Arts Blog

During its New York run, Marco Rodriguez's revue of comic monologues by outsiders in Purgatory, Heaven Forbid(s)!, got good notices from a couple of magazines -- both Time Out NY and Edge New York.

Besides a live cast recording, already released, the Broadway critical hit Passing Strange will live on. No less exalted a filmmaker than Spike Lee filmed one of the final performances of the bio-musical by rocker Stew.

WRR-FM (101) and design jeweler Bachendorf's will host a special two-hour live broadcast benefiting Texas Ballet Theater from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday. Originating in the Bachendorf's store, at 8400 Preston Rd., the broadcast will be hosted by WRR's Christopher Hackett, and will include interviews with TBT officials and dancers, including artistic director Ben Stevenson and interim managing director Margo McCann.

The loss of at least one major sponsor has left the ballet company in precarious financial condition just weeks before the opening of the 2008-2009 season.

The Dallas Wind Symphony is back in the Meyerson Symphony Center this weekend, recording yet another CD for the audiophile label Reference Recordings. With 14 CDs already in the RR catalogue, this one will feature music by one of the most popular wind-band composers, the Australian-American Percy Grainger (1882-1961). The performances will include all the optional (and rarely heard) percussion parts in the scores.

"At several points we will have 15 percussionists, 28 members of the Arts District Chorale, piano, harmonium and celeste," says DWS co-founder and executive director Kim Campbell, "plus the usual assortment of woodwinds and brass augmented by bass saxophone and basset horn."

The CD is expected to be out by November.

George Steel, general director-designate of the Dallas Opera, met with members of the press today. Over sandwiches at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts preview center, Steel understandably didn't have much in the way yet of concrete proposals for the company. (He doesn't take over the job until Oct. 1) But he certainly sounded like a man determined to shake up a company that's been coasting too long in the same old ruts.

Moving into the new Winspear Opera House, in the fall of 2009, will open up possibilities for a more flexible schedule--as well as more sophisticated physical productions. Steel talked about bringing new diversity and adventure to a repertory that's seemed to get more conservative with each season. He also talked about presenting some performance in alternative venues--and about working more collaborately with other organizations in the Arts District. (It's been downright mind-boggling--stupid, really--how little collaborative programming and marketing has gone on among Dallas's arts organization in recent years.)

Whether, in the absence of much operatic experience, his 11 years of running Columbia University's Miller Theatre will make him well suited to the challenges of the Dallas Opera remains to be seen. But he's obviously smart and smooth, and we all wish him the best

Fred Curchack and Laura Jorgensen, whose Noh show was one of the highlights of the last theatrical season, will be back in the Undermain space performing their latest show, Monkey: The Quest to the West, Oct. 9-18.

A poor critic can't catch a break. WingSpan's Ghosts and Leonard's Car in the new TeCo Space in Oak Cliff also open that night -- and the rest of the weekend doesn't get any better. And I'm on vacation the next week. What's a guy to do?

The late Rudy Eastman and Joe Rogers created The Book of Job for downtown Fort Worth's Jubilee Theatre, but as Jubilee struggles to carve out a new identity after Mr. Eastman's death only a limited number of the partnership's old musicals are being done there. So Artisan Center Theater, based in Hurst, has invited frequent Jubilee star Sheran Goodspeed Keyton to direct the audience favorite. It will be the first time the show has been done outside Jubilee. Auditions will take place the first week in September for an Oct. 17 opening.

Richard Kind, who's playing the diabolical Mr. Applegate in Casa Manana's Damn Yankees, had a leading role in the Chicago and Washington Stephen Sondheim show that has never made it into New York, Bounce. The show will finally make it to the Big Apple this year, but without Fort Worth's Mr. Applegate and without that title. The Public Theater will produce a new version called Road Show, starring frequent Sondheim hands Michael Cerveris and Alexander Gemignani this fall.

