Big Tony

Last night The Dallas Theater Center was given a rare Regional Tony Award for their work.   

Well deserved!  

In a radio interview Dallas Theater Center's artistic director, Kevin Moriarty, credited this win "to every carpenter and..." going on to explain that it is the result of decades of good work under several ADs and by many many artists and box office clerks and so on...  

I agree.  This is, in part, a win for the whole theatrical ecosystem of DFW.  

Important as the DTC is and Tony-Award-winningly TM excellent! as it's work obviously is, it just can't do such high quality work without a whole supportive world of contributors.  Contributors of both ticket money and artistic talent.  A Tony!  Wow, what a great validation.

Congratulations!

Speaking of Thanks Due, I'd like to nod now to several theater colleagues who aren't around to share this community thrill:  

Kristina Baker, who died seven years ago now.  A wonderful performer and singer who I remember best as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.  I remember this show well because it was my first set design for a musical.  (Who knew musicals were different?  Or so hard?)  Kristina was wonderfully patient and good humored about those crazy-tall kinda-welded-together rickety metal stairs I made her climb.  While singing!  This show put WaterTower Theater on the map.  (And me too.)  Kristina helped raise the bar for local actors, while being unfailingly kind and helpful to us all.  Helping create the kind of theater ecosystem we have here.

Wade Giampa, who died in 2009.  A terrific scenic designer.  Lovely scenic painter.  His work raised the production values at Lyric Stage - famous for their musicals - and wherever he worked.  I remember a conversation with him onstage at a civic theater where, as we talked, he nonchalantly painted with a brush on a long bamboo pole... creating, effortlessly!, a birch forest.  A good and wise friend to me as I was learning about theater, generous with his experience.  Kindly sharing hard-earned wisdom with the newbies is - as Wade's example models - one of the best parts of our theater community.

Rene' Moreno, who died this year.  A wonderful director and much sought after, he was famous for the intellectual seriousness of his work and his gift with actors.  But also a lovely actor.  I had the privilege of designing several sets for him and the unique chance to design a set at Kitchen Dog Theater that featured him in Richard III... in a wheelchair.  A design challenge - all ramps - except for one set of stairs where, at the early off-to-the-party-ditch-Richard scene, his Richard was left behind, unable to climb after the others.  From the bottom of those stairs the look on Rene's face...

Or his voice speaking Shakespeare's:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

These were all exceptional people... and yet part and parcel of a work-a-day theatrical community that continues on, doing good work...

So great congratulations to the DTC on their Tony!  And a moment to give thanks to - and for - colleagues like these who create a community in which such a cool thing is possible.

Not a Review: Sense and Sensibility

I recently got to see the Dallas Theater Center's production of Sense and Sensibility... 

Really enjoyed it.  I think it's a clever adaptation that - for once - catches the sometimes nasty edge of Jane Austen's humor and the real and frightening stakes involved with a young woman's reputation and future.  The Dashwood sisters live in terrifying times.  Marry or starve, basically.

Any of you who think Jane Austen is actually, you know, ROmantic, I advise you to read Robert Rodi's Bitch in a Bonnet and Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen immediately.  Sooner than that even.

I really did like this adaptation of S&S.  The general idea is that a Greek English chorus of nasty gossips shadowed and commented on the action, peering through windows and pushing characters around.  Cuts and simplifications to story, characters, and themes clarify the threat and strengthen the emphasis on gossip.  Some characters - like Mrs. Jennings who, in the book, has a good heart under her gossipy skin - became simple tattle-mongers.  (Not quite fair.)  In the program a comparison was made to today's ability to ruin a woman's reputation in minutes via Twitter and Facebook.

That's topical - just ask Monica Lewinsky.  In a series of entertaining webisodes called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, this ruining-her-reputation trope (this time from Pride and Prejudice) was translated for the modern day into the release of a sex tape online; in S&S days it sometimes took only writing a letter.

Reputation stuff still does damage.

I have to agree [sorta] with Mary Bennet, when she says: "...we may draw this useful lesson: that loss of [perceived] virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step [not necessarily her step, mind you] involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."

Tell'em sister!  Sometimes all it takes is breaking up with that "undeserving" dude...  "Revenge porn" they call it when he then puts all her sexts or too-personal photos etc online.  "Doxing" is when he - or other enemies - reveal all her personal information.  And though men also suffer from these shaming techniques, the victims are generally female.

