B'way's God of Carnage Seeks Starry, All-Black Cast
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:23:01 -0500
"Yasmina Reza, zee French lady who wrote zee play, has OK'd the idea, and so the search is on for four major stars. ... Broadway shows with black stars can be box-office gold -- and, in many cases, the productions are critic-proof."...
Wednesday Morning Roundup
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:00:06 -0500
STOP SITTING ON YOUR HANDS: When to applaud? Theatergoers freely clap when a star first walks onstage, at the end of acts or even after musical numbers. And people at pop music concerts are free to hoot and holler whenever the spirit moves them. But classical music concerts are a whole different affair. And Alex [...]
No More Raunchy Bathrooms, Public Theater Says
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:33:36 -0500
Monday's "symbolic ground-breaking at the downtown theater complex that produced 'Hair' and 'A Chorus Line' launched a $35 million, two-year project to expand and modernize the building's facade and cramped common areas."...
Is There Room Onstage For Moral Ambiguity About War?
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:30:12 -0500
"I've sat through 'anti-war' theatre from the satire on Lyndon Johnson, McBird, through Rolf Hochhuth's conspiracist anti-Churchill play Soldiers, to David Hare's relatively subtle Stuff Happens. I've seen dozens of 'em. The thought is -- or was -- could there be a pro-war play?"...
Shaping Up Nicely: LaBute & Dallas Theater Center
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:43:29 -0500
The Dallas Theater Center attacks Neil LaBute’s 2001 drama The Shape of Things with fiendishly razor-sharp vigor at the Wyly Theatre’s Studio Theatre black box space. An outrageous, amoral love story with gross betrayal, the role of art in society, loss of innocence, and boundaries between intimacy and manipulation at issue, the play revolves [...]
Comparing West End Notes With The Stranger To His Left
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:21:52 -0500
"Both of us lost sensation in the right leg first, and that meant we both stopped feeling the pain of the opera glasses embedding themselves into the right knee. We talked about the show and discussed the prices. She thought they were disgraceful."...
Nightingale: Years Have Not Been Kind To The Phantom
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:06:40 -0500
"[T]his Phantom is not the phantom we knew. The 'poisoned gargoyle who burns in hell' has clearly taken an anger management course in New York. ... Would he whimsically hang the backstage crew or send a chandelier crashing into a crowd? Not any more."...
Billington: Seductive Score, Weak Book In Love Never Dies
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:59:08 -0500
"I should say that I have no truck with those ghoulish groupies who've seen The Phantom of the Opera 852 times and regard any sequel as equivalent to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. No masterpiece has been besmirched. But there is a crucial difference between the two shows."...
Brantley: Those Rumors That Phantom Sequel Stinks? True.
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:52:40 -0500
"Of course, bad advance word on the Internet has sometimes proved false. (Ever hear of 'Avatar'?) And I would be delighted to tell you that's what happened here, especially since 'Love Never Dies' is scheduled for Broadway this fall. But how can I, when at every opportunity Mr. Lloyd Webber's latest sets itself up to be knocked down?"...
Looping the Loop 6: Cyrano Players
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:25:37 -0500
On a Tuesday evening, it's terrific to see the WaterTower Theatre parking filled nearly to capacity for the OUt of the Loop Fringe Festival. A lot of Dallas theater folk are here to see the staged reading of Donald Fowler's in-process musical about Jack the Ripper, Creep! I reluctantly decided against seeing it myself. Often when I see a workshop or staged reading and really like it, I find myself disappointed when I see the finished product in a full production -- patently unfair to the artist. So....
Instead I caught up with Cyrano Players' Communication Breakdown, written and produced by Molly Moroney.(Full disclosure: She's the sister of Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney.) This is a set of three short plays on the topic of customer service -- featuring some of Dallas' most capable actors.
The overarching theme is frustration...almost to the point of paranoia. In "Hazards at Horizons," an airline employee in charge of recovering lost baggage takes a dislike to a customer and is, shall we say, non-responsive. The title piece is potentially much scarier -- a cable installer turns out to be part of a scam. And in the finale, "Futilitarian Hell" -- which was the germ of the trilogy -- a woman gets the run-around from four different bank employees on the telephone when she tries to rectify a billing mistake.
Part of the interest in these pieces lies in their ambiguity. In the first two parts, particularly, the unsatisfied customer comes off as hostile even before the trouble starts. I would like to see each short play more fully developed. As they stand, both the substance and tone separate them all from mere sketches. But just as the set-up gets interesting, the action stops. I wanted more plot, more reversals, more action.