Guide Live reported Saturday that TBT's trip to the China Shanghair International Arts Festival was in jeopardy because of a financial shortfall. The company needed to raise at least $75,000 by today to make the trip. According to Robin Arena, chairwoman of TBT, "China is such a dream for us."

But the company fell far short of its goal and had to cancel the trip. Watch GuideLive.com for more details.

Dallas may be seen as a step down from the Big Apple, but George Steel, newly-named general director of the Dallas Opera, will be making some big steps up. Columbia University's Miller Theatre, which he's headed for the last 11 years, has a budget of just $3.5 million, vs. the Dallas Opera's $12 million. And at the Miller Theatre he's only had to fill 688 seats vs. the 2,200 in the Winspear Opera House, due to open in Oct. 2009.

And then there's the question of aesthetic fit: "He is also leaving a theater known for imaginative contemporary- and early-music programming on the vaguely bohemian Upper West Side of Manhattan," Daniel J. Wakin writes in The New York Times, "for a Texas company whose approaching season is a study in war horsemanship."

In the Times story, Steel likens himself to Gerard Mortier, the provocative Belgian impresario who's leaving the Paris Opera to head New York City Opera. "I will certainly be the Mortier of Dallas," Steel told Wakin, "and then some."

The Dallas Opera badly needs some new vision and energy--and a formidable fundraiser. Let's hope Steel proves to be the man of the hour, or decade.

Victor Marshall, the mellifluous baritone voice of Dallas Symphony Orchestra broadcasts for 27 years, has been told WRR-FM can't pay him to continue this coming season. He was told he could do it for free, but otherwise the station would use one of its staff announcers for the broadcasts.

Victor has been a voice on WRR since -- gasp -- 1967, when he started out as an announcer. (Plenty of us remember him from then.) He went on to become the DSO's artistic administrator and a beloved figure both here and beyond. He's a legend among guest conductors and soloists for his knowledge of the field and gracious attentions to visiting artists. And, of course, there's that golden voice... At age 60, he's starting a phased retirement from the DSO this fall, but he'd planned to continue hosting the radio broadcasts.

American composer Donald Erb, who was the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's composer-in-residence for a time during the late 1960s and later taught composition at SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, has died at age 81. An Ohio native, Erb received a doctorate in composition from Indiana University and later became a composition professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

"He arrived as a young, radical, ripsnorting innovator," SMU clarinet professor emeritus Ross Powell writes of Erb's DSO stint, "and talked the DSO into starting a Contemporary Music Series in McFarlin Auditorium at SMU. Getting to know Don inspired me to found Voices of Change with Jo Boatright later, and he remained one our most staunch supporters through 30 years. We performed his music all over the world and recorded much of it."

In a surprise move, the Dallas Opera has ventured outside the world of opera for its next general director. George Steel, 41, executive director of Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York, will take the Dallas job Oct. 1. The job has been vacant since Karen Stone stepped down in September 2007. In 11 years at the Miller Theatre, Mr. Steel has been hailed for innovative programming, ranging from early music to jazz, ballet and contemporary opera, and bringing in new audiences.

Read the rest of the story here, then come back and tell us your thoughts.

Waiting to be seated at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas' A Streetcar Named Desire Saturday evening, I noticed a tall, handsome fellow leaning on a cane. After a triple-take, I realized it was Brian Loncar (the organization's board chairman and husband of its artistic director, Sue Loncar).

A few months back, Brian -- one of the city's most visible tort lawyers, thanks to his TV ads -- collided his Bentley with a fully loaded fire truck. He almost didn't make it, and spent a long time in the hospital. He had already been exercising and losing weight -- probably a very good preparation for being so badly injured. But he hadn't looked this thin.

As I chatted with him, my wife came up and clearly was mystified as to my interlocutor's identity. I had to introduce him -- twice -- before it sunk in who this was. Brian, in fact, looked like Sam Shepard with a bit of a limp. After I said this was Brian for a second time, Suzanne said, "Or a third of Brian."