So.

Topical.

Because I liked this production, I felt inevitably picky-picky about certain aspects: it's The Designer's Curse.  I'll ignore most of these as too picky to smudge an admirable production.  The set was simple and fitting.  (And, for the Theater Center amazingly! not extravagantly expensive.  Okay, picky, there had to be a better way to bring on London.  Sorry.)  The costumes good, especially the chorus, though there were a few choices I disagreed with.   (Col. Brandon's underwear?)   Lighting good (except that rain).  The acting was good (I'd change a little casting) with real stand-outs as Elinor and Edward, who made the show.

I don't know that this production will convert those who go into the theater thinking Jane Austen is either a) dull or b) mushily romantic... but it ought to.

Well done.

Less than a week to go, so get tickets!  HERE.

The Ghost in the Theater

Many theaters are reputed to be haunted.

I wouldn't be surprised.

There IS a sensation in almost any theater building that's more than a few years old that performances may sort of... linger... in the space.  To me at least, different stages have different vibes depending on their age and character, but any stage feels anticipatory - as if it waits for the next act - and also a bit whisper-y with past performances.  This is true when sitting in one of the velvet seats in the house, but especially true in the darkness of the wings and backstage.  (Way up in the catwalks?  I wouldn't venture there alone without real business; it just doesn't feel like a place for tourists.)

I'm not getting all Magic 8 Ball TM  here - just making an observation.

Of the theaters in Dallas Fort Worth there is only one that I've heard claims to a haunting.  (There's another where haunting seems faintly possible though.)  The Dallas Theater Center building - the old Kalita Humphreys - is reputed to be haunted now and then by its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

In a very real way his character does permeate the building - as it must any of his designs - simply because his architecture reflects so clearly his personality through his choices.  A short man, his horizontal "Prairie" style of design gives the theater low-hung soffits that feel comfortable to me, but must oppress tall people.  Likewise, the angled stair treads of the Kalita's narrow stairs demand that visitors Pay Attention to the Building.  And their own feet.  (One drink too many and many patrons have fallen down the steps.  In fact the steps to the restrooms were rebuilt to the standard way years ago because so many patrons fell.)  And FLW's floor plan backstage, with its rat-maze corridors and identical stairs that go to different destinations... everyone gets lost backstage at least once.  Try finding the Coke machine!  Twice.  Dare ya.

But besides this very material kind of haunting, there are claims that Frank Lloyd Wright's shade occasionally attends rehearsals.

I haven't seen him.  However the carpenter for my last show there, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, reports that he kept seeing in the corner of his eye a man sitting the front row - house left, 2-3 seats in from the aisle - who, whenever he really looked... wasn't there.  This is where, according to other sightings, FLW likes to sit.  Just watching.  Very benign.

Now, where FLW ought to haunt the building is in its elevator.

There's an old story - how true I don't know - that the master refused to have an elevator in his theater, designing, instead, two switchback ramps to bring up scenery from the basement carpentry shop.  (He didn't really believe in much scenery - his building should be enough.)  The story goes that the elevator was installed secretly - where a second ramp was supposed to go - and hidden from the aged FLW by strategically placed scaffolding etc. during his site visits, only revealed after his death.  Great story.  With all due respect - the elevator IS needed, because the horrible ramp at stage right is utterly unworkable.  If you could successfully roll even an office chair up that thing in the dark between scenes you'd be lucky.  But FLW's posthumous disapproval may well explain why it's such a very cussed elevator.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright does haunt that elevator - some anonymous theater crew made sure of that: "Nooooo ELEVATORS in my Theatre!!!"

Frank Lloyd Wright's face in his theater's elevator - gifted to Public Domain

This photocopy portrait has been riding up and down in the stage's freight elevator for years - as long as I've worked there certainly - so it's getting rather torn and shabby, but many of us have mended or re-taped it in its place.  It seems appropriate.

Not a Review: Fly by Night

I caught a preview of the Dallas Theater Center's new musical Fly by Night last night.

[Caution: trying hard not to Spoiler here, but it's tough.]

Some wonderful things onstage!  Wit and stagecraft and strong songs with really great lines.  Beautifully acted and produced.  My impression by intermission was of a fresh, clever, and very theatrical show.

