With songs in their hearts, Dallas theaters are making this a summer of melodic storytelling. There’s a new musical or three tuning up every week. A trio of tough-to-stage pieces of musical theater just opened at Uptown Players, Theatre Three and Theatre Britain, with varying degrees of success. In 85…
Bosley Crowther, grandfather of critical snark, once described the 1946 film noir The Big Sleep as “one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused.” Ditto the too-clever-for-its-own-good 1989 musical noir send-up City of Angels,…
Theatre Britain is back at the Cox Playhouse in Plano with the charming Albert’s Anthology, a comedy-with-music directed by Sue Birch that’s as sweet as the jam on a homemade scone. Jackie Mellor-Guin’s 75-minute script finds 100-year-old British grandpa Albert (nicely played by Frisco Community Theatre producer Howard Korn) celebrating…
Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical The Music Man, now at Irving’s Lyric Stage, feels as summery as an ice cream social. If only this production came in more flavors than vanilla. The quaint ode to small-town life circa 1912 falls flat if its angelic Iowans aren’t threatened with perdition by a…
Traces lets you marvel at the wonders of the human body while making you feel bad about your own. Seven gorgeous young performers in a 90-minute whirl of acrobatics, dance and borderline insanity fly off the floor and hang in mid-air longer than logic and the laws of gravity say…
The lifelong connection between the two characters in Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries begins when they are 8, meeting in the school infirmary. Kayleen has tummy troubles. Dougie has just ridden his bike off the roof, splitting his forehead. Thirty years and many accidents and illnesses later, the pair finally…
Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival w/ Dave Chappelle & Flight of the Conchords! – watch more funny videos Funny Or Die, the internet comedy mega-site founded by Will Ferrell et al. has just announced its first major comedy production, and one of the biggest comedy tours ever to hit the…
Doug Benson’s podcast, Doug Loves Movies, has gained a considerable audience in the seven years since it started. One that knows all his inside jokes, catchphrases, and recurring bits. His live taping at Hyena’s on Saturday afternoon was visual proof as the comedy club filled with superfans, many holding up…
So you’ve got some jokes, right? Think you can make people laugh? Then you might find this list we’ve compiled, of the most prominent comedy open mics in D-FW, particularly useful. We’ve also got local comedy guru Dean Lewis to share his thoughts on not only the venue but the…
The audience just would not leave. Rhythmic Souls, a Dallas tap-dancing troupe, had already taken their bows after a 40-minute performance called Play It by Ear, one of four shows premiering the second weekend of the four-week Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Cultural Center. But the crowd…
I’ve seen some good ones: Louis CK at the Majestic last year. Bill Cosby, who CK himself worships, at the Winspear. I saw Todd Barry in a tiny bar in Kansas City not that long ago, and spent an hour spit-taking my Boulevard Brew. Others, too. But this was damn…
Cristela Alonzo, an alumni of the Dallas comedy scene, recently finished taping her big Comedy Central Half Hour (re-branded from the more famous moniker Comedy Central Presents), which debuts Saturday morning at 12.30 a.m. Tapped by major entertainment website Vulture as one of the top 50 comedians with a chance…
All the world’s a stage, Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It. It makes sense, then, to see some plays outside of conventional theaters once in a while. Like under tall trees in a parking lot next to an alley in Uptown. Or inside a converted Art Deco bath house…
The first weekend of the 15th annual Festival of Independent Theatres, which gives small companies one-hour slots to try out new work at the Bath House Cultural Center, yielded two strong new pieces by Dallas writers: Like Me by gay monologist John Michael Colgin (directed by Donny Covington); and Lydie…
In hindsight, I suppose I understand why Tracy Morgan would be pissed off by a question about audiences and bloggers complaining that his recent set is too raunchy. An entire set being characterized by one segment — even if it is the opening bit — would grate on anyone who…
You know him. You love him. You wanna get stoned and eat popcorn with him. Comedian Doug Benson is on tour, and he’s recording an episode of his podcast Doug Loves Movies at Hyena’s during a special 4:20 p.m. show on Saturday, June 15. Benson believes in comedic collaboration, so…
Every week we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Aziz Ansari at the Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie Aziz Ansari is taking his Buried Alive! tour across America, targeting any cities he had to skip last time. Loved for his role as…
Dull jobs in dreary surroundings have inspired many a wonderful play: David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, set in a rundown sales office; Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan’s Mister Roberts, about bored sailors on a WWII supply ship; Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the granddaddy of all dramas about soul-sucking…
If you’re a fan of Glengarry Glen Ross and you missed the fantastically funny Daffodil Girls at Plano’s Fun House Theatre and Film last month, it’s back for a weekend reprise, June 5 through 8 in the Plano Children’s Theatre space. Written and directed by Fun House founder and kiddie…
Kitchen Dog Theater opens its 15th annual New Works Festival with Octavio Solis’ absurd one-act Se Llama Cristina. It begins as a fuzzy encounter between a couple, played by Dallas stage newcomers Vanessa DeSilvio and Israel Lopez, wacked out on heroin and waking up a little hazy about who they…
Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival started Friday at The MAC and runs through June 22. Here’s the lineup: Se Llama Cristina by Octavio Solis is the mainstage feature of this annual festival of new plays and script readings. A couple (Israel Lopez, Vanessa DeSilvio) wake up after a heroin…
Every week we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Jon Reep at Hyena’s in Fort Worth North Carolina native Jon Reep has been on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and the half-hour special Comedy Central Presents: Jon Reep. On…
