Arts Blog

At the National New Play Network's annual conference, which Kitchen Dog Theater hosted here in Dallas last month, the local pups got voted two awards. One was for a show already finished, in fact -- the rolling premiere of Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, which headlined KDT's new play festival in May.

The big news, for us at least, is that a writer nominated by Kitchen Dog, Elaine Romero, received the annual new play commission for her piece Ponzi.

It's a real mark of how serious that mid-cities community institution, Artisan Center Theater, is about upping the ante that it has hired John Davidson as artistic director, effective Aug. 1. Wilkerson just directed a successful My Fair Lady for the company -- and that was surprise enough, since Wilkerson is hardly a community theater sort of guy.

He had been appearing on Broadway and in major national tours for years when he did a couple of guest stints in the Dallas area -- most notably playing Emile de Beque in the Dallas Theater Center's fabulous South Pacific a decade ago. Then he and his wife, a Dallas native, moved here to found a very ambitious new company about five years ago. After a production of State Fair in Grapevine that didn't get the audience it deserved, the company folded. But Wilkerson and his wife, Margaret Shafer, have made occasional local appearances, and he has been touring as one of the Three Redneck Tenors (though he's actually a baritone).

Wilkerson will be running Artisan's educational program and directing four shows a year with the company, beginning with a Mikado that holds auditions July 13 and 14.

It's odd that this comes the week that Theatre Arlington announced that it will no longer have an artistic director, with the departure of B.J. Cleveland. Artisan's future will certainly need watching.

Matt and Kim Lyle moved to Chicago nearly a year ago, but they've stayed active with two new shows from Matt's hand at area theaters. Now they are reprising their hit The Boxer for one night only, Aug. 22, before they take it to the New York Fringe Festival. The performance will be at 8 p.m. at the Dallas Children's Theater's Rosewood Center for Family Arts. Tickets are $20 through July 10, $30 thereafter -- the show is a benefit for the Fringe trip. Call 214-334-1659. or go to www.theboxer.org.

(Photo of Jeff Swearingen and Kim Lyle by Mark Oristano)

Since the current show in Theatre Three's basement, Woody Guthrie's American Song, is set mostly in the Depression, it's appropriate that the organization is offering people who have been laid off in the current economic crisis an amazing deal. They can see the show for a nickel -- it they call and reserve a "nickel special" ticket and bring a pink slip or other proof of unemployment when they attend.

Russ Jolly, the former Broadway actor now in business in Richardson, frequently has good stories about his days and connections in New York. (He was a prime source about Rent creator Jonathan Larson when I did a feature biography on the late composer some years ago.)

Russ worte this morning about his connection to the Woody Guthrie review now in the basement of Theatre Three, which was created by Peter Glazer:

Peter Glazer was first assistant stage manager during the original run of Big River and to my recollection called the cues during the majority of the performances. He's teaching at UC Berkeley now and has a great old Berkeley vibe. Anyway, he had me and another cast member from Big River along with two other actors do the first staged/sung-thru reading of American Song way back in 85 or 86 while we were stilling running Big River. We performed it at The Writer's Theatre which was a small company founded by Tom Fontana who was the creator of St. Elsewhere. I recently reconnected with Peter and have kept in touch with the others in the first cast Linda Kerns, Nicole Orth and Scott Wakefield, who appears on Texas stages on occasion. It's always funny for me to read about shows like this 25 years later and recall the humble origins.

(File photo of Russ Jolly from 2003, Willy Welch and Alexander Ross in Woody Guthrie's American Song by Ken Birdsell courtesy of Theatre Three)

The Lexus Broadway Series, the tour presenter for the new Winspear Opera House about to open at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts in October, is scooping its own first show. The Lincoln Center South Pacific is the first subscription item in December. But today the organization announced that it is bringing Billy Crystal's Tony Award-winning one-man show, 700 Sundays, from Nov. 17 through Nov. 22.

Crystal's tribute to his late father set the record for one-week sales for any non-musical show on Broadway back in 2005. A short tour hit some American cities and Australia. AFter a two-year hiatus, the actor-comedian is reviving the piece for a six-city tour.

It's a coup for the series and the DCPA to get a star as big as Crystal duriing its first month of regular operation. Tickets go on sale in July and will be available only to subscribers of the main Lexus Broadway Series.

(Photo by Carol Rosegg)

Matthew Posey subtitles his new piece "An Autopsy of Hunter S. Thompson," and that gives a pretty good sense of what the show is about. The famous "Gonzo" journalist is holed up in an L.A. motel, drinking and tripping and hallucinating. His bed morphs into a car before our eyes, so the hero can go on an imaginary road trip with a couple of hallucinated buddies and (sometimes) his estranged son. At other points, Posey as Thompson sits at a table, typing his "new journalism" Occasionally he pulls out a gun to menace others in paranoid fashion or to threaten suicide.

Like Johnny Simons at Fort Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre, Posey creates an enormous amount of new material. By my count, this is his fourth world premiere since his new Exposition Park space, Ochre House, opened last October.Also like Simons, Posey's ideas are often brilliant -- but the worst ones often don't get weeded out and the best ones sometimes don't get developed or polished.

I probably enjoyed this piece more than the two other Posey plays I've seen in the last year. I especially liked the way Ross Mackey, who also plays the son, stands in the doorway playing electric guitar for almost the whole show. Mackey's original music and sound design is quite brilliant -- the sounds are frequently surf-ish during the short first act (like his band's, Astrochrist, presumably), more psychedelic during the wilder second act.

Another impressive element is the frequent changes of tone to the whole show -- an especially dramatic switch right before the end. The use of video adds something too, though that's one of the elements that might have been developed more given more time and resources.

Of course, Posey -- a pioneer in alternative Dallas theater back in the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage days -- remains one of most hilarious and eccentric comic actors. There's more depression than laughter in this show, but it's memorable just the same. It runs through June 27.

Only one real surprise tonight, as you can see from my Tony story -- Elton John snubbed again for his score for Billy Elliot. I'll admit it was perhaps the least distinctive element in the show, and I've never been a particular fan of the singer-composer. But when Mel Brooks could pick up a Tony for music (dreck) when his show The Producers swept in 2001, surely John deserved a little credit here...especially since it was his idea to make a stage musical of the hit movie in the first place.

It was sweet the three kids one best actor, and they were winsome in their confusion over what to say. But it was a REALLY bad idea to put perfunctory excerpts of touring musicals on the broadcast. The shows didn't look their best in the first place, so the desired effect of luring audiences was an unlikely result. Nobody wanted to see five avatars of Franki Valli (from Jersey Boys) flailing away while we waited to see whether Next to Normal might just upset Billie for best musical.

It didn't, of course.

Wow, (Sir) Elton John lost out to the obscure composers of Next to Normal for best score. The man can't get no respect on Broadway. Could it harbinge an upset on the order of Avenue Q instead of Wicked??? Nah, it couldn't happen...could it?

Billy Elliot is definitely going to win a great many awards, though not quite sweep. (It lost the costume design prize to Shrek.) The most moving moment in the preliminary hour in which the design awards were handed out came from book writer Lee Hall (who also wrote the script for the original Billy Elliot movie). He talked about the moment in the movie where Billie's dad comes to London to see him dance as an adult. They weren't able to find a way to put that in the stage version, he said, but it happened in real life -- for the second time -- when his dad came to see the musical. That moment in the movie was based on the event in Hall's real life.

7:12 p.m. (CDT) Even more touching was most of that opening montage. Going from Elton John singing a number from Billy Elliot as the three boys danced, then adding West Side Story and Guys and Dolls (at the same time!). Then going to with every other musical on Broadway, more or less -- Dolly Parton and her cast from 9 to 5, Liza Minnelli, and everybody all at once with the cast of Hair in "Let the Sun Shine In." Even the stars in the audience were shouting.

Then some good jokes from Doogie Howser...and on to Jane Fonda. Wow.

We'll be here blogging about the Tony Awards as they are handed out tonight. Join us with your observations, beefs or WHAT-THE-HEYS.

Kitchen Dog Theater has been uncharacteristically tardy in getting out the details of the staged readings that make up much of its annual New Works Festival (which opens this Friday, after all). So far, I can't even find the details on the KDT website, although I've pushed about every button I can find. But, dear readers, if you push on past the break, you can find the names of plays and playwrights and times of performance right here!

Cara Mia Theatre, which has been inactive awhile, will return to the boards of the Latino Cultural Center December 9-19 with an original play, Crystal City 1969. This new work by former Cara Mia artistic director David Lozano (right in file photo) and Raul Trevino deals with a civil rights protest by Mexican-American students. Political theater isn't the usual yuletide fare -- and so much the better for Cara Mia!

Jonathan Norton is setting up a new group called the Playwrights' Forum, which he hopes will be meeting on the last Saturday of each month at Teco's Bishop Arts District Theatre in Oak Cliff. Here's the official announcement:

• ATTENTION: LOCAL PLAYWRIGHTS
• You are invited to attend the first meeting of
• The Playwrights' Forum.
• SAVE THE DATE
• Saturday, June 27th 2009, 12pm @ The Bishop Arts Theater Center
• 215 S. Tyler Street. Dallas, TX 75208
• About The Playwrights Forum:
• Here's how it works. Each meeting will follow a book club format. Each month 3 - 4 playwrights will submit up to 30 pages of a play they are writing via email. The group will read each submission and then we will meet once a month to give feedback and encouragement. Monthly meetings might also consist of the following activities:
• Impromptu readings of selections from that month's work * Share and tackle fun writing exercises
• Gripe * Share resources and information * Gripe some more
• Meetings will take place at the Bishop Arts Theater Center thanks to the generous donation of meeting space by TeCo Theatrical Productions. Tentatively, meetings are scheduled for the last Saturday of each month.
• To RSVP for June 27th or If You Are Not Able to Attend But Would Like to Learn More:
• Please email Jonathan Norton at nortonj@smu.edu or contact Jonathan Norton at 214-694-8755 daytime or 214-768-8254 evening. Or contact TeCo Theatrical Productions at 214-948-0716 for more info.
• We Hope to See You There.