A wee bit too clever?  Conventions like rapid flips from location to location (accommodated by a clever set) and use of a narrator (wonderful!) tend to set the audience at a distance from story and characters.   Framing it this way added style, but made me so aware I was watching it was hard to emotionally  participate.  It took a while to warm to the main characters - a love triangle which, we were told explicitly, were the real story.

Unfortunately, the show - for me - unraveled in Act II.  The broad comedy earlier was largely replaced by broad gestures toward tragedy in Act II.  Shifting gear from the hilarious crystal ball scene, to the touching bath tub scene and then the (I think misfiring) accident-in-the-blackout moment.  Serious or touching moments in the first Act work fine alongside comedy - I think there's a good balance there - the second Act didn't feel well balanced.

That blackout!

Beautiful to look at, it's obvious symbolic importance was played too heavy-handedly.  By this time, the Themes and Big Thoughts of the show were being over-explained and repeated.  (Really? The show-in-the-show is 'The Human Condition'?  That was funny until I realized you meant it.)  Music was repeated too until the clever sandwich song, for instance, grew tiresome.  Pace slowed.  The show began to seem too long.  Too didactic.

Characters?  Loved the main guy with the guitar.  Both sisters were well acted, though the actress sister hardly rounded out from a cliche'.  Strangely, one third of this explicitly-once-more-explained-to-us main three characters did nothing for much of the second half!  Less central characters got too much stage time.  The father is good and well acted, but it was a mistake to let him tell his story; that was stronger imagined.  The deli-man's traffic bit was satisfying; but...!  What that set up?

Hated it.

Partly because I'm on the side of young love etc. etc., mostly because it wimped out on the adult real-drama between the triangle that could have happened.  There was a scene I'd have liked to see!  The show lost me at that moment.  The plot event felt too pat... substituting mechanical tidiness for the messy reality of life.  A cheat.

In retrospect, for all the repartee, there were few real clashes of character.  It's a  solo show for each one.  For all the over-explicit stress on making decisions, decisions were few, solo, dreaded, and long procrastinated.  I realize that was the point.  But when the main character plans to sleep for fifteen hours in the middle of Act II...  dramatic movement is kinda, you know, slowed.

Hard to write an active, engaging show about depression and indecision.  Admitted.  This is a brave and nearly successful attempt.  The Turtle Song tackled it brilliantly!

The big problem (if anyone wants my opinion) is that the two halves of the show just don't match.

Personally, I'd go for the sparkle of Act I throughout.  You can still have, underneath, all the depression, alienation, indecision, and loneliness you want; as Woody Allen's best films prove, it's possible to wrap a bleak message in a sparkling wrapper.  The show already does this with the Turtle Song.

I was impressed with the show as it stands now.  Well worth seeing.  Huge promise.  Another production is planned for next year: go be the best Turtle you can be!

ADDENDUM:  Reading the "real" reviews, it seems that all the critics love the show - which goes to show something-or-other.  I didn't like August: Osage County  when I saw it in Chicago either!

Dallas Theater is Varied

...Is what it is.

Within three days I saw The Odd Couple, A Brand New Boise, and The Ultimate Easter Experience.

The first, by Neil Simon is, of course funny, with wit well polished by a brilliant writer and decades of performance, plus Broadway principals, distinguished regional actors, and a nice pricey set.  The second, by Samuel D. Hunter, is occasionally funny (wit is not what that playwright is really aiming for), also with good regional adult actors, and (I like to think) a good set of moderate means.  (At Circle Theatre.)  The third, by Jeff Swearingen, is funny, witty, politically pointed, too recently written to have such a Simon-ize polish yet, but hilariously performed by mostly kids on a fun Easter-egg colored set of no budget to notice.  (By my buddy Joseph.)

Nuts-fun is what it is.

There is the Easter Bunny, but there is also Uncle Sam, Robert Oppenheimer, Marilyn Monroe,  a pair of slacker soldiers who become... well, ya gotta see 'em, and (my favorite) the comic stylings of Joseph Stalin.

Publicdomainpictures.net

I couldn't even begin to type the crazy plot... wouldn't want to spoil it anyway.

Of all these disparate shows - each well done in its own way - I was surprised into laughter most by the kids.  Really funny stuff: sophisticated references for the adults, ridiculous (and howlingly funny) shtick for the youngsters.

I've been hearing about Jeff's shows at Funhouse Theatre and Film for a while now - glad I got to experience one.

