In the Undermain Theatre’s world premiere of Shiner, one character asks auto-mechanic and serial killer Agate (Dalton James) why he smiles so much. It’s not really a smile, replies the sly, reptilian Agate: “It’s just bad teeth.” That icy little moment perfectly encapsulates the duality in almost every scene of…
If you have spent any time at all in rural Mississippi, you’ll know that what the uninitiated may roll their eyes at as exaggeration in plays and films is often simply a wild truth trapped out of context. And if you’ve ever been in certain small-town Mississippi churches on a…
Over the last few months, it seems as though every major small theater company in Dallas–and a couple of debuting ones–has offered us a world-premiere show. The results have been mixed, but the ambitions behind them have been unassailable. It’s an exciting time to be a theater critic in this…
You couldn’t help but giggle, sitting behind wizened little Stanley Marcus at the world premiere of Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues as actors sang or spoke lines like “I can’t even make enough money to buy me a loaf of bread.” You had to wonder whether Marcus, who was…
I don’t know about you, but if any Old Testament story is primed to make me an atheist, it’s the saga of Abraham, the man who’s happy to stab and incinerate his son because God asked him to as a test of faith. You can talk about historical context and…
Whether it’s Tennessee Williams’ characters clinging to booze-soaked illusions or Flannery O’Connor’s thousand clowns spinning their wheels under God’s pitiless eye, American literature is rife with romanticized depictions of Southern eccentricity that spirals in and out of pathology. Yet native Southerners have always tended to roll their eyes at stories…
The other night at Pegasus Theatre, I waited for a kiss that I hoped would move the earth beneath my feet, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be the recipient. When that kiss finally did come, it was, as expected, a curious sight–many gay men would never admit…
What is it about gay men and straight women? Or, to phrase it more explicitly: Why are so many gay men drawn to powerful, emotional women? In theory, we shouldn’t give a damn about the female personality: most men (hetero and homo) are hounds, eager to bury our bones in…
Laurie Anderson really doesn’t like to make broad statements. But her semi-musical, quasi-theatrical, demi-technological performance art not only involves so many grand forms, it also deals with issues so big–technology, communication, politics, human frailty–that you frequently forget that these are the broad issues in your life as well. Onstage, the…
Digital editing techniques in the recording studio have resulted in songs being not so much captured as assembled nowadays; choruses and verses are often pieced together, line by line, from many different sessions. What’s lost in the process is any sense of urgency and momentum and suspense, everything that a…
To oversimplify matters, you could say that the pair of one-acts that make up Our Endeavors’ latest evening, Loved It/Hated It: Two Distinct Plays, are separated as sharply as the mind-heart dichotomy: The first act makes you think, the second act makes you feel. But we know from real life–and…
Really, we don’t want to give Cameron Cobb a big head–being 23 and talented can be a recipe for obnoxiousness–but the recent world premiere of his Christ resurrection redux Didymus packs a quiet, even occasionally comedic wallop. Director Kimberlyn Crowe launched her theater company, Ground Zero, out of sheer passion…
Now that I’ve enjoyed a sad, funny, subtle evening of family memories and unseen fates in WaterTower Theatre’s sterling production of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, I must express my gratitude by harassing producing director Gayle D. Pearson with the following plea. (Right about now, the sounds of collective…
Perhaps the biggest deficiency of Dallas theater is the tendency to cast performers against type. The pool of committed actors in this town is small, and chances are if you think so-and-so would be just perfect for this role, he or she is already working in someone else’s production. Sometimes…
More than a couple of times in David Mamet’s rage-and remorse-filled trilogy of scenes, The Old Neighborhood, staged by New Theatre Company, one character is stuck trying to express himself and finally just says: “Do ya know?” The other character replies: “Yeah, I know.” It’s vintage Mamet–a concession that more…
Opening night, with its mix of season subscribers, journalists, theater folk, and assorted other naysayers and wellwishers who were able to scam comp seats, always hums with energy. And the opening-night audience of Dallas Theater Center’s Alice: Tales of a Curious Girl that watched as the lights dawned on Riccardo…
Maybe it’s because the show is set in the ultra-glamorous, intrigue-ridden world of journalism. Or maybe because there’s a glaringly unnecessary subplot about clairvoyance and ghost sightings. Or perhaps my cold critical heart has begun to thaw and leak watery pink juice. For whatever reason, the latest Pegasus Theatre comedy…
Samuel Beckett has become more useful as an allusion, an adjective to qualify the heirs and pretenders of his perverse comic legacy. Rarely is the novelist-playwright spoken of as a living voice. Perhaps being widely regarded as one of the most influential theatrical sensibilities of the 20th century comes with…
There’s one moment in Global Village, the Actors’ Stock Company world premiere by playwright-collaborator Tom Grady, that arrives just before intermission and knocks the breath right out of you. I won’t be so thoughtless as to reveal it here. Suffice to say it’s the culmination of a slow tragicomic buildup…
There is one standard I hold for so-called “experimental” forms, be it in the novel or the poem or the play: Does it ripple? A delightful, now-deceased college English professor lectured at length on the phenomenon of “rippling,” and it has become an ideal bullshit detector for works whose creators…
“Racism is a device that, of itself, means nothing,” says a character from Lorraine Hansberry’s unfinished African liberation drama Les Blancs. “It is simply a means, an invention to justify the rule of some men over others.” The character, however, goes on to confuse his listener by declaring that racism…
“All women who’ve wanted to break out of the prison of consciousness…are strange monsters,” declared travel writer and poet May Sarton, “who’ve renounced the treasure of their silence for a curious, devouring pleasure.” She goes on to name Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Sappho as examples, so we know she’s…