I especially liked Trey Walpole and Linda Leonard as the co-conspirators in the title play and Moira Wilson as the increasingly infuriated caller in the final piece.
A Look Back at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Recent Trip Through Town
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:17:56 -0500
Guest blogger Walton Muyumba is a University of North Texas professor who teaches classes on blues, jazz and American literature. He is the author of The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation and Philosophical Pragmatism. Displaying the roots and logic for the band’s presence, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra opened its Friday [...]
Next Up at the Mayborn
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:18:08 -0500
UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference has announced the slate for this year’s chat-and-chew in July. The high points? Mary Karr (left), author of The Liars’ Club and her latest recovering-from-alcoholism memoir, Lit, will be the keynote speaker the opening evening — this year, to be held at the Austin Ranch, a dude facility in Grapevine. The [...]
Hip Pocket auditions and internship
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:54:01 -0500
Hip Pocket Theatre will be holding auditions for its summer season at its space northwest of Fort Worth on Saturday, March 27, and Sunday, March 28. Go to the company's website for details and an appointment.
There are also internships available in the following areas: Technical Direction Master Electrician Sound Engineering and Design Set and Properties Design Assistant to Lighting Designer - Nikki DeShea Smith Wardrobe Supervisor Assistant to Producer/Costume Designer - Diane Simons Stage Management Marketing/Promotion/Development Puppetry (Cowtown Puppetry Festival with NYC artists- Lake Simons, Chris Green & Erin Orr) Outreach in schools, libraries & hospitals Assistant to Artistic Director - Johnny Simons Assistant to Guest Directors - Lake Simons, David Yeakle and John Moore
North Shore Music Theatre To Return With Chestnuts
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:21:15 -0500
The new owner of the theatre, "which closed last year after accumulating $10 million in debt," said that "this first season back is meant to offer stability to a theater that, at one point, was the largest nonprofit theater in the region, with close to 350,000 people attending annually." The shows will go on with a far smaller house staff....
Phantom Sequel Follows Most Popular Musical Ever
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:59:59 -0500
"Lloyd Webber says the idea of writing the sequel came to him some 15 years ago, in a conversation with Maria Bjornson, the set designer of the original Phantom. 'I remember saying to her, "You know, I think it's slightly unfinished business, because all we do is we just leave a mask on a chair," and what happened?'"...
Phantom sequel: Love Never Dies
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:03:18 -0500
With the hypnotic Phantom of the Opera playing Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park (through Sunday) and the score refusing to stop swirling around my brain, I was a bit startled and more than intrigued to catch an NPR story about a Phantom sequel in the works for 2011. Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and directed by the Tony Award winning director Jack O'Brien, Love Never Dies (and neither evidently does the Phantom) picks up the story 10 years later in CONEY ISLAND (that is not a typo) and yes, the triangle of Christine, the Phantom and Raoul is still very much in play. You can read about it here.
I can't wait. Maybe -- for better or for worse -- it will at long last dislodge "The Music of the Night" from my brain.
Tuesday Morning Roundup
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:58:06 -0500
A DEPARTURE IN FORT WORTH: Just six months into the job, the director of artistic planning and communications for the Van Cliburn Foundation has left her post. Janice Mayer tells the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, “I can’t talk anymore about it as I’m seeking legal counsel, and I don’t want to compromise myself.” The Cliburn Foundation [...]
Portrait Of A Prop Master
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:54:31 -0500
"To understand why East West Players loves Ken Takemoto, ask about 'the duck.' The fake fowl - a Rube Goldbergian contraption he created for a 2008 revival of Pippin - shows just how clever, conscientious and cheap the 75-year-old prop master can be."...
The Everly Brothers Had it Right: ‘Dream, Dream, Dream,’ Say Hollywood Honchos
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:56:07 -0500
Guest blogger Gail Sachson owns Ask Me About Art, offering tours, lectures and program planning. She is Vice-Chair of the Cultural Affairs Commission and a member of the Public Art Committee. I never knew what I’d answer Barbara Walters. Now I know. I’d want Peter Guber, Bob Balaban and Brett Ratner at my fantasy dinner party! [...]
Looping the Loop 5: Chopping and dishing
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:56:00 -0500
The second and third shows I saw Sunday at WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival were both one-man shows written by the performer. The similarities pretty much end there.
Brad McEntire, found of Audacity Theatre Lab, did a play called Chop. It's really a play, with a story line and other characters, though the speaker does interact with the audience (and merely describes the other characters, of course). The rather extreme premise provokes rather little emotional flutter. I found myself wondering what the point of the piece was. I have to say, though, that with New York director Andrew J. Merkel's assistance, McEntire gives a fresh and impressive performance.