Theatre Three has been saying that its production of 'Lost in the Stars' is attracting national attention, and they're not exaggerating. At last night's opening, Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout was on the top row checking out the rarely performed Kurt Weill musical tragedy. Jerome Weeks, who was sitting next to him, brought him over at intermission to chat with the Dallas Theater Center's Kevin Moriarty and Lee Trull (and me). No mention of the show yet on Teachout's popular and always interesting blog, About Last Night, but I can't wait to read his impressions.

Former Dallas Morning News colleague Tom Sime has another new production in the Big Apple. His vampire thriller Bloodletters, seen in Dallas last year, runs Wednesday through May 29 in the basement space of the Bleecker Street Theatre, where Tom is playwright in residence. The production is under the aegis of the Modern Stage, Tom's own company, and Joe Black.

Not much suspense as we build up to June 7's Tony Awards: Elton John's "Billy Elliott' swept another round of awards yesterday as it won 10 Drama Desk categories. This event wasn't much help in predicting which show will win the drama Tony, since the winner there was Lynn Nottage's off-Broadway Pulitzer Prize honoree, 'Ruined.'

We ran a story this morning taken from a WFAA-TV news report last night about the Dallas Summer Musicals' management group deciding not to manage downtown's Majestic Theatre any longer. I talked to DSM president Michael A. Jenkins today about the story -- I was worried that his company no longer intended to present or produce in the Majestic space, long the home of its winter series (and recently the venue for Frost/Nixon and The Pajama Game tours).

Jenkins said that the story didn't include the whole picture. In June, DSM's 10-year lease to manage the Majestic expires. He doesn't want to renew it under the current terms because, he says, $1 million over the last decade. His group isn't averse to submitting a new proposal to manage the building, according to Jenkins -- so long as it is protected against such a loss. Not only will all the DSM events booked into the Majestic take place as previously announced, the company is booking shows into the space next year. It even hopes to produce a prominent world premiere there -- to make that happen, Jenkins will be on a plane to New York tomorrow.

I'm sure part of the Summer Musicals' upsetment over its terms at the Majestic involves the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, set to open in the fall. It will host a series in direct competition with DSM -- and the city is being asked to subsidize the venue, while he's been losing money on a city-owned space. We'll wait and see whether the DSM management group will still be in control of the Majestic after all, on more favorable terms.

(File photo of Michael Jenkins at last year's DSM gala, along with Dolly Parton -- who wrote the songs for the current Broadway musical 9 to 5, partially backed by the Dallas organization.)

Television star Neil Patrick Harris will host the Tony Awards, to be broadcast on CBS June 7. You might not identify the former Doogie Howser as a stage luminary, but he did star in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and step into the run of Rent for a while as Mark. The Tonys tend to be TV's best, most literate awards show, full of genuine (and apparently spontaneous) wit -- though not always We can hope that Harris is up to it. He's funny, I hear, on How I Met Your Mother...but is that him or the script writers?

Dallas playwrights, take heart if it seems that your local theater companies are less interested in you than some out of town ones are. I talked this afternoon to Yussef El Guindi, who wrote Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming new play festival main attraction, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes. El Guindi lives in Seattle, a city with a reputation as one of America's best theater scenes. But none of the companies there have produced him (though one gave him a prize).

Things were much the same two years ago for Allison Moore, thrice produced at KDT and a semi-regular at Louisville's Humana Festival. She hadn't had a major production in her base town, Minneapolis, either -- and that's another of the country's cities with great theatrical reputations.

By the way, if you're a theater person thinking of moving to Seattle, don't. El Guindi says the smaller companies there have mostly imploded because of the current economic crisis. Besides, we all want you to stay right here.

(Photo of Yussef El Guindi courtesy Kitchen Dog Theater)

The Hip Pocket will be back in its larger (outdoor) space northwest of Fort Worth again this summer, we hear, after a season in which they had to move to a corner of the property because of some code issues. This new season is heavy on interesting adapations -- something Johnny Simons does very well. My wife remembers the fear our first trip to Hip Pocket inspired her during the company's first season. I was so impressed by their version of Tarzan that she was afraid I was going to run off and join the circus...and we weren't even married yet.

After the break, you'll find the details as the theater sent them to me.

I've had emails from several arts organizations, including Theatre Three and Dallas Children's Theater, about the possibility of getting matching dollars for your contributions to some groups on one day only, Wednesday, May 20. Read after the break to see the information that Theatre Three sent me.

This came in from Undermain artistic director Katherine Owens on Friday, while I was out on vacation:

David Rabe was in town for last Saturday's performance of The Black Monk at Undermain. He landed just before the tornadoes blew in and though the storm forced us to move our celebration indoors we managed to get everyone on the set for an after-show dinner.

Second Thought Theatre will be doing a staged reading of a script by one of its founders, Steven Walters, this Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, at WaterTower Theatre's studio space. Steven has moved to Los Angeles after his season on "Friday Night Lights," but he's still got his Baylor-nourished obsession with spirituality: The new play, "Little Light," is about a religious writer in a crisis of faith who meets up with a woman who works in a gentleman's club.

I don't usually get to staged readings, but I'd make an exception of this one -- if I didn't already have commitments both nights. Hope you can make it and let us know how it turns out.

(File photo of Steven Walters in a show with Diane Worman.)

Winners of New York's Outer Critics Circle Awards were announced this morning. No big surprise that "Billy Elliott" waltzed off with the most, seven. Slightly more surprising, "Shrek the Musical" did pretty well too, with both top acting honors and some design prizes. All in all, looks pretty much like I expect the Tonys will look in three weeks.

I've always been a big admirer of Jonathan Larson's score for Rent, not to speak of his witty, literate lyrics -- unique in such a "rock"-oriented show, I think. I love the way the songs pay homage to Broadway tradition, too: "Light My Candle" is in the line of great boy-meets-girl-and-changes-his-attitude songs, such as "People Will Say We're in Love" or " If I Loved You," while "La Vie Boheme" is a wonderful list song in the tradition of "You're the Top" -- and even dirtier! Also, Larson found a way to do musical recitative such as the stuff Schoenberg and Boublil wrote for Les Miz -- only it's good.

At the opening of the Dallas stop of the show's final tour last night, though, my appreciation ran even deeper. (Did I mention I was on the verge of tears during the whole first act and much of the second? This is powerful stuff.) This time I recognized more of Larson's achievement in putting his songs and even smaller units into larger forms. What came to mind, strangely, were the Act II finale of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and the Beatles' Abbey Road (especially that highly unified second side of the original LP). Like Wolferl and the Merseysiders, Larson cuts and layers his snippets of tunes together, occasionally breaking for a big song, but more often letting the thing flow. I even heard things that reminded me of symphonic development -- which made me take another listen to the way the composer uses that old musical comedy technique of the reprise in Act II. He doesn't just bring back the melody for another go-round to send the folks out humming. He uses it to make something fresh.

I'm not saying that Rent is as great as Le nozze, maybe not even as important as Abbey Road. But it's a masterpiece of its own kind.

I even found myself adjusting to Mimi's revival in the last scene. After all, in this libretto, Angel becomes a kind of double for Mimi -- and we've already had to face that death. I think it was one of the show's producers who made that argument to me in an interview some years ago. This time, though, I bought it.

Get yourself to the Music Hall. No day but today! (or at least today through Sunday!)

(Joan Marcus photo of Adam Pascal as Roger and Lexi Lawson as Mimi)

A story in today's Variety reminds us how many big, big names got blanked in the Tony nominations that came out yesterday. In so doing, it reminds us just how star-studded the season just concluded was.

A great many Oscar winners (Susan Sarandon, Dianne Wiest) and previous Tony winners (too numerous to count), not to speak of mere celebrities like Daniel Radcliffe (see photo) and Katie Holmes, got snubbed.

I wasn't at all surprised by the Tony Award nominations for the 2008-2009 Broadway season just announced in New York. Billy Elliott has seemed to me the obvious show to clean up at the awards this year, ever since I saw it in New York last December. (Heck, you could have predicted its sucess several years before that, when it killed in London.) A couple of the recent "preliminary" award nomination lists saw 9 to 5 running ahead of Billy Elliott in number of nominations. But when 9 to 5 opened over the weekend, it got poor to middling reviews, especially from the New York Times. The Tony nominators are usually very influenced by those reivews.

The drama categories are far less clear, of course, This year's Pulitzer Prize for drama went to an off-Broadway show. (That was pretty standard for several years back in the 1990s but has been less frequent recently.) So there was no home-grown favorite. Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage has seemed to be tops on most lists and was today. (I've never been a fan of the French playwright's work, but I haven't seen this one.) If Reasons to Be Pretty by Neil LaBute pulls off an upset and gets a long run, that could throw a cramp in the Dallas Theater Center's plans to include it in its LaBute trilogy at the new Wyly Theatre next spring. For Texans, it was great to see the late Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate on the short list. It's not Foote's best play, but it still tops anything most lesser playwrights turn out.

The three boys who alternate in the title role of Billy Elliott -- David Alvarez, Kiril Kulish and Trent Kowalik -- are nominated as a single entity for best actor in in a musical. The file photo of them at right shows them in Times Square right after they landed the job.

Fort Worth's Artes de la Rosa is cancelling its annual Cinco de Mayo Festival scheduled for Saturday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m.. They are still planning all other May events at the Rose Marine Theater including Latin Express on Friday, May 22. Call them at 817-624-8333 if you have questions.

Jo Ann Holt of the Dallas Summer Musicals says she just talked to Michael Jenkins (who went to New York today for the opening of 9 to 5 - I saw him at the Majestic last night!). The DSM has no plans to cancel regular performances. But some school groups have canceled plans to attend Rent next week, and they are giving the schools full refunds.

Kimberly Richard says Theatre Three has no shows of its own up right now. The Nibroc Trilogy transfers to their basement tonight, but she has heard of no plans to change its schedule

From the Dallas Theater Center's Jake Cigainero: Dallas Theater Center hasn't experienced any absentee ticket buyers or loss in ticket sales due to the H1N1 flu virus situation. We fully intend to continue on with the regular performance schedule of Sarah, Plain and Tall through May 24 as long as we are able to do so in a safe and healthy environment. DTC will closely monitor the situation and comply with any city recommendations in the interest of public health.

