If Dallas theater gets much better than it was in 2012, Chicago’s going to be jealous. Dallas’ theatrical community used to lose a lot of homegrown talent to that city with the wind. (And to New York and L.A.) Not so much anymore, as the number of theater companies, performance…

Back in 1964, a rotten movie called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians introduced a child actress named Pia Zadora in the role of a mirthless Martian child. Zadora would go on to become a mirthless singer and actress who briefly shot to semi-stardom when she won a Golden Globe in…

Secrets of time travel are revealed in On the Eve, the high-flying new musical at the tiny Magnolia Lounge in Fair Park. According to the whimsical script, written by Dallas actor Michael Federico, all you need to float back and forth across centuries are a hot air balloon, a Hula…

One Thirty Productions changed the name of Truman Capote’s 1956 short story A Christmas Memory to the more generic A Holiday Memory for its current matinees-only offering of the sentimental three-character dramedy at the Bath House Cultural Center. Actor John Davies is this show’s lovable old coot, narrating recollections of…

Once again, ’tis old-coot season. That’s what Christmas theater is, right? Time to celebrate the eccentricities of crotchety old men, some with beards, some without. If there’s a grand vizier of geezers, he’s Ebenezer Scrooge, star of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Dallas Theater Center’s big and boisterous annual production…

There are 23 people in the cast of Jekyll & Hyde, but the real star of the show is lead actor Constantine Maroulis’ hair. It shimmers, it glistens, it flips, flies and flaps. It goes back in a long ponytail when he’s playing brooding Dr. Jekyll and falls down in…

At this time of year, it’s nice to remember that a valiant angel, not Valium, got George Bailey out of his funk. If you haven’t yet reached the “bah humbug” threshold with the 1946 Frank Capra movie It’s a Wonderful Life, the stage version subtitled A Live Radio Play and…

Second Thought Theatre artistic directors Kelsey Head and Steven Walters took their sweet time picking shows for the 2013 season at Bryant Hall. But maybe it was worth the wait. This small theater, along with Theatre Nouveau 47 and Fort Worth’s Trinity Shakespeare Festival, made season lineup announcements nearly simultaneously today…

In this week’s Dallas Observer, we chronicle the history of Jack Ruby, All-American Boy, perhaps the best play ever produced by Dallas Theater Center. It’s on a surprisingly short list of American plays that have dealt with the JFK assassination. Among the best: Macbird, a 1967 satire by Barbara Garson,…

Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, in front of live TV cameras in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. He shot him again on April 23, 1974, before a live audience on the stage at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. The moment when the paunchy, oily-haired Dallas…

Here’s how lack of attention to detail sucks the funny out of a big musical comedy like Crazy for You, the show packed with Gershwin songs and wedged uncomfortably into Theatre Three. In a scene in the second act, two female characters meet for the first time. They are rivals…

If Burying Our Father, the biblical whatchamacallit at Undermain Theatre, is supposed to be comedy, it needs to be funnier. If it’s supposed to be performance art, it needs more original moves. If it’s supposed to be a slightly too-long, goofy Sunday school pageant performed by a likable older couple,…

“Better 50 enemies outside the house than one within,” says an old Irish proverb. In the tiny, moldy Connemara cottage that’s the setting for Martin McDonagh’s tense 1996 drama The Beauty Queen of Leenane, both residents have one sworn enemy — each other. Now running at Kitchen Dog Theater in…

Something funny comes to the Winspear on Thursday with the one-night-only performance of the family-friendly one-man show MacHomer, actor-writer Rick Miller’s comic adaptation of Macbeth using characters from The Simpsons. It’s an inspired idea that Miller, a Toronto-based actor, launched in 1995 and has performed around the globe ever since…

What is the one thing you’d expect to see in a play about the world of professional televised wrestling? And what is missing from The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, which just opened in a passive-aggressive production by Dallas Theater Center at the Wyly Theatre? That would be wrestling. There…

Great idea by Lyric Stage producer Steven Jones to open his revival of the grand old musical 1776 during campaign season. If only more of those pesky “undecided voters” could see it. What they would witness first and foremost is another of Lyric’s spectacular productions of a rarely done piece…

The limits of time, space and geography seem to fall away in Perro y Sangre (“dog and blood”), a thrilling blend of music, drama, flamenco and sex that opened for a four-night run at the 40-seat Ochre House theater last night. Written and directed by Ochre House founder Matthew Posey,…

Oh, dear, oh, dear. From the sublime experience of An Iliad to the stumbling and mumbling of amateurs in Ugly People at Fort Worth’s Pantagleize Theatre Company. Everything you shouldn’t do on a stage they do, from upstaging each other to forgetting lines to engaging in the kind of shout-y…

“Every time I sing this song, I hope it’s the last time,” says the weary troubadour played by Bruce DuBose at the start of Undermain Theatre’s stunning production of An Iliad, a condensed retelling of Homer’s epic poem of the Trojan War. As conceived by co-authors Lisa Peterson and Denis…

Ah, autumn. The leaves are falling, and so are the costumes in Uptown Players’ adults-only musical Hello Again. Now steaming up the Kalita Humphreys Theater, composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa’s singing humpfest, getting its local premiere, shows off some of Dallas musical theater’s finest voices and the bodies that hold them…