Li’l Abner dukes it out with Sex in the City…guess who wins? Love and the audience do as Junior Players presents another raucous romp for its yearly Samuell-Grand Park Amphitheatre offering through July 31, a cleverly modernized Shakespearean antidote to Dallas’ summer heat wave. Former Junior Players’ actor Anastasia Munoz, who has worked for JP … Continue reading
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Primal Imperfection: Shakespeare Dallas’ KING LEAR
Shakespeare Dallas ushers in North Texas’ fall season with a regal, austere production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, set on a nearly bare stage, impressively framed with somber-hued hanging banners that blaze with noble fire as stage lights wash across them. When Lear (national performance artist/ playwright Fred Curchack) makes his first entrance, pausing upstage center … Continue reading
Junior Players’ “Bollywood Spectacular”: Celebration of Love’s Mystical Power
How many hundreds, thousands, of modernizing stylistic adaptations has Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream suffered through in the name of accessibility or some director’s whim over the years? Some work well. Some bury the play. Some simply make me want to puke. With Dallas’ Junior Players’ production, billed as “A Bollywood Spectacular”, running through August … Continue reading
No Error In Sight: Junior Players’ Comedy of Errors
No “errors” noted in William Shakespeare’s early comic farce The Comedy of Errors, presented 1920’s film-style by Junior Players in collaboration with Shakespeare Dallas at the Samuell-Grande Amphitheatre through Sunday July 27. As part of its yearly arts outreach to nearly 6000 Dallas area youth, Junior Players mounts a full-scale, fully costumed, professional caliber … Continue reading
Rambo or Gekko? Shakespeare Dallas Does “Macbeth”
Does Macbeth project as Rambo or Gordon Gekko? This is not a trick question. In Shakespeare’s tragedy “Macbeth”, an injured sergeant describes the title character’s conduct on the field of battle early in the play: ”For brave Macbeth, … Disdaining fortune, with his brandisht steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour’s minion, Carved out … Continue reading
Fortinbras,Fortinbras—wherefore art thou, soldier dude?
Hullo, Hamlet: you dashing, dizzy, doomed Dane. Wherefore did your intrepid Shakespeare Dallas director Rene Moreno deign to dilute your dimensional drama by employing a stuffy, flat version of your life’s demise? Whitewashed by conventionally prudish Victorian actor/ adaptor Edwin Booth, this version eliminates the politics and most of the conflict and passion in the … Continue reading
Hose That Critic!
Hose that critic! Ever wanted to get even with one of those smart aleck, opinionated, unsympathetic, party-pooper theater critics who stick irritating burrs under the sweaty saddle blanket of your treasured, perfectly crafted and exquisitely executed production? Today, 7/23, two regional theatre artists got the chance to work out some symbolic frustration on regional theatre … Continue reading
Best on Stage 2010: criticalrant.com
Ten Top Productions: Literary merit. Imaginative staging. Sophisticated direction. Cohesive ensemble performance. Comprehensive technical vision and execution. Delightful, viable realities. Our Town (Water Tower Theatre) August: Osage County (Oklahoma City Repertory Company) Much Ado About Nothing (Trinity Shakespeare Festival) The Dog Problem (Undermain Theatre) Umlauf’s Bicycle (The Ochre House) The 39 Steps (Stage West) Charm … Continue reading
2 Gents of Sharona: Shakespeare Dallas’ Pretty One
Ooh my little pretty one, pretty one. When you gonna give me some time, Sil-via? Ooh you make my motor run, my motor run. Gun it comin’ off the line Sil-via Never gonna stop, give it up… My my my i yi woo. M M M My Sil-via…! Director Raphael Parry and Shakespeare Dallas just … Continue reading
My Best of Live Theater in DFW 2009
Magic on stage in the Dallas-Ft. Worth region. A wealth of creative theatrical endeavor: satisfying, dignified and quirky, heart-warming and spine-chilling, thought-provoking and side-splitting, high art to lowly farce. Performance ritual reveals truths of the human condition through magical transformation. Or we hope that happens. Here’s what wove that special magic for me this year, … Continue reading