Not a Review: The Odd Couple

I got to watch one of the previews for the Dallas Theater Center's new production of The Odd Couple.

This Neil Simon play is still funny and (once the actors warmed up a little) still engaging.  I particularly liked these takes on the Felix and Pidgeon Sisters characters.

But for me, the star of this production is the set.

Designed by Timothy R. Mackabee, these apartment walls are high and lavishly detailed with a built-in shelving unit and miles of moldings, more miles of crown-moldings, and an elaborate two-level wood parquet floor.  Crisply built.  As you'd expect at DTC, the furniture is good, including a period chandelier and great a '50s Modern style audio console.

The play doesn't actually require much: it's the realistic living / dining room of a NYC apartment with an operable window, an entry door, a door to the kitchen, and door(s) off to the bathroom and the rest of the apartment.

Of course, it's good practice to include realistic views through those doors and windows, to see a bit of the apartment building hall, a hint of kitchen, enough view of the rest of the apartment to make the place feel real.  But this set goes faaaar beyond this.  Through the windows you see a next door apartment that shares the light well - complete with drapes and lamps.  Through the kitchen door and its windows you see the kitchen... can watch Felix or Oscar open the refrigerator.  Or throw spaghetti linguine at it.  Very nicely realized.

VERY rough sketch, from memory, of  DTC's The Odd Couple set.

Now, I have to admit to a certain amount of pure envy here for the obvious size of the set budget: because all this cost a lot.  Not just the high level of finish (molding gets expensive and the floor is small pieces of real wood not scenic paint), but also for sheer quantity - there is as much set behind the set as there is on the audience side of the proscenium.  Kinda amazing, once you start mentally appraising all this real estate...

Part of me was thrilled to spot that view into the next apartment.

Part of me whispered that some of this excess budget might have been better spent on internships or  man-hours to continue DTC's former generosity of allowing poorer theaters to borrow props... like that great '50s audio console.

Not a Review: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

The name of the Dallas Theater Center's latest play intrigued me: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.

This curious phrase was explained in the show, so I'm happy.

There's rather a lot of explaining, since the main character (not Chad) acts as narrator - a charming, profane, often funny one - who soliloquizes throughout. The play, for me, did teeter on that dangerous edge plays usually do teeter on when the playwright Has Something To Say and a handy narrator to say it with: at moments the story began to slide into preaching.

But that would be the world of TV Evangelism...

This is the world of TV Wrestling.  THE Wrestling.

Photo courtesy of Publicdomainpictures.net

The actors did well by the material. There were parts I really enjoyed (one great Dallas joke!), but on the night I watched, the audience felt uncertain... Characters interacted with us, but how much were we supposed to interact back?  Was "the roar of the crowd" okay? This was a preview performance though, so I expect the actors will soon whip up the crowd at will.

The set is, as you might expect, a wrestling ring.

Somewhere or other I saw a comment about "innovative designers" which puzzled me a little because, really, how else would you tell a story about televised wrestling besides with a wrestling ring, video camera, and huge screens? All nicely done. Good design. But then, DTC had its usual comfortable set budget to spend and they spent it - what I would think innovative would be to do this show well on the usual yoga-mat-n-bungie-cord budget.

Maybe a theater company could temporarily, for this show only, relocate to a gym?  That'd be innovative!

Not a Review: God of Carnage

I saw the Dallas Theater Center's latest show, God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza.

God of Carnage poster from the Dallas Theater Center

A good production, as you'd expect, with good performances by four actors (three with strong ties to my home theater Kitchen Dog).

The play itself?  Not a big fan.

I mean it was OKAY.  Held my interest and was intermittently funny.

But the idea of two well-off couples meeting in a drawing room - until  politeness descends to mankind's innate savagery and that drawing room is trashed - is not exactly a new idea.  In fact, I'm sick of it.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or The Goat (which I got to design) have the same veneer-of-civilization-cracking, but dialogue is sharper, emotions more visceral and savage, and there's a specificity and point to the conflict that God of Carnage's scuffling school boy story just doesn't generate.

About those school boys.  I understand the playwright's point is that we're all selfish creatures at heart - making even mother-love a shallow thing - but I don't buy that either mother could be so unfocused on her kid.  Despite the actresses' best efforts, the script doesn't allow much depth of feeling or motherly defensiveness.  The fathers are worse.  Now, if the playwright wanted to prove parental selfishness, what I would believe is the classic version, where the parent is protective in a tribal rather than affection-for-that-individual-kid way and narcissism shows in the self-congratulatory martyrdom many mothers are famous for.  That I'd believe.  This?  No.