Seth Rudetzky -- known as the music director on MTV's star-search Legally Blonde series and as the host of Sirius Radio's afternoon Broadway show -- was one of the two headliners of the festival's first weekend. He's an immensely entertaining personality, so it was a pleasure to watch Broadway Seth Rudetzky Style. But it's not really even a performance piece. It's actually a lecture illustrated by lots of delightful recorded examples. The subject is the kind of Broadway singing Rudetzky likes best, belting. (So no mention of Barbara Cook and only a back-handed compliment to Julie Andrews.)
Really, the show is a combo of very picky criticism and gossipy complaint. Rudetzky worships the like of Barbra Streisand, Patti LuPone and Betty Buckley (who he has accompanied on local stages). But he's willing to pick apart even Streisand and LuPone.
I know quite a bit about Broadway musicals, and I learned an enormous amount from Rudetzky's show. And it was great fun. But it's still a little weird to put a classroom in a festival like that.
Big guns on the business of show business.
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:22:01 -0500
Last November the Brinker International Forum brought movie star Hilary Swank to the Winspear Opera House to speak to a well-heeled audience. Last week's Brinker International Forum's panel discussion titled "The Creative Process" also featured three big names (four, if you count moderator and CNN anchor Campbell Brown), actor-writer-producer-director Bob Balaban; producer-studio-head Peter Guber; and director Brett Ratner who discussed how their ideas become feature films. It was a one hour panel discussion, and began with promotional clips that lasted the first fifteen minutes of the hour.
One of those promotional clips was particularly cheesy, and frankly, an hour is not long enough for those of us actually interested in the creative process of filmmaking, but probably more than enough for some of the audience that night (several with tickets in the closest rows were very late, which leads me to believe those up in front might have been more interested in attending the private "meet and greet "with the speakers than in hearing what these three heavy-hitters actually had to say about filmmaking.) But I digress.
Battle’s Over. North Texas Wins.
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:21:43 -0500
Guest blogger Maria Muñoz-Blanco is Director of the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. After some 20 years as an avid listener of NPR, the last thing I expected was to hear All Things Considered cover the North Texas cultural scene as if we were some sort of Wrestlemania-for-the-Arts. The recent feature by Wade Goodwyn [...]
Colorado's Only Black Theatre Might Close
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:47:55 -0500
"Saddled with debt, infested with infighting and now again seeking new artistic and executive leadership, the late founder Jeffrey Nickelson's dream is proving to be unsustainable, done in by petty bickering, staggering costs and audience abandonment."...
Monday Morning Roundup
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:45:42 -0500
LOCAL OSCAR NOTES: Of the story lines that touched North Texas last night at the Oscars, the most direct comes via “The Weary Kind” winning best original song. It was featured in Crazy Heart and was written by Ryan Bingham of Austin and T Bone Burnett of Fort Worth. Once onstage, Bingham was quick to [...]
Lloyd Webber's Phantom Sequel Savaged Online Before It Opens
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:25:25 -0500
"Love Never Dies may well be the most pre-emptively vilified show yet. Vicious verdicts began popping up online immediately after previews started on February 22."...
Screens And Projection Increasingly Part Of The Theatre Stage
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:04:10 -0500
"We have a culture right now that has us buried in our BlackBerrys and our iPhones and all of our Palm things. Everywhere you look, there's a screen now."...
San Jose Rep Theatre In Danger Of Closing
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:28:46 -0500
"Despite a bailout from the city in 2006, the theatre's operating loss nearly doubled from $220,908 in 2008 to $406,812 last year, according to officials."...
The Paul Slavens Show: LIVE BLOG for March 6, 2010
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:55:42 -0500
Happy Oscar night , glad you kept our musical appointment. This is where you can leave your polite comments and music suggestions. Give links to where music can be purchased if you can, it helps. New to me this week: Wyclef Jean Liam Lynch The Go! Team Stardeath and White Dwarfs Luminous Orange DJ Lobsterdust Jimmy Bryant and Jimmy West ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Wyclef Jean [...]
Looping the Loop 4: A punishment for gluttony
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:39:10 -0500
Rite of Passage Theatre Company has been around for the last year -- at festivals only, far as I can tell. The previous offerings were scripts by co-founder Clay Wheeler. At this year's Out of the Loop, Wheeler (a Baylor University grad) directs a piece by Baylor professor Thomas Ward.
