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.

Nobody longs for unemployment and poverty. But it's been proven that adversity and hardship can bring out creativity. The Post WWI and Great Depression era were periods of great creativity. Now we're in a new depression of sorts. Social pain of a sort we're having these days gives everyday folks something of real substance to write about, and sing about. And there's two shows going on in town that honor the hardships that create the kind of great art I'm talking about.

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.

My pal, Joy Tipping, always uses the phrase "if the F5 ever hits" as if it is her own ten point scale. I know one place that better survive the F5 if it ever hits! My special strip center, my familiar, is that section on Mockingbird Lane near the Palomar Hotel.......the strip center occupied by Premiere Video and Pocket Sandwich Theater.

Nothing against Netflix or Blockbuster. I just prefer Premiere Video. Sam and Heather run the place. They've made it a kind of a haven for the arts community.

Pocket Sandwich Theater is special, too- where other theaters have companies- Pocket Sandwich Theater has a family. It's a theater with a great big heart. I was reminded of that heart on Saturday when Pocket hosted the memorial service for friend and fellow playwright, Steve Lovett.

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)

She knows how to make an entrance: Dame Edna hit the Bass Hall stage on Tuesday night swathed in what seemed an acre of cascading hot pink and silver ruffles, all topped by that magnificent coif of Easter-egg purple. The regular Bass Hall drapes had been replaced by purple ones, of course -- and really, you can't help but admire a woman who apparently considers purple a neutral (as do I).

Orli Shaham, who was to have played the second of two piano recitals this weekend at Collin College's John Anthony Theatre, has cancelled. But in her place, the Texas Conservatory for Young Artists has secured American pianist Spencer Myer for the 7:30 p.m. spot Saturday.

Myer gave quite sophisticated performances in the first round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and quite a few of us were surprised that he didn't advance. He was certainly one of the initial contestants I was most interested in hearing again. (Too bad I can't hear him Saturday; I'll be at the Dallas Symphony.)

Myer's program:
Handel - Suite No. 2 in F Major, HWV 427
Copland - Piano Variations (1930)
Schubert - Four Impromptus, Op. 90
Albeniz - Iberia, Book I
Gounod/Liszt - Valse de l'opera Faust

The theater is sort of on the back side of the College, which is at 2800 E. Spring Creek Parkway in Plano. You can spot it by the stage house projecting above the rest of the complex.

Tickets are $18; discounts for students. 972-985-0392, www.tcya.org

That Myer didn't advance past the preliminary round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition left quite a few of us scratching our

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.

I can't think of a prominent classical pianist who has been blind. But there have certainly been quite a few major jazz pianists, including Art Tatum, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, George Shearing.

And there have been many prominent blind organists, many of them also composers, especially in France. Examples include Antonio de Cabezon (1510-1566), John Stanley (1712-1786) and, in the 20th century, Louis Vierne, Andre Marchal, Gaston Litaize, Jean Langlais, Jean-Pierre Leguay, Helmut Walcha, Alfred Hollins and David Liddle.

The blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, who took one of the two gold medals at the Cliburn, certainly impressed me with his mastery of major scores. But I kept wanting more color, more rise and fall of phrases; all of the other finalists struck me as more expressive players (although some of the expressivity was more learned than felt).

It has nothing to do with blindness, although I wonder if Tsujii hasn't been cheating himself of scores' interpretive directions by learning by ear--and thus dependent on the vicissitudes of the recording, or the pianist playing the piece for him. Braille music editions, which he does not use, do include those directions.

Some of the most unforgettable piano performances I've ever heard came from a blind pianist, Deborah Saylor, who competed in the Cliburn's 2000 and 2002 amateur contests. She didn't essay the most difficult repertory, but her playing had the kind of spontaneity and fantasy--the amazing color and lavish rubato--associate with recordings of early 20th-century pianists. When another critic complained that her performance of the Chopin "Military" Polonaise was too slow, I went home and pulled out a recording of Paderewski, who took it at almost the same tempo, and with similar freedoms. For an "amateur," Saylor (who I believe learns music by Braille) produced the rich expressivity and coloristic range I kept wanting to hear from Tsujii, who by contrast often struck me as bland. Others, obviously--including the Cliburn jury--felt differently.

During a fifty-year career, Joan Crawford was simply too big to be overlooked. Everything about her was oversize: her eyes, brows, mouth, jawline, shoulders, her gestures and of course, her famous shoulders. Beautiful as she was, she had a mannish quality that inspired a cult of sincere admirers- some of whom derive tremendous amusement from repeated viewings of the bad movie inspired by daughter Christina Crawford's 1978 book "Mommie Dearest" - a book about the star's most questionable starring role- as that of "mother".

The book is simply awful and so was the film. And now there's "Mommie Queerest", a new theatrical spoof of the movie, which is really so much fun to watch, in part because Joan Crawford was so beautifully mannish and larger than life that she was ripe for gay spoofing, but also because here in Dallas Queen Joan is being played to GORGEOUS perfection by drag actor extraordinaire, Coy Covington, in Uptown Players production of the new spoof.

Almost scene for scene, the awful movie script is brought to hilarious life at the Rose Room (Station 4) on Oak Lawn. And our Queen Joan has the biggest wire hanger ever.