This weekend's performance of As Thousands Cheer and all upcoming programming at the Irving Arts Center will continue as scheduled. The galleries and Sculpture Garden remain open for normal hours. Patrons are advised to use precautionary measures such as washing hands regularly, and covering nose and mouth when they cough and/or sneeze. For more information visit www.irvingartscenter.com

When I was visiting with the creators of the musical "Sarah, Plain and Tall," which has a boffo production currently running at the Dallas Theater Center, I learned one especially fun fact. The role of the little boy, here played with amazing aplomb by area sixth-grader Max Ary, is one of the few for which the people who originally performed and toured the one-act children's version who didn't return for this enlarged version.

Frankly, it would be a little weird if the original actor had. He's John Lloyd Young, who won the 2006 Tony Award for best actor in a musical as Four Season Frankie Valli in "Jersey Boys." Both roles, of course, used that phenomenal falsetto that made the adult actor able to sub for a youngster, when an actual child could have easily have gone on that two-van national tour.

"Sarah" composer Laurence O'Keefe agreed with me that his pal Young had been one of the things that really made "Jersey Boys." That show is not quite the same without him. Fortunately, young Max is so good you don't miss his predecessor in his current role.

(File photo of John Lloyd Young receiving his Tony Award)

Contemporary Theatre of Dallas has extended its hit production of The Cemetery Club through May 17 (no performance on Thursday the 14, though).

In my review of the Dallas Theater Center's world premiere of the expanded Sarah, Plain and Tall, I made an implied comparison to musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein and others. Normally, that's not a fruitful way to talk about a new work. But it seemed particularly appropriate in this case because the piece has so many parallels to the R&H classics and other musicals of that golden era.

The most obvious parallel is with The Sound of Music, since the first time we see the Kansas widower and his family, he is forbidding them to sing. The Sound of Music often gets a bad rap from critics because it IS slighter than the Big 4 R&H shows. Those others all actually contain the death of a major character (Jud, Billy Bigelow, Lt. Cable and the King of Siam) -- as well as serious threats to other characters.

The Sound of Music doesn't contain a death -- but it does have God and Nazis to give it a deeper, more universal context. "Climb Every Mountain," admittedly, carries a whiff or a rather cheesy sort of spirituality. But at least we see the relationship of the man, his children and the potential new mother as part of a much bigger, more meaningful world.

More after the break.

(Sarah Plain and Tall - (L-R) Kate Wetherhead as Anna Becca Ayers as Sarah background Herndon Lackey as Jacob - photo by Brandon Thibodeaux, courtesy Dallas Theater Center.)

The Drama Desk Award nominations came out today. Much more than the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the new dramas nominated come from Off Broadway. One interesting surprise: The stage musical versino of "9 to 5," which hasn't officially opened yet, topped 'Billy Elliott" in number of nominations. That's mostly because all three stars in the Dolly Parton tuner got nods, whereas the young boys in "Billy Elliott" didn't. I still think "Billy Elliott" will walk off with the top Tony Awards, but it's nice to know it might be a horse race.

A week later than Tina Parker promised it in her as-usual-hilarious curtain speech at "Titus Andronicus" last Friday, she sent over the announcment of Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming season. It has new plays by three playwrights who have had great productions at KDT recently -- Allison Moore, Zayd Dohrn and Noah Haidle. I have to admit that one playwright's name is entirely new to me, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb.

A switch on the one classic entry: KDT has done oodles of Shakespeare over the years, often in high-concept productions like the current "Titus." But for the first time, it will do Chekhov next season. "The Seagull" should be a good match for the company. But, my, my -- have I seen many versions of "The Seagull" hereabouts, most of them quite memorable. Richard Hamburger's may have been the best thing he ever did at Dallas Theater Center, Katherine Owens' was lovely at Undermain Theatre, and (much longer ago) the late Norma Young and Hugh Feagin made a dashing older couple at Theatre Three. I know I saw a fine recent production at UT-Dallas, too, and I have a faint recollection that I might have seen one at Stage West, though I wouldn't swear to it.

So many Seagulls so far away from the ocean!

A few seats down the row from us at the opening of "As Thousands Cheer" at Lyric Stage tonight, Broadway director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall was sitting with Mr. (and I take it Mrs.) Roger Horchow. Marshall directed the Tony-winning Broadway revival of "Pajama Game" three seasons ago, but national audiences know her best as the director of the more recent "Grease" revival -- partly because she was one of the judges on the reality TV star search for the musical, "You're the One That I Want."

Marshall's connection with Horchow is that she choreographed his super version of "Kiss Me, Kate" (can it really have been a decade ago?!). I hear she's also good friends with former "Forbidden Broadway" star Diana Sheehan, who's making a hilarious local debut in "As Thousands Cheer."

If you get to Irving Arts Center for the show, be sure to check out Mark Oristano's really interesting photography show, "Hollywood/1935." It features portraits of many local theatrical celebs -- but in the style of the old-line Hollywood glamour publicity photos. I especially liked the one of Jac Alder sitting in three Theatre Three seats simultaneously. The one of Regan Adair makes him look like a leading man of the era, too. I hear the show had previously been up at KD Studio Theatre, but I missed it there. Don't you miss out this time!

Coy Covington, the actor who frequently and hilariously works at Uptown Players in drag, is a regularly columnist over at TheaterJones.com. His current piece about why actors work when they don't get paid and what they make when they do is a great. read.

(Mike Morgan file photo of Coy in Uptown's Die, Mommie, Die.)

WaterTower Theatre (like Theatre Three -- see below) announced its season at a party last night. An email glitch kept the lineup from me until just now. (Forced to choose, I remained neutral and went to neither shindig!)

The good news is that after a season in which two previously announced shows were replaced to lower production costs, WaterTower is again tackling some scripts with large casts -- a couple of them musicals. The season starts off with a bang with Park Cities native Doug Wright's masterly Grey Gardens. (I was rather expecting it to show up on either the Dallas Theater Center or the Theatre Three season, since both have connections to Wright.) The season ends with a revival of a personal favorite, The Full Monty -- which had a prize-winning production at Theatre Threee a few seasons ago but which I'm always ready to see again.

The bad news is that, as artistic director Terry Martin warned might have to happen because of the current economic climate, WaterTower has had to suspend its Studio Series, which has brought some interesting smaller shows to the company's second space over the last two years. Here's hoping that better times will enable WaterTower to try again soon -- and that Second Thought Theatre, which has been resident in the same space for several seasons, will muster the energy to keep on going. With the founders all having moved on, it has been hard for Second Thought to hold on. But it has still been producing some excellent work.

The full WaterTower season announcement follows after the break.

When you glance at Theatre Three's upcoming season, announced this evening, it's enough to get your blood-pressure going: "Royal Family" and William Finn's name in close proximity! For years, the Broadway composer has been working on a musical loosely based on the Kaufman-Ferber comedy. Could it possibly be that, miraculously, the rights problem finally got solved and, even more miraculously, the Dallas company got dibs on the project?

No, it couldn't alas. Theatre Three opens its season with the play, sans music, in June. The next show up will be Finn's "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Great shows, both, but still....

The complete text of the press release announcing the whole season comes after the break:

Broadway star and director Tommy Tune will be in Fort Worth for National Top Dance Day at Arts Fifth Avenue, 1628 Fifth Ave., at 8 p.m. on Monday, May 25.

The great, still underrated actor Stacy Keach will be touring through Dallas in Frost/Nixon next week, and I interviewed him for an advance feature today. He plays President Nixon, of course, but he told an interesting story about another Commander in Chief.

The actor, who played a small role in W, last year's movie about the presidency of George W. Bush, says that while the 43rd President was in office, audiences seemed to link his Nixon character to the current incumbent. Responses in blue states were quite different than n red states. Keach says that has changed since Bush left office.

Interestingly, President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara -- longtime Keach fans -- came backstage to congratulate the star when Frost/Nixon played Houston. The 41st President asked the actor whether he thought he should see the W movie, and Keach remarked that it did have a rather negative take on the relationship between the two Presidents Bush. Still, the former President said, "I guess I need to see it," according to Keach.

It will be interesting to see whether President George W. Bush and Laura come to see the show here in Dallas.

{Photo of Stacy Keach in Frost/Nixon by Carol Rosegg.)

Neiman Marcus' downtown store will feature displays of Dallas Theater Center costumes, photographs and designs in window displays and in-store viignettes May 1-18. Except for a 1965 production of The Tempest, the displays will mostly be devoted to work down in the 21st century.

The Pulitzer Prize committee announced today it has awarded Lynn Nottage's Ruined its award for drama for 2009. The play opened at Chicago's Goodman Theatre last November and runs at the Manhattan Theatre Club through May 10. Nottage's previoius work includes Intimate Apparel (produced locally last year at WaterTower Theatre) and Crumbs from the Table of Joy (which had fine productions at Dallas Theater Center and Jubilee Theater). The 45-year-old, a graduate of Brown University and Yale Drama School, is only the second African-American woman to win the drama Pulitzer, after 2002's Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog.

Veteran actor (and filmmaker) Kevin Nash wrote me his reaction to Kitchen Dog's over-the-top Titus Andronicus. His tagline is "What a mess -- and I'm not talking about the mutilations, blood and gore."

He goes on to say:

• Kitchen Dog Theater's production of Titus Andronicus is an example of how an ill-conceived attempt to change the geography or time frame of a Shakespeare play for its own sake can go terribly wrong.

[In Ben Torres' photo, Rukhmani Desai (Lavinia), (center, is held captive by actors Andres Ortiz (Demetrio), left, and Micah Figueroa (Quiron) as she listens to Christina Vela (Tamora).]

The rest of his comments are after the break.

