half hours. But because it’s almost never produced…
By Jeremy Hallock After struggling as a comedian for over 20 years, Marc Maron finally started hitting his stride in 2009 with his enormously popular “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast and then the IFC TV series, Maron, which debuted in 2013. He easily commanded the large crowd from the huge…
Imagine if the Rude Mechs had a love child with Taylor Mac (or Daniel Alexander Jones), and then named Young Jean Lee the godmother. You might find him crawling around Dallas theater today introducing himself as Brigham Mosley. Of course, you won’t need to know the cultural lineage of Mosley’s…
For some playwrights, winning the Pulitzer Prize for a first or second play marks the end of a promising career as a dramatist. It happened with Margaret Edson and her 1999 Pulitzer winner W;t (she’s never written another play). With Charles Fuller and A Soldier’s Play (1982). And with Paul…
When writing of WaterTower Theatre’s production of All My Sons, which opens tonight, the Morning News’ Nancy Churnin raises an interesting point about the show’s playwright Arthur Miller. She says that in the past decade her admiration for Miller has been challenged by the 2007 revelation in a Vanity Fair…
Spring is festival season in Texas and before it gets too hot head over to Cowtown for this years’ Fort Worth Opera festival. Since the Fort Worth Opera shifted from a traditional season to a festival format in 2007, fans look forward to this opportunity to spend a weekend focused…
Even though we’re terribly far away from the East Coast, Dallas frequently plays host to some of the most beloved Broadway shows when they head out on the road. If you’re interested in the theatre and don’t mind seeing a touring cast, you can damn near see any Broadway musical…
A small show that packs a mighty emotional wallop, the four-person musical Ordinary Days has a few more performances by Our Productions Theatre Company in the studio space at Addison’s Theatre Center. If you like bittersweet sung-through mini-musicals like [title of show], this one, just 80 minutes long, will leave…
As a play about football, but not just about football, Colossal packs more action and drama into its four 15-minute quarters (plus 10-minute “halftime show”) than most actual games. Now running at the Wyly Theatre, Dallas Theater Center’s production of Andrew Hinderaker’s 75-minute drama-with-dance, staged by DTC artistic director Kevin…
Comedian Aaron Aryanpur is one of the reasons why Dallas has a comedy scene. He started performing when there was just one comedy club in town, which usually catered to out-of-towner headliners. The rest were coffee shops and bars that had an unoccupied corner and an owner who didn’t mind…
