Crimes of the Heart is part Carson McCullers novel, part Dixie Chicks song — a pseudo-Southern gothic piece chock-full of family melodrama and eccentricities that add layer after layer of plot to the award-winning play. It’s a dramatic standard, a playwright’s go-to since the early 1980s, with lush dialogue and black humor and crazy ladies. SMU grad Beth Henley’s timeless and Pulitzer Prize-winning tale is of three sisters who are gathering for the funeral of one of their husbands, and who each have to deal with their respective “crimes of the heart.” One has shot and killed her abusive husband (hence the funeral), the other two have to deal with a litany of emotional and psychological issues, and all three laugh through their tears like the steel magnolias that they are. Marianne Galloway, Diane Casey Box and Jenae Yerger-Glanton take on the roles of Meg, Lenny and Babe in the Contemporary Theatre of Dallas production through July 25 with performances at 5601 Sears St. 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $27 to $32, available by calling 214-828-0094. See contemporarytheatreofdallas.com.
First Friday, Saturday of every month, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.; Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Starts: July 6. Continues through July 25, 2012