In the absence of Sue, who was taking a trip to L.A. with two of the kids, Brian gave the curtain speech, quite a memorable one in its emotional impact. He climbed up and down the stairs to the stage unaided -- not bad for someone the doctors worried might not qalk again, or even live.

As I was driving to work this afternoon, I was behind a DART bus downtown -- and who should I see on the poster in the back but new Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty? I've been seeing so many posters of new Dallas Symphony conductor Jaap van Zweden that I was wondering when Kevin was going to get his turn.

But the slogan on the poster got to me. (I may have rearranged the words...I saw it several hours ago.) "Together We Can Be Brave" (or be courageous or take courage, don't hold me to it)

Huh? Certainly Mr. Moriarty's upcoming season is a courageous one, filled as it is with new works. But that strikes me as an odd way to lure people into the theater, to suggest that buying a ticket is liking enlisting in the army or fighting terrorism. If satire is what closes on Saturday night, a need for bravery is what warns people to stay home -- or so I would have thought.

Good luck to them, and the slogan certainly doesn't misrepresent the season. But...

To go along with the opening of Zanna, Don't!, Uptown Players announced its 2009 season. Once again there are two plays, two musicals, a gala revue spread over two weekends and a parody-in-drag performed off-site in the Rose Room. The headliners are the area premiere of the Tony Award-winning The History Boys and the first locally produced version of Altar Boyz (though the tour has already played at the Majestic).

Producer Craig Lynch assures me that plans are still afoot to build a new, larger space in Oak Lawn. That makes three area theaters likely to be moving into larger new digs, along with the Dallas Theater Center and (most probably) WaterTower Theatre.

The full list and dates are after the break below:

For this Olympiad, The Guardian 's Alex Marshall thought it fitting to track down the 205 national anthems that could possibly be played for winning athletes and give them a critical ranking. That was easier said than done, and he found the results of his quest less than scintillating.

Here's more from his report:

If so, maybe you can help solve a mystery for fellow attendee Sandy from McKinney. She inquired in an e-mail:

Christy,

I didn't know who to direct this question to, so I hope you don't mind if I ask you for help.

After the 2pm Matinee of "Jersey Boys" yesterday, a man stood up on the second level of the stage and waved to the roaring crowd.

I couldn't get my binoculars up fast enough to see who it was. Is there anyway you could find out if it could have been Frank[ie] Valli?

We would really like to know.

The show was fantastic, and the performers were exceptional.

Thank you so much,

Sandy

Do you have any clues? Let us know.

Had a nice chat Monday with Doug Adams, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's CEO-designate. Currently holding the same job with the Colorado Symphony, he's cool, personable and articulate -- speaks in complete and coherent sentences. He was popular in his previous stint with the DSO, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as general manager. He should be a breath of fresh air after Fred Bronstein, who's a very smart guy -- and was a savvy manager of the DSO's music-director search -- but was widely unpopular with the staff.

Blanche Dubois may still be depending on the kindness of strangers, but the audience never got to hear her say so at Friday night's opening of A Streetcar Named Desire at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. We were already three hours and 15 minutes into the show when Kyle May, playing the doctor who is taking Blanche to the sanatorium, half-collapsed. There were a few moments of confusion onstage until director Rene Moreno said "Call!" from the side balcony -- meaning the show was officially interrupted. The actors and a few members of the audience lowered Mr. May to the floor and looked after his needs. Somebody called 911, and the actors ministered to their colleague -- looking very different from their late 1940s characters -- until the EMTs arrived. The medics walked Mr. May offstage and soon pronounced him OK.

People lingered for five or ten minutes as a decision was reached whether to finish the play (with a stage manager substituting for the recovering actor). But the magic was broken. People clapped and there was a perfunctory curtain call. The opening night party reflected the general disappointment.

Mr. May is expected to return to the show for Saturday's performance.

Up to those final minutes, though, the performance had been going swimmingly. Look for a review online late Saturday and in Sunday's paper.