Unlike Spring Awakening, American Idiot was built for big houses like the Winspear. The Broadway musical packs a visual wallop to match Green Day’s pop-punk thunder. Trouble is, wallop and thunder is mostly all we get.

Heading into the weekend with the Friday Roundup, we get some pronunciation help on the 19th century’s master of the melodrama, jazzy stuff at the DMA, sharing sisters between Fort Worth and Dallas — and more!

Like a college grad who’s moved back in with his parents, the funny, foul-mouthed puppets of the Broadway hit Avenue Q will find a home downstairs at Theatre Three. And they may stay awhile.

There’s sixty years of history behind Giant,, the big-budget musical opening at the Dallas Theater Center. When it came out, Edna Ferber’s novel angered many Texans. Four years later, the movie version became Warner Brothers’ biggest hit. It always helps if you make us look like Elizabeth Taylor or James Dean.

With generally positive reviews. But no word on Dallas’ own Cedric Neal, alas.

It’s all meant to hype Smash,, which looks to be the ‘adult Glee. Still, 20 schools across the country will get a pilot musical theater program out of it, including one in Dallas. Your school can apply for the expansion program for the fall.

Give It Up! finally gives it up — after two months on Broadway as Lysistrata Jones. The good news? We’ll probably have Liz Mikel back.

Composer Michael John LaChiusa is having a big year — working on Giant, which opens in January at the Dallas Theater Center — and debuting another musical in New York. Which brings up some interesting speculations.

The musical Rags has a gorgeous score with a big story: the wave of desperate Jewish immigrants coming to New York around 1910. There are big Broadway names (Charles Strouse of Annie, Joseph Stein of Fiddler, and the Lyric Stage show has big voices. Too bad the results feel … small.

The basketball-playing cast of Lysistrata Jones — known when it played the Dallas Theater Center as Give It Up! — needed some coaching in the fine craft of layups and dunks. So they all visited with a retired NBA all-star.