It's an awful fast decent into savagery too.

And really?  Must one actress vomit on stage?  We live in a crude age (just look at popular comedy movies) and the vomit scene does make a huge impact onstage... but it's a cheap thrill.  So is coarse language.  Writers who want to be seen as "edgy" seem to feel it's obligatory.  But no one is shocked anymore.  Really.  The laughs coarse language gets are cheap laughs.  (Just as the garter belt in my own Boeing, Boeing gets cheap laughs.  Have playwrights, directors, and producers so little pride?  Silly question.)

So.  Not a big fan of the play.

The set?  The set showcases the obligatory African art - Africa is mentioned in the text and it underlines the primitive emotions.  I'm not sure about the color scheme: bright reds and sky blues, plus earthy browns and oranges.  An early set sketch of John Arnone's was printed in the program (great idea!  thanks).  I preferred that version, where the reds and oranges were more integrated, rather than contrasted as in the finished set.  I'm not sure if this was a deliberate change in focus - to emphasize conflict - or an unfortunate change made for pragmatic reasons, since the revised version is a simpler and thus a cheaper build.  For me, the bright red commanding fireplace - crowned by African art and ivory tusks - is another stage-y cheap thrill.  Which makes me wonder whether Mr. Arnone wasn't sending-up his own show a bit, creating a satirically cartoonish setting for this cartoonish story.

I'd have been tempted.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment, after hearing that this was a Tony-winning play by a "hot" playwright etc., was that I didn't hear any memorable, quotable, or clever lines.  The hamster story is worth repeating, but otherwise, zip.

Lady Bracknell (who knew her way around a drawing room) would have had something politely savage to say about that lack.  Since I can't remember a line from God of Carnage, here's one from The Importance of Being Earnest:

"To be born, or at any rate bred in a handbag, whether it have handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life which reminds one of the worst excesses of the French revolution, and I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?" 


Behind the Scenes Note: The unfortunate digestive movement onstage has led, I'm told, to a plague of gnats in the theater.  Attracted by the moisture and... well, by whatever the heck else was "vomited" and not well enough cleaned up.

The exterminator had to be called in.

Back to the Land of the Living...

Or the breathing world anyway...

 I've just FINALLY finished paper mache'ing a huge 3D rainbow construction in the garage for the Big local theater's summer kid program.  So... I get to breath again.  I've been incredibly busy and battered by many deadlines (the shows Ruth, Boeing Boeing, and now Mistakes Were Made have Teched) and I really feel like I haven't taken a break in weeks.  


This morning is my first deeeeep breath.


Phew!


But it will take time to soak the gluey colored paper off my hands.  I kind of love big messy projects (gluey feet included).   I've been sitting in my garage every morning for the last two weeks - when the day is still cool - gluing rainbow colored paper to a big geometric "rainbow" construction and feeling like I was enacting a living garage-tableau for my neighbors of Paper Craft, The Endless Installation.  


Finally done!

Copyright Clare Floyd DeVries and Clint Ray

Furniture Pull

This morning I'm meeting at a helpful theater's warehouse to pull furniture for my up-coming show Ruth, at Kitchen Dog.

It's a huge, HUGE help to poor and struggling theaters (i.e. all theaters) when those with furniture, props, or other assets share their wealth.  I am, personally, grateful for these loans.  It doesn't just improve a show, often it makes it possible.  Especially for period work.

In KD's In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play even the impressive legs of the doctor's table were loaners.  Sure, we could have built that table without 'em, but it wouldn't have looked nearly as solidly, Victorianly, authoritative as that exam table HAD to look - appearing a very Altar in the Temple of Science.

Those legs helped both sell this Doc's authority... and make the sexy carryings-on funnier.

In Fort Worth - enlightened theater world! - one university shares a warehouse with many theaters.  All put furniture in it, all are welcome to borrow it out again, with a simple sign-out book and an honor system.  Dallas?  Nope.  Few theaters can afford a warehouse, but if you call around, many kind groups, schools, or individuals will offer what you need.  (I've had sofas out of living rooms sometimes!)  Theatre Three is particularly kind and helpful and rich in furniture.  Thank you Theatre Three!

