The title of WaterTower Theatre’s revival of Rockin’ Christmas Party is missing its “g” for a reason. Throughout the two-plus hours of singin’ and dancin’, you’ll keep thinkin’ to yourself, “Gee, what does that song have to do with Christmas?” and “Gee, why are those ladies wearing Conehead wigs and…
At the Monday night Open Stage talent show in Richardson, the emcee, Russ Sharek, shows the audience the “Positivity Pill.” It’s a stuffed toy shaped like a capsule and it’s tossed at anyone who doesn’t give the performers upbeat feedback. No booing allowed here and no “keeping score” about which…
It’s a quarter to 8 on a Monday night at Open Stage, the weekly talent showcase at House of Poets in Richardson, and the incense is growing Vatican-thick. The show happens on a raised platform along one wall of an oblong banquet hall at the back of a shopping center,…
If you have to use “the Method” to act excited about seeing in-laws at your holiday gatherings, you have something in common with all the actors in Scrooge and Santa drag night after night from now till New Year’s. Sure, it’s a job for them, sometimes even one that pays…
Tish Mussey and her brother Martin grew up as army brats, moving frequently and learning that their shared love of theater gave them an identity and something to do together wherever they were. When the siblings ended up in The Colony, now with their own families, they found there wasn’t…
Theater Caps are bite-sized punch-packing capsule reviews by resident theater critic Elaine Liner. Use them as a reminder — or a teaser, if you procrastinate — of her full-length reviews in The Mixmaster’s weekly sister. It’s probably not the best idea to make a play about a cross-country road trip…
Director’s Notes documents, from planning to performance, the challenges of local artist Katie Toohil as she mounted an original, independent theatrical dance production. The last two weeks of Grieve was one of the most intense times in my entire life. There remained so much to complete and I can’t say…
Theater Caps are bite-sized punch-packing capsule reviews by resident theater critic Elaine Liner. Use them as a reminder — or a teaser, if you procrastinate — of her full-length reviews in The Mixmaster’s weekly sister. Theatre Three and its downstairs lair, Theatre Too, are on a John Bucchino kick. The…
November is early for valentines, but at Theatre Too love is in the air with It’s Only Life, a 30-song revue by composer John Bucchino. Performed by five attractive young singer-actors, accompanied lovingly on grand piano by Terry Dobson, the 100-minute show begins as a look into quirks of the…
The new rock-and-roll musical is called On the Eve. Actor Michael Federico wrote it with his friends Seth and Shawn Magill, the husband-and-wife team who head up East Dallas band Home by Hovercraft. It’s about Marie Antoinette, sort of, and you can see its debut, in a pay-what-you-can staged reading,…
Back in March, Elaine had a Giant announcement on Unfair Park: The full Dallas Theater Center’s lineup from artistic director Kevin Moriarty, which included the Michael John LaChiusa musical Giant (based on the book by Sybille Pearson). Well, another Insert-Huge-Adjective-Here announcement just-in-the-in-box: (h/t Robert) The DTC’s officially announced the cast…
Have a buck? You could see a play tonight. And a good one at that. The Ochre House theater, Matthew Posey’s hothouse of experimental work, is doing a pay-what-you-can performance of its latest, Ex Voto: The Immaculate Conceptions of Frida Kahlo. Actress Elizabeth Evans, looking eerily like the artist, plays…
You may remember him from his aborted run for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, from his fight-provoking confrontational 2004 Austin set when he followed the political bombast of Alex Jones or from the riots that occasionally ensue at his shows when he touches a particularly sensitive nerve in his audiences…
Seeing any show at Matthew Posey’s 40-seat Ochre House is a bit like watching a circus unfold in a walk-in closet. So much happens in so little square footage that you come out with your head buzzing, wondering why a big theater like the Wyly doesn’t use its vast expanse…
With her dark unibrow and shadow of upper lip fuzz, Dallas actress Elizabeth Evans looks eerily like the title character in the Ochre House’s latest production, Ex Voto: The Immaculate Conceptions of Frida Kahlo. Her resemblance to the iconic Kahlo isn’t why Ochre House founder and artistic director Matthew Posey…
Theater Caps are bite-sized punch-packing capsule reviews by resident theater critic Elaine Liner. Use them as a reminder — or a teaser, if you procrastinate — of her full-length reviews in The Mixmaster’s weekly sister. Once again, Irving’s Lyric Stage has found gold in an old, rarely done American musical…
There is a fiddler and there is a roof in Rags, the 1986 musical getting a splendid revival at Irving’s Lyric Stage. But those aren’t the only things it has in common with that other piece of American musical theater featuring Russian Jews belting show tunes. The books for Rags…
The smaller roles and the actors who play them are the reasons to see To Kill a Mockingbird, now playing at the Wyly Theatre in a Dallas Theater Center production. Anastasia Muñoz, playing both the judgmental “Miss Stephanie” and the rape-accuser Mayella Ewell, is so good you probably won’t realize…
Theater Caps are bite-sized punch-packing capsule reviews by resident theater critic Elaine Liner. Use them as a reminder — or a teaser, if you procrastinate — of her full-length reviews in The Mixmaster’s weekly sister. For years we’ve waited for veteran Dallas actress Sally Soldo to get a solid starring…
Theater Caps are bite-sized punch-packing capsule reviews by resident theater critic Elaine Liner. Use them as a reminder — or a teaser, if you procrastinate — of her full-length reviews in The Mixmaster’s weekly sister. Oh, girl, we gotta talk. Actually, we gotta be quiet while Haley Walker talks to…
Two good Dallas actresses are getting their due in a pair of shows obsessed with courtship, marriage and the whole damn thing called love. One play will make you feel good about all that. The other won’t, but it does afford its star, Sally Soldo, the sweetest role she’s had…
Dallas actor and painter Aidan Langford rolls like a rock star. He has a driver to chauffeur him to and from the theaters where he’s performing. His agent is busy fielding offers for acting and modeling gigs. At home, he has someone cooking and serving the meals he likes. Being…
