So I was checking into this motel room in Galveston with Vida Stegall–don’t even ask, I don’t wanna go into it–and as soon as I flipped on the light switch, she starts complaining about how everything is “not right.” “This room is not right,” she says. And I’m looking at…
Countless playwrights have this century tackled the Spanish legend of Don Juan, the man whose insatiable appetite for women represented what could be considered the first feminist cautionary fable. Even those writers who have explored the comic possibilities in Juan’s winding trail of broken hearts have rarely ignored the serial…
In The Mirror Has Two Faces, Barbra Streisand plays Rose Morgan, a Columbia University Romantic literature professor who endures a drab, romanceless life. She lives with her imperious, fault-finding mother, Hannah (Lauren Bacall)–a beautician, no less–and wards off the attentions of a nebbishy suitor (Austin Pendleton) while pining for the…
It’s Thanksgiving 1972, and a year after returning to his upper-middle-class Texas home, Vietnam vet Jeremy Collier (Emilio Estevez) is still reeling from his war experiences. Living at home and listlessly taking a few community college courses, he has grown only more alienated from normal society. His mother, Maurine (Kathy…
When we first see the character of middle-aged Australian David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he’s standing in the driving rain and tapping at the window of a wine bar after closing time. Let inside by a sympathetic waitress, he keeps up a nonstop nonsensical patter that makes him sound…
thursday november 21 Taking Back Our Democracy From Corporate Domination: If anybody thought that the two major American political parties cater to vastly different interests, the snoozefest of a 1996 presidential election should have put that to rest. For all the hullabaloo about race, sex, and other white-hot cultural issues,…
Did you see where the Canadians blew up a decommissioned warship so that it would settle at exactly the right place on the bottom of the ocean? They wanted it to be right next to the other ships they’ve already sunk in the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland…
Feminist literary critics have tap-danced on the grave of every dead white male in the Western canon of letters…except for William Shakespeare. Willie the Shake has by and large escaped the scorched-earth academics who have reduced the likes of Milton and Marlowe to smoking cinders. The conventional wisdom is, in…
As Palookaville begins, three wayward city boys–Jerry (Adam Trese), Sid (William Forsythe), and Russell (Vincent Gallo)–chisel their way through the outer wall of what they believe to be a jewelry store, only to find out that they’ve actually broken into the bakery next door. While Sid stands guard, Russell steals…
friday november 15 Twilight of the Golds: There are a whole lot of hot-potato topics that get tossed around in Jonathan Tolins’ drama, The Twilight of the Golds, and you can bet Little Finger Productions and Actors’ Theatre of Dallas, the two companies that have joined forces to premiere the…
I’ve been watching a bunch of hippie movies from around 1968 to 1973, and I’ve noticed that almost all of them have at least one scene of longhaired, bell-bottomed Disaffected Youths yelling like idiots at a public meeting. It could be a meeting of Army generals or a city council…
Although the hot movie topic for the past year has been Jane Austen, it really should have been William Shakespeare. True, four of Austen’s novels have recently been adapted to the screen, but she hasn’t been nearly as omnipresent as the Bard of Avon nor, Clueless aside, quite so contemporary…
thursday november 7 Desdemona…a play about a handkerchief: Last summer’s Shakespeare Festival of Dallas production of Othello, while competent enough, featured a performance by Liz Piazza Kelley as Desdemona that generally towed the line for generations of Desdemonas before her. While the character being innocent of Othello’s charges is what…
For Dallas theatergoers, the wait is over. We get to find out what happens between Joe and Louis, Pryor and the Angel, Belize and Roy, and poor wandering, hallucinating, but strangely lucid Harper. Dallas Theater Center stuck its neck out with a highly publicized, expensively promoted production of Tony Kushner’s…
Have you noticed how closing times at bars get earlier and earlier? What’s going on here? Certain cities and states now have bars that close at midnight, just like in Communist countries like Sweden. Didn’t we already find out in the 1920s what happens when you monkey with a man’s…
Ticket buyers who decide to attend the Undermain Theatre’s world premiere of John O’Keefe’s new play, The Deatherians, will see a sign at the door of the theater that states the following: “This play contains adult situations and extremely graphic language. For mature audiences only.” That warning is the understatement…
Film critics are put in a difficult position when they see a movie that’s well-made but features characters so unbelievably odious you wouldn’t want to spend two minutes with them in real life. Of course, directors including Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese have built legendary careers out of one scumbag…
There’s a great line delivered by the Scottish protagonist in Trainspotting: “A lot of people hate the English, but I don’t. The English are just wankers, but what are we? We were colonized by wankers! We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonized by.” That may be the…
Storytellers long ago recognized the fertile ground for plots available at the average neighborhood saloon. A bar can be so many things to different people: a hangout; a pit stop; a place to meet friends, strangers, and lovers, known and unknown. It can be a happy place, or a miserable…
While it’s true that most filmmakers still keep on-screen gay romance in the hand-holding stage, the viewer who yearns to savor a little bit of tenderness between same-sex lovers may have been startled to find a wealth of sweet moments in the most unexpected places recently. Spike Lee, traditionally no…
thursday october 31 Heaven: The Biblical Arts Center is smart–in a public relations sense–to call its latest children’s art show Heaven, although that title doesn’t cover the full range of subject matter here. A more complete label might be Heaven and Hell, because the exhibit contains illustrations by kids ages…
What used to be the two most boring words in the history of the English language? “Mutual funds,” right? What does everybody wanna talk about at parties in the ’90s? Mutual funds, right? Everybody’s buying mutual funds. People who can’t divide nine by three are buying mutual funds. People who…