Now look again at that photo of In the Next Room...

In the Next Room: the Vibrator Play - photo by Matt Mrozek

See the handsome antique cabinet on the upstage wall?  Holding medical books and instruments?  It helps set the time period, reinforces the doctor's wealth and authority - literally gives him weight - plus it's the only real piece of furniture in the room, almost on the set, so scenically it's quite valuable... (And, as a designer, I love that it has fat corner "legs" too, so it talks to my table.  It's funny.)

Wouldn't be allowed to borrow that this year.

For some reason - no one's been told why - the Dallas Theater Center, which has a grand and very rich storehouse of furniture and props (paid for, in part, by tax money and in tiny part by my ticket purchases over the years)... Well, they've stopped loaning out.

No loans.  Nobody.

This is a great loss.  I'm very grateful for their furniture over the last decade, as I know many many other designers and theaters are, all around town.  The Dallas Theater Center's stock has enriched plays in the entire region.  They have by far, by multiples of tens and hundreds or thousands, the budget for furniture of any other theater in Dallas, Fort Worth, or all the cities around.  Their warehouse is a treasure trove!  I'm sure their generosity cost some time, but... surely the flagship of Dallas theater thinks supporting this region's theater is worthwhile?

I'm heart-sick that DTC's generous lending has stopped.

I wish the Dallas Theater Center would reconsider.  Please loan out to us little guys again.  We may be poorer, but we do good theater too.  We would appreciate your help.

(More on furniture: Return of the Dreaded Sofa and Pulling Furniture, an earlier post on the topic.)

Not a Review - Giant

The Dallas Theater Center and (I don't have my program in front of me) producers from New York have collaborated on bringing Edna Ferber's sweeping Texas novel to the musical stage.  (There is, of course, a classic film version.)

The sprawling story almoooost fit.  It's a lot of plot and a lot of characters, so Giant's run time naturally stretched a bit past the amount of time an audience can sit comfortably on the DTC's newly padded seats... but only just.

I have mixed feelings about this production.

On the one hand, I'm rootin' for DTC to create new works and for this Texas story in particular.  I loved and was touched by the scene and song at the beginning of the first act.  I liked most of the cast, and enjoyed the songs.  The production values were great, of course (a couple quibbles).  Loved the very clever and effective set and lighting.

Image of the Dallas Theater Center's Giant, borrowed from Arts & Culture

But on the other hand...  (Isn't there always a but?)

I think, though the team has done miracles in compressing this story, that they need to cut the length further.  The songs are all good, but no one song stands out as the hum-on-the-way-home number or stands alone.  Maybe the storyline of the Mexican cowboy off to war ought to be cut to improve the show's length, but I see exactly why it's still in - it strengthens the Hispanic theme greatly and has the snappiest song, sung by one of the most appealing actors, and the scene has both needed emotion and verve.  The second act gets a bit bogged in too many settings and plot points.  Even the set gets cluttered in the second act, until the beautiful spareness of the desert scene.

I wanted to like Giant more than, honestly, I did.  But I think there's a great show in there somewhere.

The quibbles?

1) A show about Texas at the Dallas Theater Center with almost no Texans in it?  When I saw it, the (Texas) understudy played the role of the Uncle.  Played it well.  But otherwise, very few locals.  And this, perhaps, contributed to the occasionally shaky Texas accents.  Also, when a character is meant to be a young Texas country stud of menacing (hetero)sexuality... sorry, but to me he sounded NY and (metro)sexual.  The inflection on certain words I think. Great pipes and energy though and looked the part.
2) The beautiful clarity and simplicity of the set (not to mention the plot) gets a bit lost as the second acts hops from place to place.  I know that's in the text, but simplicity would be better here, I think, if it can be found.
3)  I've heard complaints that the Stetsun hats' shapes/creases are not period correct.  I'm not expert enough to know about that, but I did catch the out-of-period Neiman Marcus bags.  Really guys?  You're the DTC with, like, a gadjillion dollar budget and a props staff of thousands (okay, more than one).  Couldn't you make the right bags?  There were only two.

Like I said, quibbles.  The bigger problem is that, though all together a just fine production... for me it's just... fine.  Not yet great.  But it can be!

Not A Review - The Tempest

The Dallas Theater Center's production of The Tempest is interesting.