The Outer Critics Circle Awards are the closest thing to a predictor for the Tony Awards that cap the Broadway season every year. (They're different, in that they include off-Broadway stuff, but that's mostly in separate categories.) To judge from the nominees announced today, Billy Elliott seems to have a leg up on best musical (no big surprise there). There doesn't seem to be an overwhelming favorite for best Broadway play. Interesting that that Jane Fonda didn't get a nod from the critics for her return to the stage in 33 Variations, fhough the play got a nomination.

There's one intriguing, if not puzzling, thing in the upcoming Dallas Theater Center season announced yesterday. It's rather rare for the company to produce a recent American play that has already been produced locally. But as part of its The Beauty Plays package of dramas by Neil LaBute, the DTC will be doing Fat Pig, which Kitchen Dog Theater produced only three years ago.

That's odd enough, but even stranger is an addendum on one version of the press release/announcement. Dallas Theater Center company members Lee Trull and Christina Vela are also Kitchen Dog company members. They did two of the four roles in Fat Pig at KDT. I'd have thought that DTC would be trying to dish up something quite different from the previous local production in order to distinguish the two versions from each other -- but both Trull and Vela, the release says, will be in The Beauty Plays. Since DTC plays to produce the three four-character dramas with only six actors rotating among them (although staged by three separate directors), it would seem that Trull and Vela are likely to do the same roles again. Weird. (File photo of Christina Vela and Lee Trull with Ian Leson in the Kitchen Dog Fat Pig.)

One of the most astounding pieces of writing on music I've ever read comes on jazz pianist Ethan Iverson's blog "Do the Math" currently. Everson, the keyboard player for the wonderfully hip trio The Bad Plus, is what he calls a "fan boy" of the French-Canadian classical pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin. Hamelin has a lot of fans, includiing in Plano and Dallas where he has played and even recorded. But few know the man's recordings at the depth that Everson does. In this long, long intervew, he goes into details of music and interpretation that only a fellow-musician could manage. I count myself a Hamelin fan, too; I've been listening to and even reviewing his recordings for over 15 years. But I was floored by the comprehensiveness and intensity of the communication in this exchange.

Read it! Read it all the way through! Then go online and buy all the recordings of both guys.

Jocelyn Wiebe is directing a staged reading of the Bard's late and seldom performed romance Cymbeline for Shakespeare Dallas's Shakespeare Unplugged series. The performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Bath House Cultural Center. They're general admission, free for SD members, $5 for others.

Bruce Richardson -- usually a composer and sound designer! -- will follow with the even rarer Timon of Athems on May 1 & 2.

DTC publicist Jake Cigainero emailed me a copy of the speech Kevin Moriarty gave at this morning's official announcement of the company's upcoming season. It's long (as blog entires go, at least), but it contains a lot of juicy bits, including the news that company member Sean Hennigan will play Scrooge in next December's A Christmas Carol -- an appetizing prospect. I have copied the whole thing into the space after the break for those who want to know the whole scoop.

Here is Kevin's own account of the highlights of his message, excerpted from an email he sent me himself:

Among the highlights - beyond the colorful and entertaining guessing game building up to each play - was information about our upcoming 50th Anniversary events this spring (including a season-ending party at the Kalita which will include a conversation with past artistic directors and company members, together for the first time on stage at the Kalita) and the publication of a new commmemorative book celebrating our history. Also, I announced that in the coming months we'll be announcing three commissions of new plays from important American plawrights. And we looked back at the values underlying our work in the past year.

I have been meaning to catch up with Mark-Brian Sonna Productions since I had a tip from a trusted reader last year that the company's unorthodox interpretation of Dante's Inferno was really interesting. (My previous experiences with the for-profit group, which produces a full season at Addison's Stone Cottage, hadn't been all that encouraging.) So I ventured a look at the first performance of a new translation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by Ian Johnston last night -- a world premiere for this version.

While the show doesn't work entirely, I found it more interesting than the other MBS shows I have seen. It plays to Sonna's strenghts (he's a trained dancer with a love for the classics as well as a passion for mounting new work). Continue after the break to see my thoughts in more detail.

To prepare for Stephen Sondheim's upcoming visit to Dallas, the Dallas Institute has asked Theatre Three's Jac Alder and Lyric Stage's Steven Jones to give talks on April 7 and 21, respectively. Details and ticket prices are after the break.

This just in from Angela:

I am excited about the read-through with the actors and director later on this week. My hope is that I get a sense that day of how close the play is to "ready" for a full-fledged first production. This is the first script I have written that will force me to look for a first producer because of the design elements. High ceilings for suspending Harry Houdini upside down and spinning him over a tank filled with water that splashes over the top of the tank probably limits a few locations for production.

I have loved the luxury of producing my own plays at Theatre Quorum. But I am discovering that losing a little control is just as exciting. Thinking and writing visually is thrilling

Susan Sargeant, artistic director of WingSpan Theatre Company, is producing the staged reading of Angela Wilson's script-in-progress God Goliath for performances April 9 and 10. Here's what she said about her function in the process, from an email she sent today:

As the Producing Artistic Director for WingSpan Theatre Company, I have the pleasure of selecting the play that will be explored for a Staged Reading Workshop. My process with God Goliath, has been in collaboration with Angela and Beth. Beth and I both supply Angela with feedback for each draft. This particular process has been wonderful because Beth has been very hands-on with Angela. So Angela has received engaged input from both of us. However, the most vital part of my role is to serve as a filter and an objective eye. I look forward to receiving Draft #6. This draft is the one the actors will create from for the Staged Reading in April.

Ashley Wilkerson, so terrific in last summer's Coco & Gigi in the Festival of Independent Theatres, is going the festival route again. Her one-woman show, Freckle in My Eye, has three performances beginning Thursday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m.at Dallas Hub Theater's fringe festival. Check out the whole fringe schedule. There's a bewildering array of events.

Project X's entry in the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, Some People, is transferring to the Green Zone for the next three weekends (now that the company's co-production of This Is our Youth has vacated the space). Thomas Riccio's script finds mystical happenings in a suburban house. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through April 10. Tickets are $10. For details, call 214-421-2400. {The photo shows Brad Hennigan and Lori McCarty in the play.)

Beth Bontley, the Fort Worth actor-director who's working on Angela Wilson's new play God Goliath as director and dramaturg for a staged reading by WingSpan Theatre Company on April 9 and 10, sends word on how things are going:

Step 1 seems simple, 'read play.' But it is more like absorb play, breathe it in. Each new play I work with begs different questions from me. God Goliath is a play in development that is about 20 years old. It began while Angela was in grad school and has had several incarnations since. Sometimes in cases like this, the play is like a tree with many branches, but has lost a connection to its root.

Working with a playwright for the first time is quite delicate. One must sense the structure of the play, of course. And just as important, one must sense how the playwright likes to hear suggestions, comments and possible direction. My goal is to help the author find the truth of their story, rather than force my ideas on it. And this creating thing can be quite intense and quite fragile, a metaphoric gestation and delivery process.

For the rest of her thoughts, continue reading after the break.

This revival of Kurt Weill's musical based on the South African classic novel Cry the Beloved Country is a big deal. It's very rarely done. For details, read past the break.

WingSpan Theatre Company is doing a staged reading of local playwright Angela Wilson's play God Goliath on April 9 & 10. I just got an email from Angela telling me how excited she is over the top-flight actors who are doing the show. The co-founder of Theatre Quorum, Angela has been working harder on writing screenplays than on stage pieces over the last couple of years. It's good to know she's back in theater mode again.

Susan Sargeant and Beth Bontley and I have been developing GOD GOLIATH to get it ready for the first actor rehearsal. First of all, did Susan tell you who the actors are? Ashley Wood, T.A. Taylor, Pam Dougherty, Cindy Beall and Carrie Slaughter. As if that isn't enough, Susan and Beth are unbelievable! I cannot tell you what they have contributed to the development of this piece. It has been enough to get me excited about playwriting again, about theater again. I am stoked.

Having said that, GG is a HUGE play. It is going to take a big theater to produce it for the first time- which is partly why I sat on it for years. Theatre Quorum could have never produced it and can't do it now. I am really hoping that the play will be ready for production after this workshop and staged reading. We'll see, of course, but the possibility seems to be closer than ever.

Check back here for updates on God Goliath.

The Trinity Shakespeare Festival at Texas Christian University will begin on June 9 and 10 with performances of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. The younger roles -- crucial in these plays, of course -- will be played by students. But a healthy ensemble of professional actors has also been hired. Emily Gray, for instance, will play Juliet's nurse. (When she and her husband Matthew ran Classical Acting Company, he played the role in drag. I wonder if they're the first husband-wife duo ever to tackle the part?)

The two shows will rotate in repertory in TCU's two main theater spaces. (Many of the actors are in both shows, so obviously they won't both be up the same nights.) Performances run through June 29. Other top local performers who'll be onstage are David Coffee, Brent Alford, David Fluitt, Trisha Miller Smith, Bryan Pitts and Jeff Schmidt.

The Long piano duo will perform a recital at 7:30 p.m. on April 4 at Encore Pianos in the Shops at Willow Bend. Admission is free, but a reservation is required.

I had an email from my friend Dick Grote about being onstage during the Dallas Opera's L'Italiana in Algeri, its final production at the Fair Park Music Hall. Dick is a nationally recognized author and consultant on employee evaluation. I got to know him while he was volunteering as a Rabin Award nominator for the apparently defunct Dallas Theatre League. Here's the beginning of his account:

I had read a press release from the opera saying that they were looking for supernumeraries. I was pretty sure I'd land a part, since they said in the press release that they were looking for males who were "tall, brawny, and stupid-looking." I was cast as one of four Algerians. My job was really that of a stagehand in costume, but it did give me the chance to be part of an opera production. I'm now a professional performer -- for three weeks of rehearsals six days a week and four performances, I was paid $130!

We had three weeks of rehearsal and then four performances at the huge, 3200-seat Music Hall at Fair Park. What made it particularly meaningful was that after 52 years of performing in the Music Hall, next year the Dallas Opera will be moving to a brand-new facility downtown. This was the final performance after 52 years. Jacqueline [his wife] came to three of the four performances (she missed the Sunday matinee performance since she was a volunteer for the cast party that followed).

