With Echo Theatre’s Nibroc Trilogy, we have a rarity in area theater: a second chance to visit a worthy little production. When Echo presented the Nibroc Trilogy at the Bath House Cultural Center in February, the response was so enthusiastic that Theatre 3 invited the company to re-stage them in Theatre Too.That’s the basement space at Theatre 3. This month, all three plays will be there in succession.
Patricia MacLachlan’s award-winning children’s novel is quite modest, its small events are told in simple language. Those are its strengths. But the original, 64-page novel simply doesn’t have enough material for a full-length musical. The creators of the show currently premiering at the Dallas Theater Center — bookwriter Julia Jordan, songwriters Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe — originally staged a version of this show in New York in 2002. Here, they’ve kept many of the same actors, designers and director, but they’ve added even more conventional musical comedy material
By coincidence, critic Hugh Canning took in performances of North Texas’ two leading symphony directors for the Sunday Times of London — in productions of La Boheme and Die Meistersinger von Nuremburg. The Puccini opera was directed by Jonathan Miller for the English National Opera and was conducted by Fort Worth Symphony’s Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Canning [...]
High stakes (l to r): Jim Covault, Chuck Huber, Matthew Stephen Tompkins, Chris Hauge and Jerry Russell in The Seafarer KERA radio review: Lawson Taitte’s review in The Dallas Morning News Mark Lowry’s review at Theater Jones Arnold Wayne Jones’ review in the Dallas Voice Jimmy Fowler’s review in the Fort Worth Weekly Director Rene [...]
In the Dallas and Fort Worth daily newspapers, there will no longer be separate reviews of many cultural organizations and events. The two city papers are former rivals, yet the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have begun running the same review by the same writer. It’s the latest development in what has [...]
The Chicago Tribune sized up DSO conductor Jaap van Zweden last week, before he arrived to conduct Bruckner’s 5th symphony as an emergency replacement for Riccardo Chailly — and reported, more or less, that they were cautiously impressed. This weekend, the Sun-Times agreed. Andrew Patner, critic-at-large for Chicago’s WFMT, wrote that, “On the strength of [...]
It turns out that films receiving rave notices generally do better than films that are panned. This would seem obvious when you think about it, but considering the number of newspapers that have been shedding TV critics, book critics, classical music critics and film critics, it’s interesting that Erik Lundegaard at Slate had to crunch [...]
Audio: Listen to the commentary Last month’s New York Times feature on the Denton music scene boasted only a passing mention of Centro-Matic, the low-fi, high-octane brainchild of singer-songwriter Will Johnson that has spent a decade proving melodic, moving rock music can sound glorious without sounding pretty. The Times treatment could have been a slight, [...]
The following is a theater review by KERA’s critic at large, Jerome Weeks. It airs December 20 on KERA’s Morning Edition. The Undermain Theatre has long been expert at presenting dark, ironic works, their basement space becoming a troll’s cave where the theater takes full advantage of the dank atmosphere and the ghostly lights. But [...]
The following is a theater review by KERA’s critic at large, Jerome Weeks. It aired today, December 14, 2007 on Morning Edition. Before there was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, before there was A Christmas Story or Bad Santa or all the other dysfunctional families-at-Christmas comedies, there was Alan Ayckbourn’s stage play, Season’s Greetings. Written in [...]