As we've come to expect, performances were excellent, the Shakespearean language fluid and natural.

The set by Beowulf Borrit is wonderful - imaginative, ethereal, very beautiful, and beautifully used.  It's as if a giant cupped a portion of Prospero's enchanted isle in his hands and deposited it on stage... with crumby edges of dirt and roots left exposed.  The top surface (white carpet like mown grass) encourages the director and actors to roll, slide, crawl, fling themselves down, and make one of the most dramatic entrances ever.

Oddly though, costumes, also by Boritt, were... prosaic.  The black and white theme was strong - the stranded men-in-black become whiter with island dust and mud is a nice conceit - but overall...  Disappointing.  Particularly disappointing were costumes for other-worldy characters like Caliban or  Arial.  The monster?!  I'm restraining myself from smart-mouthed cracks about that monster: suffice to say it'd have better suited Chuck E. Cheese than Prospero's Isle.  (After thinking about it, I'd suggest some creature more crab-like or scorpion-like, in the dusty island colors than this velveteen puppy.)  Even Miranda's costumes were unromantic and, worse, unflattering.  How could the designer of this phantasmagorical set create mundane costumes?  Or... why?

But the set!  In those moments when the lighting design turned to the saturated colors that, for me, are magic onstage, this world was enchanted.

Image borrowed from The designcurve

Not a Review - The Wiz

Went to see the Dallas Theater Center's production of The Wiz.

A lot of fun!  I enjoyed the colors, the costumes, the singing, and especially the terrific dancing by Dallas Black Dance Theatre, who even pulled off "tornado" dancing.  The sets worked well... though they felt very traditionally proscenium style to me... considering that the big deal with this staging is the way audience seating pods move around.  I think they moved around too much - half as often would have been plenty - but it was great to see the seating change radically in this changeable space.  All in all a good production.

Minor quibble: more attention should have been taken in shielding the light booth from neighboring seats; the glow was distracting and it hurt sight-lines too.

Tornado sketch from my version of The Wiz, for WaterTower Theatre's summer kids' camp

Not a Review: Cabaret

Hard to believe, but though I knew the songs and story, I had never seen a production of Cabaret.  Which may give me a unique perspective on the Dallas Theater Center's version.

Singing, dancing, choreography...  amazing!  The first glimpse of the show is the M.C.'s arrival - memorable - then his "girls" and "boys."  (These and the jokes were as tawdry as expected, the physical gags rather more so.)  Story lines were fascinating: Sally Bowles and her writer; the landlady and her fruit-vendor suitor; the prostitute who up-grades from sailors to a nice Nazi-supporter.  The acting was so good that my heart broke first for the fruitier, then for his sweetheart, until I left nearly as bruised as the writer.  I wanted to shake Sally till her teeth rattled.  Both the prostitute and the Nazi were, if not exactly sympathetic... real-life sized and believable.  You could feel - way up in my balcony - the retired-tart just reveling in her new fur coat.  The Nazi...?  Believable.  And the ending tableau (which I won't spoil) was strong.  A powerful, beautifully realized production of a show whose fame I now understand, by director Joel Ferrell.  Go!  Buy tickets!

Bob Lavalee's set supported this well.  Nice to see an asymmetrical thrust in this space - a spare, well detailed arrangement of that thrust stage with a wider stage behind it and, behind that, the band on risers rather like restaurant booths.  Furniture and a doorway rolled in and out to furnish "rooms" on the thrust.  Behind and beside the band, stairs wound round to a L shaped bridge that worked perfectly as the boarding house hallway (occasionally clogged with sailors) and other "off" locations.  Behind this bridge a tall semi-sheer curtain sequestered further-off-stage acts like the writer's beating; from my seat, actors behind it were not always visible, but their gigantic shadows added a lot.  At the end, bridge and curtain played a very effective part.

A few quibbles and a little Dallas boosting: I got a little tired of furniture moving (show writers - do you think about multi-settings?).  I've heard some sight-lines are terrible and believe it - folks seated under the bridge can't see much of those scenes, for instance.  But my seat was okay, so why should I care?  (A very Cabaret viewpoint, that.)  The boosting?  How good to see Dallas talent put to use!  Mixed with visitors were many local actors/singers/dancers plus a local set designer and director.  Finally the DTC is becoming the foundation it should be for our arts community.