Echo Theatre's production of the Nibroc Trilogy, a hit at the Bath House Cultural Center, will be transferring to Theatre Three's basement May 7-30. Jac Alder cited this as an example of the collegiality of Dallas' theater community at the meeting about the future of the Kalita Humphreys last week. And I had also heard talk of the transfer from its male star, Ian Sinclair -- the busiest male actor in Dallas these days. Sinclair has to finish his run in Undermain Theatre's The Black Monk before he can move back to Nibroc.

The co-production of Tracey Scott Wilson's The Good Negro that the Dallas Theater Center debuted last fall had its New York premiere at the Public Theater last night. It got a favorable review from The New York Times, too. Note that the actor playing the role based on Martin Luther King, Jr. has changed. I thought the fine Billy Eugene Jones was wrong for it; Curtis McClarin is doing it at the Public.(Photo of Rachel Nicks and Curtis McClarin by Joan Marcus)

The Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs is developing a new master plan for the future of the Kalita Humphreys Theater, home of the Dallas Theater Center for the last 50 years. A team of a dozen distinguished consultants has been studying the history of the building (designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably the most famous architect in history). Now they're seeking input from arts groups and the public at large. I went to the Tuesday meeting at the South Dallas Cultural Center. There's another, open to everybody, at the Latino Cultural Center at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

With the DTC moving to the Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the fate of the historical building is up in the air. The city wants to exploit (in a good way) the historical and aesthetic heritage -- without turning it into a mere museum. Theatre Three's Jac Alder spoke out eloquently at the Tuesday meeting for the need to have the needs of potential arts users uppermost in mind. Architect Ann Abernathy of Booziotis & Company, the architects who are the primary consultants, clearly wants to make sure Wright's intentions are to the fore. It's an interesting balance to be worked up.

The one thing I spoke up about was my own ambivalence about the new lobby space and south entrance added about 20 years ago. It's handsome in its own way and much improves the building's comfort and usability. But every time I enter the door, I'm struck by how un-Frank Lloyd Wright the addition is. (Wright loved narrow, cramped spaces like the original lobby.) I'm glad the decision about how to resolve that issue isn't in my hands: I have no idea what I'd do.

The last two shows I saw at this year's Out of the Loop Festival both happened in the Studio Theatre. Director Jocelyn Wiebe did what she could with [sic], but the piece about three artistic wannabees in adjoining walkup flats is flimsy stuff. (The gay guy's got a hopeless crush on the straight guy, the straight guy's got a hopeless crush on the gal; they all feel betrayed by the gay guy's ex. Boring.)

For me, though, the festival ended with a bang -- a buzz created by Theatre Britain's Vincent River. Philip Ridley's script is quite a bit more conventional than the two that Kitchen Dog Theater produced...there's even a danger of falling into preachy sentimentality. Fundamentally, though, this play about two strangers mourning the same person is sound -- and director Robin Armstrong put together a heck of a production (which was also graced by the best designs seen in this year's Out of the Loop).

Theatre Britain founder Sue Roberts-Birch is always on the lookout for British dramas with great roles for women of a certain age, and she found one in Vincent River. She plays Anita, the mother of the title character who was recently killed in a gay bashing. She has changed neighborhoods to get away from the gossip, but has noticed Davey (James Chandler) following her. Turns out Davey found Vincent's body. We soon realize that Davey is far more distraught than the facts should indicate. Eventually both characters painfully (and virtuosically) tell their stories. The play ends on an indecisevely weak note, but it's a great ride -- one of the highlights of the 11-day festival, for sure.

Be on the lookout in Tuesday's Dallas Morning News for my final thoughts on this year's Out of the Loop.

The snippety attitude Variety took when it discovered this week that Baylor University was sending performers to New York (in a show that originated at WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Festival last year) says a lot about contemporary American theater, maybe contemporary American culture in general. (Hey, group prejudices existed even in biblical times. Remember the line to the effect "What good thing could ever come out of Nazareth?'

The really interesting thing is that Baylor seems to be turning out theater artists that take religion very seriously without failing to be cool. In the past, Second Stage Theatre has brought to Out of the Loop some extremely well-written plays by Steven Walters that dealt with issues of faith. And just now I saw a new play by Baylor grad Clay Wheeler (now on staff at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut) that is even more specifically religious in nature.

In Wheeler's Holy Mother of God, best friends Cal (Sky Bennett) and Thommy (Matthew Clark) are both aspiring writers working in a New York coffee shop. We learn that a tragedy they shared affected them in differerent ways. Cal has become closed on and lost his faith, while Thommy sees visions of the Blessed Mother. We see them too, in the person of actress Ginger Goldman (who seems to be making a career lately of playing cool visitors from heaven). Cassie Bann plays Cal's girlfriend, a literary agent.

Amber Jackson, a Baylor MFA candidate, directed the show for Rite of Passage Theatre Company. (The program doesn't make clear whether this is a new entity or has been in existence in Waco.) The playing is amusing and even touching -- not a script that's ready for the big time yet, but extremely promising and unique in its attitudes. The acting is very strong, though the two men seem a tad young in context.

It's interesting, too that these writers coming out of Baylor aren't necessarily Baptist. Holy Mother of God, as the title indicates without irony, deals with Catholics.

On the next-to-last day of WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, I got to two shows. SceneShop's The Interrogation of Vince Banyon turned out to be a weak script, weakly performed. Grayson Harper's world premiere script has one of those big-concept gimmicks that in this case makes no sense at all. It's little discredit to the actors that they didn't have us believing a minute of it.

After the dinner break, it was nice to come in out of the cold and catch Amy Stevenson's final cabaret set of the festival. She's singing better than ever, and she was gracing the folks in the lobby with some old favorites from Show Boat and Chicago. We were almost late to the 8 p.m. show because we lingered to congratulate her. (My wife's a huge fan, for one thing.)

The scuttlebutt about Diwa Theater Company's debut production, Cowboy versus Samurai, had been all negative. Just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear. This new Asian-American company (which claims it might be the first ever in Texas) didn't come up with a polished product. But, thank goodness, it started out with a real, and actually amusing, play (by Michael Golamco) -- maybe not a masterpiece, but cleverly written and with attractive characters, perhaps on the level of one of the second-tier TV dramedies such as October Road.

Travis (Tung Tran) has moved to a little town in Wyoming because L.A. was getting on his nerves. His buddy Chester (Chester Gayao) is trying to be a militant Asian-American, but he's a little fuzzy on what to do because he's never been out of the town and he doesn't even know what country his parents adopted him from. The new teacher in town, Veronica (Monalisa Amidar), is a Korean New Yorker who only dates white guys, so -- a la Cyrano -- Travis writes love letters to her signed by his white cowboy pal, Del (Austin Rucker).

The actors' inexperience shows (espeically Gayao's and Rucker's). But each of the four actors is well cast in the role and gives intelligent and often funny line readings. Amidar directed the show herself, which only accentuates the performances' awkwardnesses. Still, I enjoyed this show more than many others in the festival this year.

Playwright Itamar Moses, whose "Back Back Back" is currently in previews at the Dallas Theater Center, told me during a lunchtime interview today that Michael Emerson was in the New York production of one of his first plays, "Bach at Leipzig." You know Emerson, of course, as the nefarious Ben on TV's "Lost."

"I thought, why isn't this guy more famous?" Moses said. "He's not only an amazing actor, but the nicest guy in the world. Actually, his character in my play was a little like the role he's playing now -- a mysterious but kind of lovable villain."

Stage West is holding its third annual Texas Playwriting Competition, with entries due April 15. My former colleague Tom Sime won the first and got a staged reading for his script. (He's had eight in recent weeks in New York, where he's now living -- more power to him!)

Details after the break.

Del Shores, the popular playwright-screenwriter whose Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Houseweife has been a hit for Uptown Players, is doing new his one-man show Del Shores the Storyteller at KD Studio Theatre on March 27.

"I wanted to try this out in Dallas first, because, frankly, I feel
safe and most loved there," Shores says.

Details after the break.

Plays about sports tempt writers into all kinds of strained metaphors, but here's a simple one: The Play about the Coach is a winner. WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival imported this production written and acted by Paden Fallis, a former Dallasite now living in New York, for the first of three performances on Thursday night. It's under the aegis of Rocketship Productions, a New York company devoted to new and under-produced scripts.

Not many local actgrs could be as convincing as Fallis in portraying a college basketball coach. The performer looks like a rare breed of eagle, his sharp eye taking in everything on the imaginary gym floor and his predatory mind looking for any advantage. The unnamed character is at the end of his rope -- barely hanging on to a slim lead against a rival with a much better record, getting cellphone calls from an unnamed party who seems to be an angry wife.

Fallis uncannily imitates every young-ish coach we've ever seen on TV, hiking up the inseam of his pants as he squats to take in the action, pumping a fist while making a quick lateral move himself, talking trash to the ref, the rival coach, his own players, whoever comes into his line of sight. You can almost smell the testosterone. The writing is unnecessarily arty at times (the soliloquies only confuse us, and the coach is implausibly fond of quoting Shakespeare). But the performance is powerful enough to make this one of the best shows in the current Out of the Loop.

American Actors Company, the Baylor University-based professional theater, took Craig Wright's The Unseen to New York's Cherry Lane Theatre this week. (The same production was one of the hits at last years Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, remember?) Variety gave it a very respectful review, but seemed a little nonplussed that a Baptist university does theater. No word yet from The New York Times.

Thomas Riccio's Some People, presented by Project X: Theatre, had the first of three performances in WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival this evening. At nearly 100 minutes, it's a substantial piece -- blending suburban satire and Jungian depth psychology. The very literary might think it a blend of Strindberg's Ghost Play with Mozart's The Magic Flute or Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (with a smidgeon of Ionesco or Jean-Claude von Italie thrown in).

