Jerry Russell, founder of Fort Worth’s Stage West theater and father of state Senator Wendy Davis, has died. The sad news came from Davis, who released this statement Thursday morning: “I am heartbroken to report that my father, Jerry Russell, passed away peacefully in the early hours of this morning…
The Winspear Opera House’s underground parking can be a mess, but it doesn’t exactly sneak up on you. From the moment you pull your car in for a big performance, you’re reminded, Oh yeah, this is three-act: Two acts in the theater, one in the garage. It’s maddening, but you…
It’s intermission at Book of Mormon and my face feels like I fed it psychedelic mushrooms instead of dinner. I’m explaining this to the lobby bartender who asked if the show is as good as everyone says. I point to my teary eye ducts and try to push down my…
I walk through a somewhat ordinary office — some desks, chairs, white boards — to a storage area in the back. It’s dark in here. Stacks of shipping boxes line the walls and litter the floor. Someone hits the lights, my eyes focus, and I see them. Round, beige heads…
By the time I muscled through the traditional Fair Park gridlock traffic and made it inside Gexa Energy Pavilion for last night’s Oddball Comedy Festival, the place was flooded, with thousands splayed on the lawn waiting for the main stage and hundreds more in the concession area. The “Curiosity” part of the…
Comedian Hannibal Buress has a lot of items on his to-do list these days. He’s not only shooting a new pilot for Comedy Central but he’s also part of their episodic remake of the Broad City web series and the sidekick for the insane Adult Swim talk show The Eric…
“It was never my intention to die at this place. If so tell me to wake up and walk out of here.” That’s how Ann Williams, the founder and artistic director of the Dallas Black Dance Theater, succinctly sums up her thoughts on her pending retirement. It must be apt…
It’s the Monday after closing night, and the director is cleaning up the last set pieces from his performance space. There are video-game consoles stacked in the bathroom, disconnected security cameras hanging from the ceiling, and a pair of blank-loaded pistols that, thankfully, he just a moment earlier removed from…
The members of Samurai Drunk, the comedy improv group from the Dallas Comedy House, have been hanging out at a nearby Cafe Brazil after almost every rehearsal since their first days together in the club’s “Level 1” improv training sessions. Founding member Brian Moody said they would spend two or…
It only takes about five minutes for someone in the noisy crowd of social drinkers at the Old Monk pub on North Henderson Avenue to recognize comedian Paul Varghese. An attractive blond woman recognizes him just as we sit down on the patio to talk about his new album Paul…
We all grow older, but until we die we’ll be shadowed by the boy who never grows up, Peter Pan. The rotten little imp is everywhere. Always has been, always will be. As inescapable as Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse. Instead of new ideas, big-time musical theater keeps reaching back…
Dallas’ comedy scene can feel disjointed at times, but there’s no shortage of places to see funny people say, and do, funny things. So for the moment, consider us the Siri of North Texas comedy, but way less warm and creepy-sounding. Addison Improv Comedy Club, 4980 Belt Line Road, #250,…
Be afraid of Virginia Woolf. She’s drunk off her ass. In Edward Albee’s epic 1962 drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, main characters George and Martha pour 17 drinks — hard liquor on the rocks — in the first act alone. Nine or 10 more in the second act. Another…
As far as titles go, Craig Cackowski and Lucas Neff could certainly do worse than The Better Half, the name of the show they’re performing at Dallas Comedy House this weekend. “I think we’re a good contrast in styles,” Cackowski said by email. “Lucas is boundlessly energetic and physical. He’s…
It doesn’t suck to be the cast of Avenue Q at Theatre Too in The Quadrangle. A year after opening the first local production of the Tony-winning puppet-centric musical, the same seven Dallas actors still have their hands up the backsides of the fuzzy felt-mericans. Their performances, brighter and funnier…
Cook gets all meta on Louie. The sentence “Dane Cook is coming to Dallas” could be interpreted as a warning or an announcement, depending on your stance. The divisive comic behind the platinum-selling album Harmful if Swallowed and the double-platinum hit Retaliation, is back on tour with a Dallas date…
According to the creators of the Broadway-bound (eventually) stage musical, what the 95-minute 1983 movie version of Flashdance lacked was 16 more musical numbers — on top of the soundtrack’s period cheese-rock “Maniac,” “Gloria,” “Manhunt” and “What a Feeling” — and another hour or so of dialogue and dancing. They’re…
With songs in their hearts, Dallas theaters are making this a summer of melodic storytelling. There’s a new musical or three tuning up every week. A trio of tough-to-stage pieces of musical theater just opened at Uptown Players, Theatre Three and Theatre Britain, with varying degrees of success. In 85…
Bosley Crowther, grandfather of critical snark, once described the 1946 film noir The Big Sleep as “one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused.” Ditto the too-clever-for-its-own-good 1989 musical noir send-up City of Angels,…
Theatre Britain is back at the Cox Playhouse in Plano with the charming Albert’s Anthology, a comedy-with-music directed by Sue Birch that’s as sweet as the jam on a homemade scone. Jackie Mellor-Guin’s 75-minute script finds 100-year-old British grandpa Albert (nicely played by Frisco Community Theatre producer Howard Korn) celebrating…
Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical The Music Man, now at Irving’s Lyric Stage, feels as summery as an ice cream social. If only this production came in more flavors than vanilla. The quaint ode to small-town life circa 1912 falls flat if its angelic Iowans aren’t threatened with perdition by a…
Traces lets you marvel at the wonders of the human body while making you feel bad about your own. Seven gorgeous young performers in a 90-minute whirl of acrobatics, dance and borderline insanity fly off the floor and hang in mid-air longer than logic and the laws of gravity say…
