Good actors are doing their level best with a not-so-good play and a sub-standard production at African American Repertory Theatre in DeSoto. The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years — whew — is a dull period comedy that deals…
Sometimes it’s worth it to wait and catch a show at the end of its run rather than on opening night. By the third or fourth week, actors have it down. No stumbling over dialogue. No loss of focus. So it is with the ferociously good production at Theatre Three…
The first Friday of every month brings Viva Dallas burlesque to the Lakewood Theater, and this past Friday included an extra helping of sauce: a Mardi Gras theme. Hosted by Violet O’Hara, the show included performances by Iris Le Mour, Ruby Joule, Jolie Goodnight, Honey Cocoa Bordeaux and Pearl Lux,…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Greg Fitzsimmons at Addison Improv A regular guest of David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jay Leno, Fitzsimmons’s set is infused with his acerbic wit and scathing sarcasm. For example, did you…
In Death by Microphone, local Brit and barbecue blogger Gavin Cleaver attends stand-up comedy classes at the Dallas Comedy House and reports back for our amusement and education. Check back next week to revel further in his failure. After last week’s disaster, morale was low on the Good Ship Cleaver…
Actor Brian McEleney is the luckiest person in the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre during Dallas Theater Center’s production of King Lear. He’s the only one in the hall who doesn’t have to watch his performance in the title role. For this co-production with Rhode Island’s Trinity Repertory Company, DTC…
Dallas actor and playwright Danny O’Connor first performed his one-man show Zero at WaterTower Theatre’s black box studio five and a half years ago. Since then, he’s lost 60 pounds and he and his show have gained some comedy muscle. Now he’s a taller, younger, leaner version of Louis C.K…
“I know there are comedians that think you need to know how to deal with it, but I don’t want to be good at it,” Kyle Kinane said of hecklers in his Mixmaster interview last week. On Sunday, his last night at the Addison Improv, he proved that whether he…
“Look, no one’s going to actually support TMZ, but what ever happened to shame?” This is a big question Kyle Kinane’s posing, one I’m not fully ready to unpack at 3 p.m. The comedian and actor is very vocal on Twitter, the modern stage for comedians, and on Tuesday, he…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Ahmed Ahmed’s Next Generation Comedy Tour at the Majestic Theater Ahmed Ahmed (Yep, that’s his name, not a type-o.), star of the TBS hit comedy Sullivan & Son, returns to stages across the…
Do I hear a waltz? And a Charleston? And some numbers from Ghost: The Musical? The theater year gets off to an upbeat start with talented actors singing their faces off in a trio of musicals, large and small, stretching from Fair Park to Turtle Creek to Addison. The biggie…
Matthew Posey writes, directs and stars in all of the weird, wonderful musical dramedies he puts on at his Ochre House theater, and he always shows the audience something unexpected. He plays the banjo in Old: a Vaudeville Tragedy in Two Acts, currently running at the tiny space near Fair…
Putting It Together, a two-hour revue of Stephen Sondheim songs, isn’t much of a musical. It’s more of a meh-sical. But WaterTower Theatre in Addison has a reasonably pleasant staging of it directed by Terry Martin. Singer-actors Alex Organ, Bob Hess, John Campione, Diana Sheehan and newcomer Sarah Elizabeth Smith…
In Death by Microphone, local Brit and barbecue blogger Gavin Cleaver attends stand-up comedy classes at the Dallas Comedy House and reports back for our amusement. Check back next week to revel further in his failure. It felt like a lengthy course last week, two hours during which we heard…
Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is like the Beethoven’s Fifth of 20th-century classical music. It’s such an iconic work that even if you don’t know it, you probably know it. In 1940, Walt Disney’s animators, inspired by the primitive undertones of Stravinsky’s aggressive, pulsating music, set to the score visions…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Pablo Francisco at the Addison Improv Feel like seeing a few shows this weekend, but only have time for one? Come check out Pablo Francisco as he flashes through myriad characters while doing…
Couple things. Christopher Walken’s got nothing on Van Quattro. More about that in a sec. If you have avoided live theater lately because you think it’s boring and the plays are too long, Second Thought Theatre’s season-opening production of Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane will change your mind. Get…
In Death by Microphone, local Brit and barbecue blogger Gavin Cleaver attends stand-up comedy classes at the Dallas Comedy House and reports back for our amusement. Check back next week to see how his first bit goes. So then. Learning to be amusing. I am nervous. Especially at the Dallas…
I was a bit concerned that Saturday’s Mike Birbiglia performance, My Boyfriend’s Girlfriend, at the Winspear Opera House wasn’t billed as stand-up but rather as a solo show or monologue. Most stand-up acts could be described as a monologue or a solo show. What’s the difference between a stand-up performance…
Big comedy news o’clock, everyone, as tickets for Bill Burr’s stand-up show at the Majestic go on sale today. If you don’t think this will sell out faster than a pop star faced with a check from Pepsi, you’re going to be disappointed next week. A fixture across all kinds…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. D.L. Hughley at the Addison Improv The star of The Hughleys and one of the four comedians featured in the Spike Lee film The Original Kings of Comedy, D.L. Hughley is a household…
“I think science appeals to me more as I’ve gotten older,” comedian David Huntsberger mused into the phone. “‘Cause of the varying hypotheses on stuff, the attempts to explain human existence. It always seems to be pursuing that. I mean, what the hell are human beings, and why are they…
