So you’ve heard that ‘The 39 Steps’ is a brilliant stage spoof of the classic thriller. You’ve heard that four actors play more than 100 roles. What you haven’t heard is that the lead role is one of the more physically demanding there is. Currently playing at the Majestic, Ted Deasy takes on that role — running and hiding and trying to look dapper while doing it.
Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play finally comes to Texas, and Estelle Parsons gets to play the meanest-mouthed matriarch since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The drug-fueled, obscenity-strewn decline of an Oklahoma family eventually goes over the top, but the more-than-three-hour trip there is hilarious and harrowing.
So Saturday night, the AT&T PAC threw its cumulative wingding-gala, the final fundraising frolic before Sunday’s open house, when the whole Arts District welcomed the two freshman facilities by getting all free and easy with a day’s worth of open-admission museums and concerts. Think of it as kind of a cultural Rush Week. So anyway, [...]
Jackie Kennedy’s invalid aunt and eccentric cousin lived in the family’s squalid home on Long Island — a 28-room cat litter box. But in Grey Gardens, this deranged, defiant, bickering mother and daughter are wrapped up in a tender, haunting gothic musical. WaterTower Theatre’s area premiere of the Tony-winning Broadway show is superb, a stellar way to start the company’s new season.
The hit Broadway musical with adults playing young spelling contestants gets its local stage premiere. The showtunes can be as earnest and cute as a PBS kids show, and the singing is ragged. But the humor is absolutely wicked. Plus, Theatre 3′s intimate stage puts you there in the gym. This one’s sure-fire. It’ll win a big audience.
The 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line has now come to the Dallas Summer Musicals. A recent documentary, Every Little Step, follows the auditions for that revival while recounting how the original 1975 show about Broadway’s “gypsy” dancers was created. Jerome Weeks talks to Michael Serrecchia, a North Texas actor-director-teacher who made the cut for that first Broadway show.
Charles McNulty, theater critic for the LATimes, expresses an oft-heard cry in theaters there: With John Goodman getting raves in Waiting for Godot and sharing the Broadway spotlight with Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Jeremy Irons, Geoffrey Rush, Marcia Gay Harden and James Gandolfini, why aren’t any of these above-the-title stars acting onstage in the LA [...]
The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts announced the lineup for its first Lexus Broadway Series: The Lincoln Center production of South Pacific Dec. 15 – Jan. 03 August: Osage County Jan. 12-Jan. 24, 2010 Spring Awakening: March 23-April 4, 2010 Avenue Q May 25-June 6, 2010 Tickets are expected to go on sale today. [...]
Why does anyone listen to music, anyway? Evolution-wise, what is all that blasted noise good for? (No, this is not another in our happy series on why everyone hates Christmas standards.) There are two traditional, sociobiological answers: We use music to mate (“Birds do it, bees do it … let’s do it”) or to bond [...]
The KERA radio story: The extended online story: The cancellation of the tour of the Tarzan musical – set to come to Dallas in March — has caused one of the producing partners to fold and left the Dallas Summer Musicals with a loss of $225,000, at least. The American Musical Theatre in San Jose [...]