That is, the play features a middle-aged married couple succumbing to anomie in the suburbs. He sits watching TV or has altercations with the neighbors. She shops a lot and has conversations with both her hair products and an imaginary friend who lives a much more interesting life. Their teenage daughter worries that she's sprouting a tail. Eventually they discover that their Uncle Bill has been hiding in a closet for 18 years -- and that the navel of the world is right there in their own house.

The original electronic score and extensive video projections add a lot to the piece, though sometimes it seems very off the cuff, almost improvised. The theme of spiritual regeneration is quite hopeful, but it does leave us wondering -- if the navel of the world exists in all our houses, how do we find it and how do we use it to discver the secrets of the universe?

Flying Man Productions, a new company, gave the world premiere of Green as part of the 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. Only three performances were on the schedule, and I caught the last one on Monday. Brandon Smith's script embodies the same paranoid political fantasy -- the government destroying an invention that could have produced unlimited cheap energy -- that Davad Mamet executed more gracefully in The Water Engine decades ago. Smith's play has more surface plausibility, at the cost of a certain prosaic dullness.

Josh Blann directed and also played the patent office examiner. Beau Trujillo was excellent as the suspicious and secretive inventor. Jennifer Green didn't have much to work with as the inquisitive new girlfriend, and Ryan Mananlansan didn't really seem the outdoorsy type as the inventor's lawstudent sidekick. All in all, an honorable first outing, but not all that interesting a play.

American Idol winner Taylor Hicks is set to star in Grease when it comes to Casa Manana and Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth September 1-6.

Along with the Starwars guy, the big out-of-town act this first weekend of WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was Seattle journalist (that's right) David Schmader. I missed his annotated presentation of the cult film Showgirls, but this afternoon I caught his one-man show Straight. Basically, he tells the story of research he did a few years back on the movement to convert gay people to the straight life. Schmader doesn't look or talk like an actor, though he's done a fair amount of performing over the years. Columnist Dan Savage and playwright Chay Yew worked with him to direct this 1999 piece.

Basically, Schmader went undercover to dig up dirt on a yoga-based psychologist and then on a religion-based retreat. He's clearly passionate, even furious, about the topic of gay identity. Yet he represents the people he encounters in these settings fairly, even with a certain amount of empathy. The most interesting part of the show is the growing interaction between Schmader and his macho but simpatico Texas dad.

Later I saw Fairytale Blues by Joshua Bridgewater and Mary Humphrey.(His group is called Ninety Eight Theatre Company, hers Marypearl International Productions.) It's a musical-within-a-musical-within-a-musical in which the characters all bear names from nursery rhymes. Basically Rosie Bo Pee (Kristina Franklin) wants to get out of her unpleasant urban environment and get to fame and fortune in Hollywood Hills. The show has a lot of promising moments that don't add up to much. Humphrey plays T. Wolf, and her big song about money is the show's highlight. But things dribble out at the end with a double monologue -- and no song at all in the last quarter of the piece.

An ad hoc group called Uncommon Ground (whose common ground has mostly been working for Uptown Players) put together a production of Jason Schafer's comedy I Google Myself for this year's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at WaterTower Theatre. It's a funny play with an amusing premise: A guy googles his own name (which we never learn) and finds the top 37 hits refer to a gay porn star renowned for dishing out a bit of sadism. Turns out the inspiration for the persona (and the name) came from a junior high bully with the moniker. We meet him, too. Eventually all three attain so much notoriety they're on a TV talk show together.

The play has something to say, along with all the sadomasochistic jokes. The audience at Sunday's matinee clearly loved the broad-as-the-Missisippi performance, but I thought director Bruce R. Coleman should have pulled way back on Kevin Moore as the chief googler. Moore is actually a fine actor and can be subtle when he wants to. Here, though, he's a cartoon (at least until the final scene). His cast mates, Chad Peterson as the porn star and Joel McDonald as the bully, are far more nuanced but equally comical.

In a week of notable theater, perhaps the most moving thing I've seen was at Addison' Stone Cottage Theatre today in WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. An ad hoc group calling itself Mad Mamas produced Last Lists of My Mad Mother. In Julie Jensen's script, Pam Dougherty plays a middle-aged writer taking care of her mother (Jeanne Evans), who suffers from increasingly advanced Alzheimer's. Lisa Fairchild plays the out-of-town sister, very free with her advance but not so forthcoming with the help. Kerry Cole directed.

I've been a fan of Pam's for nearly 30 years. No one in town does realistic American drama better. She's wonderful here, but matched every step of the way by her acting partners. Evans did this show more than a decade ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, and it's a shame we've had to wait so long to see her performance here at home. Her portrait of frailty, stubbornness, vacancy and finally elation is a masterpiece -- sometimes hard to watch, but always true and always touching.

In its first seasons, WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival featured several established local theater companies -- like a winter version of the Festival of Independent Theatres. Those smaller companies sometimes found OTL frustrating because it generally offered fewer performances than its summer counterpart. So gradually the festival offerered fewer and fewer such productions, concentrating more on guest acts from out of town and one-person shows.

This year only a couple of established Dallas companies are appearing in OTL. Second Thought Theatre, which is a guest compan y at WaterTower year-round, is doing James McClure's Pvt. Wars, originally the companion piece to the SMU-trained playwright's Lone Star. T.A. Taylor (whose son Christian is one of the three actors in the show) tells me his wife, Giva, designed the costumes for the original New York production many years ago. For my impressions of the Second Thought version, read on past the break.

On Thursday I saw the One Man Star Wars Trilogy, one of three simultaneous performances opening WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. It was fun, as you can see from my review -- you have only till Sunday to see it.

But there's much, much more to come. I had to go to Kitchen Dog Theater to see Psychos Never Dream tonight, but over the weekiend I'll be seeing five more shows at the Loop and blogging about them. Over the course of the next nine days I'm hoping to make it to 14 entries in the festival...not quite everything, but as close as one person can come (while seeing three other shows opening in Dallas during the same week).

Check here for updates. Festival can be found on the WaterTower website.

My appreciation of the late, great Texas-born playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote that was in today's paper has been getting me emails all day. One thing I wish I had remembered in putting the piece together (very quickly) yesterday was brought to my attention by Russell L. Martin III, director of SMU's DeGolyer Library:

The Horton Foote Collection at SMU comprises over 200 boxes of material documenting the career of the Academy Award winning playwright, author, and film maker. The collection includes manuscripts, scrapbooks, handwritten drafts of screenplays, diaries, letters, photographs, and family memorabilia of the Wharton, Texas, native who has spent over 60 years in film, stage, and television. In 2003, DeGolyer Library mounted an exhibition, "Horton Foote and The Trip to Bountiful, 1953-2003," accompanied by a publication, Ronald L. Davis, Roots in Parched Ground: An Interview with Horton Foote.

Here's a link to some of the SMU material.

Also, here's a link to a lovely Foote site on KERA's Art & Seek blog, sent to me today by former colleague Ann Bothwell (much missed around here). The thoughtful appreciation is by another much-missed former colleague, Jerome Weeks.

Mark Lowry has collected eloquen tributes from many area theater folks in his piece on TheaterJomes.com. (See what you can do if you're not on a 45-minute deadline!)

This just in from Fort Worth's Jubilee Theatre: This year, the prestigious National Black Theatre Festival® will honor Jubilee Theatre Artistic Director Ed Smith with the festival's first annual Lloyd Richards' Director's Award. Smith is receiving this award because of his significant contributions to black theatre and American theatre in general. The festival will be held from August 3 through 8, 2009 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The theme for this year's festival remains the same as the past ten festivals: An International Celebration and Reunion of Spirit. Mr. Smith will be presented with the award at the Opening Night Gala Awards Banquet, which will be held on Monday, August 3. (File photo by Nathan Hunsinger.)

Texas-born playwright Horton Foote died today in Hartford, Conn. (In recent years, he divided his time between that city and his native Wharton, Tex.) Over his long career, the 92-year-old wrote many plays and screenplays, from The Trip to Bountiful to Tender Mercies, for which he won an Oscar. He was the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for drama for The Young Man from Atlanta, and his play Dividing the Estate was a critical hit on Broadway last fall.

Jac Alder, who produced two of Foote's plays at Theatre Three, sounded profoundly sad when he heard the news. "Ironically, I was on the phone with his agent's office just yesterday. I'm interested in scheduling one of his plays in the upcoming season," he said.

Lawson Taitte today writes about Charlie Ross of the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, coming Thursday as part of the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.

Here are a couple of YouTube clips, recorded for Cinemax, to give you a sense of what you're in for.

(And be sure check back here throughout the festival for regular updates.)

I enjoyed the story on adapting the iPod for classical music we printed today, but I have developed my own strategies.

I waited a long time before diving into the mp3/download world. What finally got me hooked was realizing that it was great for short works -- lieder, arias, etc. You can make your own programs (and here the shuffle feature is really great). I started out with Schubert lieder -- eventually getting about 2,000 performances into ITunes, including the whole Hyperion collection and the ongoing Naxos survey. (These have all been ripped from CDs I own.) More recently, I've been putting on Handel arias -- seems like a new recital comes out every couple of weeks, mostly recently from the unlikely Rolando Villazon.

I also started listening to jazz seriously again for the first time in many years. I won't even tell you how greedy I got about that.

All the practical tips in the story are good, but I found it useful to put each album (or sometimes group of album) on a playlist, and organize the playlists into folders. That makes it very simple to find a piece, but it is an extra step.

I've also really enjoyed downloading from EMusic.com. The site has loads of really offbeat releases from independents of all sorts, including classical. And the jazz....!

We published a photo of his show, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, with my profile of playwright Del Shores today. Thought you might like to see staff photographer Randy Eli Grothe's portrait of him as well.

Before he went back home to France, director John McLean made a video about the audience reaction to his production of Don't Dress for Dinner at Theatre Three. Producer Jac Alder says that this and the basement show, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change!, set houses records over Valentine's weekend and will be extended.

One big plus for audiences at the theater in the Quadrangle is the new parking garage -- ground level covered parking, well lit and patrolled, 30 paces from the door. Free.