Binge is about an overweight young man, Doug (Mark C. Guerra), who wants to have gastric bypass surgery. The scenes alternate between interviews with thecrass surgeon (James Prince) and vignettes from Doug's regular life. Co-worker Chris (Roger Schwermer), an even crasser lady's man, tries to fix Doug up with the receptionist. But Doug actually starts striking sparks with the new pizza delivery woman, Beth (Rachel Hall).
The show's first half hour is aptly described by one of the character's observations on the interminable sessions between doctor and patient: "Boring!" Things start to get more interesting when Beth comes on the scene, however. She's quirky and a breath of fresh air.
The play turns dark at the end. Ultimately we have so little empathy with any of these people that we wonder why we bothered to spend so much time with them. But the performance is pretty good all the way around. It was especially nice to see Guerra get a chance at a larger role (he frequently does bit parts around town). Here he's sensitive without being annoying about it.
After Slow Star, Canada's Stratford Festival Breaks Even
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:03:14 -0500
"According to the festival's report, total revenues for 2009 amounted to $59 million with expenses totalling $58.8 million."...
London's Actors Union Loses Its Muscle
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:44:37 -0500
"Far from being the muscular entity I recall from the 1960s and 70s, one that could set wage structures, negotiate overtime and working conditions, and even insist on the odd backstage visit from pest control, the actors' trade union now more resembles an elderly grandfather attempting to reason with the yobs as they make off with his roofing slates."...
Looping the Loop 3: Sex
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:20:31 -0500
It's sometimes difficult to believe that barely more than a generation ago someone like Lenny Bruce could get put in jail for saying a certain four-letter word onstage. Especially when you see a show like My First Time, WaterTower Theatre's own contribution to its ninth Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.
Ken Davenport adapted the theater piece from many of the submissions to the famous 1990s website that invited people to share their first sexual experiences. Four actors, two male and two female, take all the roles. Sometimes they just say a word or two taken from the stories. Sometimes they give us a complete account.
As you might imagine, the level of sexual frankness is high. A time traveler from the 1960s or before would probably die of a heart attack in his or her seat.
Two years ago Mark Fleischer (the man who turned Plano Repertory Theatre into a major group before he went off to graduate school and it died) came back to town to direct WaterTower's festival show. That one was terrifically performed. So is this one.
Only for the bold and unembarrassable.
Looping the Loop 2: Talking about "I Sing!"
Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:59:23 -0500
Theater people -- and I suspect audiences -- have to relate a new work to something they already know in order to begin taking it in.
For the first matinee slot in this year's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at WaterTower Theatre, I chose to see Club 119 Productions' I Sing! It's a chamber musical (music by Eli Bolin, lyrics by Sam Forman) that played New York a decade ago and vanished. I'm always eager to see a fresh small musical, and this one features some of our busiest younger actors. (Photo by Vladimir Meyman.)
After a long first act, I retreated to the lobby and had a conversation with actor Stan Graner (who's currently starring in Artisan Center Theater's Brigadoon). He asked if I thought I Sing! sounded like bad William Finn.
I said, "No, I was thinking Avenue Q -- without the jokes and the puppets."
Bach in the Studio Space, Dallas Observer and TheaterJones critic Elaine Liner piped up, "This is Avenue Q without the puppets."
Great minds.
Like I said, we all need to relate a new work to something. But actually I think Elaine and I were basically wrong. Read on to see why.
That's Broadway: Twyla Tharp movin' on to Sinatra
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:44:58 -0500
I know next to nothing about dance. I must preface this entry with this piece of information, because I am about to talk about a new musical on Broadway that deals entirely with dance. Please feel free to elaborate in the comments on anything you feel I may omit here simply from dance ignorance.
Twyla Tharp, fresh on the heels of her megahit Movin' Out, centered around the music of Billy Joel, has brought her vivacious and impassioned choreography together with the songbook of Frank Sinatra in Come Fly Away, which opens on Broadway on March 25.
It is not entirely fair to critique a show while it is still in previews. Before a show opens, many concepts and missteps are still fluid and ready for changes. Especially in a show like Come Fly Away, there is room for improvement and time to fix problems.
Since I know theatre, I have two main pieces of advice and neither one has a thing to do with the incredible choreography. Twyla's got that under control.
In Making a Documentary, You’ve Got to Go to the Story
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:54:30 -0500
Guest blogger Andy Streitfeld is owner and CEO of Dallas-based AMS Pictures. He sends along the following post: Last year, I met an ordinary man who did a very extraordinary thing. His name is Nando Parrado, and he’s the hero of the “Miracle of the Andes,” the story of the 1972 Uruguayan plane crash most [...]
