The big news: In its first half, before it bottoms out with the rankest feel-goodery, Theodore Melfi’s too-familiar ain’t-he-irascible comedy-drama St. Vincent features scene after scene of Bill Murray actually trying to make you laugh. How long has it been? He plays Vincent, a drunk-driving Brooklynite whose look suggests science…
Tennessee Williams described The Two-Character Play as his “most beautiful” drama after A Streetcar Named Desire. He may have been a bit too in love with his own words. It’s a haunting piece laced with poetry, madness and tragedy, but it’s no Streetcar. The current production of The Two-Character Play…
Director Michael Serrecchia has gathered some mighty big voices to play Little Women in the musical version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. Contemporary Theatre of Dallas ends its season with this show. On a multi-level set by Rodney Dobbs that has the cast navigating steps made of giant stacks of…
At Dallas Children’s Theater, Rapunzel! Rapunzel! A Very Hairy Fairy Tale, directed by Nancy Schaeffer, is letting the title character’s hair down while bringing the house down with giggles of delighted young audiences. This is children’s theater at its best, cast with top professional grown-ups — Erika Larsen as the…
Knocking out the first-rate forgeries that fooled 60 American museums? That was a curiously mundane miracle, something for Mark Landis to do while watching TV. A frail and ascetic Mississippian who resembles Michael Stipe playing Truman Capote, Landis sketched and painted minor Currans, Averys and Cassatts with one eye on…
When you were a kid, did you know what you wanted to be? And if you did, did the goal stay the same longer than two weeks? Most kids are like magpies, flitting from soccer to bug camp to music lessons to the next shiny new thing their friends are…
Nasher Sculpture Center’s ’til Midnight returns Friday night with performances by Jeff Mitchell & The Phonophreaks at 6 p.m. and Ishi at 9 p.m. It’s a great time to stop by and see the current exhibition, Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio, which our arts editor called “irresistable.”…
Those campfire stories of yesteryear are about to look like child’s play in light of Rawlins Gilliland’s Happy Murder Stories. The unofficial Dallas Poet in Residence channels Edgar Allen Poe as he regales a packed house at the Kessler Theatre (1230 W. Davis St.) with the all-too-true stories of his…
Thanks to the rise of technology, mankind seems to have forgotten the simple of joy of two simple things: taking a picture and walking. Everyone with a phone in their pocket has a camera that can take digital pictures for us and thanks to Uber and Rascal Scooters, we never…
Music and comedy go together like peas and carrots, but merrier. And with less fiber. Catch this combo for the ages at Alternative Comedy Theater’s “Laughter is Music to Our Ears” program at 11:15 p.m. this Friday and Saturday in the Pocket Sandwich Theater, 5400 East Mockingbird Lane. Newly-formed (but…
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is reintroducing its popular ReMix series, with the first installment of the 2014-15 season debuting this weekend: Song of the Symphony. With a casual environment and earlier start times, ReMix offers patrons a chance to enjoy classical music in a more social context, which, on this…
If you’ve filled up on corny dogs and the variety of fried novelty foods packed into calorie heavy balls at the State Fair of Texas, you can clean out your stomach at the 2014 Texas Veggie Fair. This fiber-conscious event will leave you feeling better than you arrived. Styled in…
Before the Disney version of the story of a young princess who is put under a 100-year curse by an evil fairy and only awaken by the kiss of her true love, we had the ballet, The Sleeping Beauty. The stories are similar; it’s still the classic fairytale about Princess…
There was a time when it wasn’t good to be a nerd. Those were dark days, back when your obsession with Dungeons and Dragons basically meant you were a Satanist and the comic books in your backpack regularly earned you an ass-kicking. Now, nerds are catered to at every level:…
You can’t predict love. Certainly, when James Carville met Mary Matalin, we’re guessing he wasn’t thinking, “She’s perfect.” After all, he’s a democratic politician and she’s a consultant to the Republican party. But as it stands, 20 years later, their romance is still going strong, disagreements aside. They even wrote…
Shakespeare isn’t just one of the theater’s greatest writers, he also wrote some damn good poems. He was particularly talented at penning those little 14 line monsters known as sonnets. This weekend Shakespeare Dallas, in keeping with its goal to stage every word the Bard ever wrote, presents Sonnets with…
When it comes to contemporary art, especially in New York City, Carlo McCormick is one of your go-to guys. The culture critic and curator will be in Fort Worth as part of the Tuesday Evenings at The Modern series, at which he will discuss “Crashing the After-Party: Revelries & Radicalisms…
Comedian Jim Gaffigan has made a living talk about his love of food but unlike some snooty Food Network talking head who treats sustenance as some kind of sexual valhalla, Gaffigan treats like a long, enduring marriage. He clearly loves such an important part of his life, even if it’s…
A coworker recently pointed out to me that without fail, iPhones will autocorrect “Deep Ellum” into “Deep Vellum.” Now, we’re not saying that this was the impetus for the new Dallas-based translation company’s name. But it could’ve been. After all, it’s not like they’re actually going to publish on “Vellum:…
Earlier this year, USA Today named the Dallas skyline Readers’ Choice for 2014 Best International Skyline. Look, I love Reunion Tower as much as the next Dallas lifer, but I’m guessing a lot of the votes were swayed by Justin Terveen’s stunning images. The Trinity River has never looked better…
For its newest show Cara Mia Theatre Company lugged ton after ton of sand into an abandoned warehouse in Trinity Groves. The actors in Teotl: the Sand Show play in what at first glance looks like an oversized sand box. Designed in collaboration with Prism Co., a fledgling company earning…
Starting October 16th, Dallas Theater Center hosts Pulitzer-winning play, Driving Miss Daisy, at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. The play, made ever more famous by its subsequent film starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, follows the generational progression of the relationship between a well-to-do Southern woman and her chauffeur. At once…