Novelist-playwright Denis Johnson has been spending quite a bit of time in Dallas as Kitchen Dog Theater and Project X work on his play Psychos Never Dream, set to open next week. Writers always hate to hear that celebrities "don't do press," but that's how it goes. Tina Parker, who's in the show, reports that Johnson says he's a new noir novel, Nobody Move, coming out in April.

Johnson won the 2007 National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke. He's playwright in residence for San Francisco's Campo Santo Theatre Company and lives in northern Idaho. The photo is by Cindy Lee Johnson.

Genius director Julie Taymor (The Lion King, Frieda) will be bringing another legend to the stage next season -- none other than Spider-Man himself. The songs will come from some pretty notable gents, too: U2's Bono and The Edge. Previews are set to begin at Broadway's Hilton Theatre on Jan. 16, 2010.

Fort Worth's Circle Theatre announced today that it kicks off its 2009 season on March 19 with Yasmina Reza's Art. (Have to admit that it's not my favorite play.) Excerpts from the press release announcing the rest of the season continue after the break.

FireStarter Productions, which has been a guest company at Circle since 2007, will do one production there this year -- a group of one acts called Tapas. It opens April 16.

Dallas Morning News sports columniist Kevin Sherrington'is piece today about the baseball play Back, Back, Back now in rehearsal at the Dallas Theater Center. Heck, the DTC hasn't even sent out a press release yet. Weird when the sportswriter knows who's acting a a play and the theater critic doesn't!

But it's still great to see theater on the sports page.

Dallas playwright Angela Wilson had a Kitchen Dog Theater reading of her script God Goliath a decade ago, but evidently she considers the piece still in development. WingSpan Theatre Company is having another go-round with the play at the Bath House Cultural Center April 9 and 10 at 7:30 p.m. The performances will be pay what you can. (That's Wilson in a 2006 staff portrait by Jim Mahoney.)

This may be a first: At least, I can't imagine that any prior box office has won an architectural award -- till now. The TKTS booth in Times Square, which has been under re-construction for a number of years, just won Travel & Leisure's 2009 Design Award for best public space. I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about...because I sure can't imagine it.

In case you're one of those dedicated highbrows who reads only this blog at the expense of everything on our website (or in the paper), you might have missed my colleague Mario Tarradell's great interview with popstar Duncan Sheik, who also happens to have written the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening. He's in the area (McKinney, Fort Worth) this week to do a couple of intimate concerts.

Here's a strange coincidence: Spring Awakening musical direct Kimberly Grigsby was also in town this week -- announcing the recipients of the $1 million in arts grants TACA handed out Monday night. An SMU alum, she has been back in Texas an awful lot lately. She's a good friend of Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty. I know DTC is planning some big extravaganzas for its first season in its new home, the Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, beginning in October. Is it just a delightfully paranoid fantasy of mine, or are all these comings and goings portents of something big to come?

Audacity Theatre Lab's upcoming premiere of Matt Lyle's comedy Hello Human Female has a trailer on YouTube. Warning: The language is mildly R-rated.

It's always sad when unexpectedly tight space means that a staff photo goes unpublished with a story -- and it's especially sad when the photos are as cool as the ones Juan Garcia took for Theatre Three's Don't Dress for Dinner. The review's in the paper today. Here's one of the photos for you to gaze at:

That's Daylon Walton, Kimberly Condict and Ashley Wood in the photo.

That perennial musical theater revue I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change! once again proves its popularity in Theatre Three's basement space. The latest revival (with a fresh new cast) has been extended for three additional weekends, March 5-March 22. Note, however, that there's a break between the current run and the extension -- no performances Feb. 26 through March 1.

Echo Theatre opened the first installment of Arlene Hutton's Nibroc Trilogy at the Bath House Cultural Center on Thursday, with the other two plays to come on the following two Thursdays. The playwright will be in town Feb. 21 for the first of two Saturday marathons of all three plays in one day. Then on Sunday, Feb. 22, she'll give two playwriting workshops -- one called "Connections" from 100 a.m. to noon, then one called "Scare-Free Improvisations" from 1 p.m to 2:30 p.m. They will take place at TLC Creative Works in the State Bank and Trust Bldg. at Central Expressway and FItzhugh. Cost is $30, $20 to registered students. You get $10 off and lunch for enrolling in both. Contact Kateri Cale at Kateri@echotheatre.org for more information.

Look for a feature on what it takes to mount a trilogy like this one in Tuesday's paper.

In my profile today, director Marianne Galloway talks about going through burnout when she was running the Risk Theater Initiative venue that shut down about a year ago. Read past the break if you want to see my story from June 7, 2007, in which she was announcing the opening of the space on Ross Ave.

For reasons of space (I presume!), the last two paragraphs of my review of The Seafarer at Stage West got cut down to one sentence. I originally wrote:

For the first few scenes, it seems Huber is going to steal the show with Ivan's comic fecklessness. Covault's convincing impersonation of blindness provides a somber counterweight. Tompkins has made a specialty of down-at-heels tough guys; this time the agony is all inward, never played up for effect. Russell finds a completely new vein with Lockhart -suavely menacing and glacial. Nicky's a simpler role; Hauge lets the action's dark currents flow by him unnoticed. This Seafarer is miraculous in a number of ways. What else would you expect of a Christmas play?

There also wasn't room for this staff photo from Cody Duty. It shows (left to right) Jim Covault, Chuck Huber and Matt Tompkins.

Richardson's Labyrinth Theatre announced today that it is ceasing operations and that the remaining two shows of the current season have been canceled. The company, founded by Kevin L Ash in 2004 performed in the Arapaho United Methodist Church and was one of the the relatively few theaters in town that employs Equity actors. It's programming, however, tended to be routine and its shows seldom met with critical approval. The press release announcing the closing cited current economic conditions and reduced audiences last fall as the reasons the board made the decision to shutter.

Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik won multiple Tony Awards for his Broadway musical Spring Awakening two years ago. But now he not only has a new album out but he's touring as well. He comes to the McKinney Performing Arts Center on Valentine's Day.

There's no official work, but I'm speculating that Spring Awakening will turn up in the new touring series at the soon-to-open Dallas Center for the Performing Arts during its inaugural season. Other good bets -- the Lincoln Center version of South Pacific and Pulitzer Prize drama August: Osage County.

After seeing the show Kevin Moriarty and his cast devised from the first ten chapters of Genesis, In the Beginning, I'm struck by how brave, almost contrarian, the choice of subject matter is. With the possible exception of the Bible's final book, Revelation, the beginning of Genesis is the most controverted, indeed controversial, passage in the entire Judaeo-Christian scriptures.

The interesting thing about In the Beginning is that it completely avoids the question, "Did this stuff really happen?" It takes for granted that what is important here is the meaning of the story, not its historicity. Actor Sean Hennigan, playing an unnamed local religious leader who was one of the consultants on the project, did say he took the seven days of Creation literally (and incidentally provoked titters from the audience, which obviously had its own opinions). The consultant who was physically present and participated in the discussion that is actually part of the show said he considered the chapters in question "a great poem about God and humanity" but the way he said it didn't really touch on the potential controversy.

So you have a whole play on the first part of Genesis that doesn't mention evolution or whether that's really the remains of a boat on the side of Mt. Ararat. Interesting....

And, yes, the public discussion that DTC is including at the end of every show is actually part of the performance for this one. It was indeed interesting, and I've heard from people who thought it was the best part of the show. Personally, I would rather have seen Moriarty work his theatrical magic on some more of the original text, like Abraham and Isaac.

Playwright Lynne Alvarez died on Monday, according to an email I just received from Undermain Theatre's Katherine Owens. Alvarez was a notable avant-garde poet and playwright based in New York. She moved to Dallas to seek care after she learned she had a brain tumor. Undermain named her its playwright in residence and gave the world premiere of her piece The Snow Queen late in 2007.

Read Katherine's moving tribute to Alvarez after the break.

Susan Sarandon and pioneer of Absurdist theater Eugene Ionesco sound an improbable mix. But the Oscar-winning star is going on Broadway in the late French playwright's Enter the King March 7 through June 14. Her co-star, Geoffrey Rush (another Oscar winner), co-translated along with director Neil Armfiled. Rush previously did the play in two notable Australian productions.

Variety reports that the sit-down version of Wicked that just closed in Los Angeles grossed $145 million. Heck, that's more than some fairly successful movies gross -- and that's just in one city, not even on Broadway (where it continues to rake in $1.5 million a week, rain or shine). It continues to tour everywhere, too.

I just had an email from a New York agency that says that Texas generates more Google searches for the just-closed Broadway show Spring Awakening than any other state but New York. Most hits came from females, and the largest number come from the 13-to-17 age group.

There's no official word yet when the tour of the show will get to Dallas, but evidence points to its being on the first season of musicals at the upcoming Winspear Opera House in the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.

I'm glad there's interest, but will Texas parents let their teens come to a show where the top song has a title, not just a lyric or two, is hard-R-rated?

WaterTower Theatre artistic director Terry Martin today sent a letter to subscribers telling them that for the rest of the current season the company is cutting performances from four weeks to three (eliminating five of 22 performances per show). It is also substituting shows with smaller, less expensive casts for the final two shows of the season. The Glass Menagerie will substitute for the previously announced Our Town. No word yet what will take the place of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

WaterTower has been among the local theaters with an expanding audience in recent seasons. The current economic situation, Mr. Martin says, has cut into that audience. His letter says he's trying to be a good steward for an institution that has become a local leader over the decade of his tenure.

Artistic director Willie Holmes announced today that Blacken Blues Theater has canceled its 2009 season. The remaining three shows had been scheduled for the new Bishop Arts Theater Center in Oak Cliff, but Holmes cites the economy, among other things, as the reason for the cancellation.

Audacity Theatre Lab announced that it is producing a new script by Matt Lyle (the former Dallasite who founded Bootstraps Comedy Theater), Hello Human Female. It will go up at the new Exposition Park space Ochre House on Feb. 18.

Audacity also plans to mount a different original script (written in-house) at Austin's Frontera Fest in the spring and has a lot of other irons in the fire.

