Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical play opening this week at the WaterTower Theatre shows surprising parallels with the current Conan-Jay embroglio.

CHILD’S PLAY: The 26th Annual KidFilm Festival takes over the Angelika Film Center in Dallas this weekend for two days of programming for the youngsters. Among those being fetted with a tribute this year is author Mo Willems, who will introduce films of his books at 3 p.m. on Saturday. He talks to dallasnews.com about [...]

MUSIC HISTORY UP IN DENTON: It stands to reason that UNT would have a top-notch music library, what with all the top-notch musicians produced by the school. But, as dallasnews.com reports, this library is more like a music history museum. Among the items in the collection are 800,000 recordings, a first edition of Handel’s Messiah, [...]

ROOM WITH A VIEW: Monday night, Theatre Three opened the Dallas debut of Amy’s View. The play is set in Britain and follows its characters over a 20 year period as they debate a number of societal and cultural questions, including theater itself. In his review on dallasnews.com, Lawson Taitte says the production, “starts a [...]

ALONG THE WATER’S EDGE: The Dallas Museum of Art has announced that it will stage “Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea” beginning April 25. The exhibition explores, “how modern and contemporary artists — from Childe Hassam and Edward Hopper to Willem De Kooning, Gerhard Richter and Catherine Opie — have drawn upon coastal landscapes as [...]

HOLIDAY THEATER REVIEWS: Theatre Arlington trades in the usual simple sentimentality of the season for a show  with depth in Kringle’s Window. The play focuses on a broken family working through some difficult relationships. “It achieves sweetness without dipping into the sugar bowl too often and balances its pathos and humor nicely,” writes Punch Shaw [...]

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.

SHADES OF ‘GREY’: If there’s one theater production this season that seems to be on everyone’s lips, it’s Grey Gardens at WaterTower Theatre. Jerome reviews it today for KERA radio (you can listen to it and read a collection of other glowing reviews here.) And now there are a pair of Q&A’s out there to [...]

Dallas playwright Vicki Caroline Cheatwood recently interviewed Highland Park native and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Doug Wright about Grey Gardens. Wright wrote the book for the musical, which is playing at WaterTower Theater in a superlative production. He talks about adapting the famed Maysles Brothers documentary for the stage and growing up gay in the Park Cities — all as part of this week’s Art&Seek Q&A.

The WaterTower Theatre’s headliners for its 2010 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival will include controversial solo performer Mike Daisey — best known in drama circles for his monologue, How Theatre Failed America. Daisey has performed it around the country, he’s been a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, he’s written for WIRED, [...]