Dallas writer-actor-comedian Marco Rodriguez has added a new notch to his gun belt. His screenplay Silence has one first place in its group in the New York City Midnight International Screenwriting Competition. Marco reports that BARU plans to produce the script as a short film.

The Dallas Theater Center has been in negotiations for the rights to a new musical version of the book and miniseries Sarah, Plain and Tall for many months. It has finally announced the show as the final entry in its 2008-2009 season.

The songs in the show are by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin, who also wrote Legally Blond. Their version had a public workshop version in downtown New York a few years ago, but the DTC production is being billed as the world premiere. It will run April 22 through May 24.

Jeremy Pivens, the TV actor who's one of the three stars of the highly successful Broadway revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, missed Tuesday's performance and Wednesday's matinee and announced he's not returning to the show. He says his doctors have advised him that his mercury levels are high.

According to Variety, the apparently skeptical Mr. Mamet said. "So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer."

Mr. Mamet is also reported as saying that some high-profile performer(s) will be stepping in for the quicksilver actor.

The press release for WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Festival held a surprise -- a disappointing one, for me. The company is not producing its own component of the festival this year. That's sad mostly because the last two year's WaterTower's contribution was one of my favorite shows of the season (The Great American Trailer Park Musical in 2007, Blackbird in 2008).

The first-week headliner is pretty special, though: the Canadian actor Charlie Ross' One Man Star Wars Trilogy. The rest of the festival will feature events produced by 22 other companies and individuals. (I won't append the schedule here yet, because in past years the schedule has tended to shift as the festival approaches -- and we're still nearly three months out. But it sounds tantalizing -- and like a very busy 10 days between March 5 and 15 for yours truly.)

Dallas actress Naima Imani Lett, who did very well as Laura in the all-black Glass Menagerie in Plano last season, sends a holiday postcard announcing that she's in the end-of-year big movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We're not real sure how proud her family's going to be, however: She plays the madame in a 1930s New Orleans brothel in the film.

Sometimes not knowing where you're going produces felicitous results. In a rare moment of indecision about where to get dinner between matinee and evening performance, my Brooklyn friend and I meandered aimlessly in the direction of the Jacobs Theatre. Once again a crowd was piled up in from of All My Sons. They weren't waiting for mere Oscar or Tony winners: John Lithgow and Diane Wiest (in a ski cap) graciously signed autographs for a long while, as did Patrick Wilson. No, the crowd was in wait for TomKat, or whatever part of that unit would emerge from the stage door. After quite a long wait, with male and female assistants coming out and going back in, Katie Holmes finally emerged. No Tom beside her, but somebody almost as famous in her arms -- Suri, probably the most famous toddler in the world. Everyone oohed and ahhed as a very few autographs were signed.

We couldn't get into the famous joint next door, so we strolled through Shubert Alley (sadly blazoned with posters for a great many shows about to shutter)...and lo and behold, an even greater mob was waiting outside a stage door on 44th St. It was no mere mortal they awaited...but Harry Potter himself. Hungry as we were getting, curiosity proved stronger yet. As the wait dragged on, we overheard some sensible folks say they were leaving to go see the (Rockefeller Center) Christmas tree. My pal and I stood around for about 10 minutes, I'm ashamed to admit (and my friend had already seen Daniel Radcliffe in this Broadway show, Equus, in which he bares it all). After a black SUV that looked armor-plated rolled up, the young wizard himself came through the door, wearing a multicolored jockey cap. He signed autographs too.

So we ate bad pizza served up quickly (and rudely). I'm happy to report, however, that the last three shows I saw in New York were much tastier than the slices. But as one or two of them haven't offically opened yet, you'll have to wait till later for the skinny.

Douglas Balentine, who founded Fort Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre along with Johnny and Diane Simons, has died. According to an email from Ms. Simons, Mr. Balentine had gone camping and a Texas park ranger discovered the body three days ago. Plans for services in Kerrville and Fort Worth are still pending.

Doug Balentine created the original musical scores for many Hip Pocket shows in the company's early years. His work was also seen and heard at the Kimbell Art Museum, the Edinburgh (Scotland) Fringe Festival, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Duke University.

Today I saw the fall Broadway season's two biggest musicals, Shrek and Billy Elliot. Shrek is living proof that the decline and fall of Western civilization is now complete.

We all know what word "flatulence" is euphemistic for. Is there a comparably polite word for belching? In any case, one number in the show consists almost entirely of both. It's the toilet humor equivalent of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better."

I found the Shrek movie pretty offensive in terms of double entendres in a show aimed at kids. Today very cute (obviously very rich) kids were all around me. And the double entendres about trannies, cross-dressing and sexual compensation issues abounded. The 11 o'clock number goes, "Let your freak flag fly." (Bet you didn't know the big bad wolf liked to wear granny's dress because of a psychological preference.)

I'm all for the show's basic message of not judging others, but all this seems a little advanced for preschoolers.

By comparison, the guys in tutus, the four-letter words in adolescents' mouths and the guy-to-guy kiss of 12-year-olds in Billy Elliot seemed innocence itself.

Seeing Horton Foote's Dviding the Estate, I was in a prime critic's seat. (The Texas playwright's show has already opened its limited Broadway run, but weekly and out-of-town reviewers are still attending en masse, as well as voters for end-of-season awards, etc.)

Actress Judith Light (currently of Ugly Betty and Law and Order: SVU) was two seats in front of me. All around me were gossiping writers and actors. Meow, meow. Of course, you never hear derogatory remarks about other audience members in a Dallas theater! (At least not this loud.)

Outside there was pandemonium. I was a little amazed by all the teenybopper fan energy being expended on 13 the Musical...which is about teenyboppers, but is also set to close prematurely. Less surprising was the crowd beginning to line up outside the Roundabout production of All My Sons. This one got great reviews, but the fans were there for one reason only. Katie Holmes is in the cast, and I heard people whispering loudly, "He could be anywhere. In the halls, ...." He is of course Tom Cruise, Ms. Holmes' significant other. There were SUV limousines but no sign of TomKat, sadly.

The Mediterranean-French restaurant Marseilles, a hop and skip away, is one of the best meals and best bargains in the theater district. I waited awhile to order because it seemed I was being stood up by my old friend and former colleague Tom Sime. I was disappointed when he never showed up. When I got back to my computer, it turned out it was my fault. In asking him to see the Foote (one of his favorite playwrights), I had told him "Friday, Dec. 13." Of course, there is no such day this year. Unfortunately, he had picked up on the date, which was wrong, rather than the day of the week. I had to write to explain and apologize. I'll have to wait till next time to catch up and send him the good wishes a lot of folks in Dallas told me to extend to him.

I don't think I ever flew so low over Flushing in Queens as landing at LaGuardia airport this afternoon in some truly nasty December weather -- sharp winds from the east, intermittent rain and near-freezing temperatures. Even my theater-going friend, a lifelong New Yorker, told me later, "We don't get many days like this."

Seeing the new Sondheim, Road Show, at the Public Theater tonight was a bit of an unexpected pleaure, perhaps partly because other critics' response to the show has been so lukewarm. Hey, even minor Sondheim is still Sondheim. Michael Cerveris -- in his third Sondheim show in recent years after the Assassins and Sweeney Todd revivals -- is almost too scummy as the ne'er-do-well Wilson Mizner. A very vivid performance.

Spotted on exiting the theater was theater composer Jason Robert Brown. Years ago I called him one of Sondheim's artistic grandchildren, so it was fitting to see him in attendance. I'll be seeing Mr. Brown's 13 the Musical Sunday evening. Sadly, both Road Show and 13 don't have much longer to run in New York. But I imagine theaters in Texas will be picking up both as soon as they become available.

I leave for New York in the morning to check out four new musicals, the Roundabout revival of Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey and Horton Foote's play Dividing the Estate, newly arrived on Broadway. I'm not sure how much celebrity spotting I can manage in only four days -- and the weather is expected to be sludgy and dismal. But I'll keep you posted here if anything interesting comes up.

Actually, if you go a few years back it's four.

I loved WaterTower Theatre's holiday show, Beautiful Star, which is essentially a modern-dress adaptation of three stories from Genesis and the Christmas tale, as told in the York cycle of mystery plays from medieval England. Kevin Moriarty is in the process of doing his own (non-holiday) adaptation of the first several of these, creation through Noah, for Dallas Theater Center's upcoming In the Beginning.

Now today I got a small press release from Fort Worth's Stolen Shakespeare Guild about it's holiday offering, From the Beginning to the Nativity, which sounds in outline very like Beautiful Star -- with some additional material. It opens Friday. I'll reproduce the performance information after the break.

Interestingly, Jerry Russell reminded me when I was at The Code of the Woosters last week that Stage West did a similar adaptation a few seasons ago.

This weekend Pegasus Theatre boss Kurt Kleimann sent around a letter saying there would production of one of his black-and-white mystery-comedies this year. (For the last few seasons, Pegasus has done a new one at Richardson's Eisemann Center in January.) He consoles fans with the news that he is in negotiation to produce a state-wide tour of a black-and-white show to begin in the Dallas area sometime next year.

Atlanta's Theater of the Stars confirmed this afternoon that its touring production of Disney's Tarzan has been canceled. That's the one that the Dallas Summer Musicals has on its upcoming season...and DSM has already invested $250,000 in the show. Obviously a lot of presenters around the country are hopping mad -- and want their money back (most of which seems to have been spent on Atlanta's High School Musical 2).

On a happier note, the young lady cast in the title role of Casa Manana's Annie coming up later this month has already played the curly-headed moppet a couple of times before, including at said Theater of the Stars. Kelsey Lee Smith has also been seen on a recent episode of ABC's Samantha Who? Those who want a preview peek at Annie's orphans can see will perform live at North East Mall Saturday, December 6, 11:00 - 12:30 pm, next to Santa Claus in front of Macy's.

Susan Mansour, who's living in North Texas now and starred in Uptown Players' The Valley of the Dolls last year, is back on Broadway -- in the stage adaptation of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. It's not her first time on the Great White Way; she was featured in the original cast of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.