Tonight's nasty weather continues to take no prisoners.The latest arts cancellation we've heard about is the Dallas Arboretum's Cool Thursday's concert tonight, which was to have featured the band Dallas Unlimited. The band will be rescheduled to early September, and tickets will be honored at that time. For further info, go here.

The Dallas Museum's Jazz Under the Stars concert has also been canceled.

The word at the Cliburn was that Nobuyuki Tsujii, the blind gold medalist, finds music much easier to learn by ear than by Braille editions of scores. Here's a contrary view:

"I read your review with great interest since I work with the blind
> community as a sighted certified (Library of Congress certification)
> music braillist. The music braille code is similar to the print code
> which sighted people use and is certainly not cumbrous, nor is it any
> slower than reading print. You do a disservice to the blind musicians
> to say such. I am sorry that Tsujii hasn't had the teachers to
> encourage him to learn and read braille music since then he would have
> been able to make his own interpretation of the music and might have
> presented a better performance. You might find a music braillist to
> further discuss this code and find out more about it. It really is a
> beautiful thing and in lots of ways much superior to print music.
>
> For one thing one doesn't have to worry about ledger lines. In
> braille music an A is an A is an A, just depends on which octave it's
> in that is easily deduced with just one or two dots. Also there are
> many different ways in this Code to show repeated measures or even
> parts of measures. Many of us love the Music Braille Code!
>
> Bettie Downing

The music world has been all abuzz over Benjamin Ivry's Wall Street Journal piece on the Cliburn: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458728669699751.html.

I found it obnoxious, and inaccurate.

Having covered every note of the 16-day contest, I note that Mr. Ivry nowhere says that he actually attended the competition. If he did, the Cliburn press staff was unaware of it. If his conclusions are based on the webcasts, he should say so. Because of logistical problems, I had to review one of Di Wu's solo recitals via the webcast, and was so aware of its shortcomings for judging tone quality and more that I felt obliged to say so in print.

Mr. Ivry doesn't even get his facts straight. He says John Giordano "leads" the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, even though he was succeeded nine years ago by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. He identifies the Takács Quartet as "from Hungary" although only two of its original Hungarian musicians remain, and the group has been in residence at the University of Colorado since 1983.

What Mr. Ivry describes as the "mediocre" and "dispiriting" FWSO was playing under conditions that would rattle the Berlin Philharmonic: accompanying relatively inexperienced players with wildly different conceptions in long days and nights of multiple rehearsals and performances. I was impressed that the orchestra did as well as it did. The arrangement even required special dispensation from the American Federation of Musicians, which normally would never agree to such working conditions. Having heard the FWSO steadily for the last 10 years, I can vouch for its high standards under normal circumstances.

I share some of Mr. Ivry's reservations with gold medalist Nobuyuki Tsujii. But plenty of us, not just on the jury, would not agree with his obsession with Di Wu as "the most musically mature and sensitive" competitor. My own vote would go to Haochen Zhang, who did get the other gold medal.

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?

Quite a surprise!

Two gold medals: Nobuyuki Tsujii and Haochen Zhang.
Silver medal: Yeol Eum Son
No crystal award.

This is the first time a blind competitor (Tsujii) has advanced beyond the Cliburn's preliminary round. And it's the first time any competitor from the Far East has won the top prize -- in this case, all three top prizes.

We all hate the noise from the audience--the counghing fit, the cellphone that goes off, the crying baby (the last of which you wouldn't hear at the Cliburn, with its strict no one under twelve policy). But what about the noises performers make while performing? The worst offenders at this year's Cliburn were Haochen Zhang, who hummed along and hit the damper pedal so hard with his foot that it sometimes sounded like there was an extra tympani part, and Yeol Eum Son, who made audible breathing noises while playing. Observation: the noises seemed to bother professional and trained musicians in the audience least of all, probably because those folks focus on the music and listen past the noise.

After what amounted to several hours of music from Chopin's back shelf (both concertos and the Rondo, Opus 16), the audience at the final round of the Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth finally got to hear a bit of Chopin that not only reflects that composer at his best but that's rarely heard on the concert stage: the Berceuse. Strategically tucked between the thunderbolts of Beethoven's "Appasionata" and Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody in Noboyuki Tsujii's recital Sunday afternoon, it's a work this longtime concert goer has never heard performed live in a professional concert. The pianist must maintain absolutely steady tempo and convey total serenity; because of its wonderfully lean texture, any missed note is immediately obvious. But anyone who was there or who listened in Sunday afternoon knows that, in the hands of a performer of Tsujii's level, this gentle, profound lullaby can produce tremendous impact.

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.

One of the most disappointing moments of the final round of the Cliburn Competition so far came at the opening of the third night. After Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov's insightful and color-sensitive readings of works of Franck and Chopin, I had high hopes for his performance of 20th-century Japanese colorist Toru Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch I. Unfortunately, Bozhanov handed out a monochromatic rendition of Takemitsu's brief, intense--and, in a good performance, gloriously shaded--depiction of raindrops dripping from a tree after rain. Bozhanov did neither himself nor Takemitsu any favors with this performance.

Twenty-four hours ago, I complained about inherent weaknesses in Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. Though I'll still contend that it doesn't so easily reach the heights of that composer's greatest works, I'll admit that Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii clearly knows how to find the logic and passion that most pianists sacrifice while wallowing in the pretty tunes and glittering passage-work that abound in the piece. Performing with the Fort Worth Symphony and conductor James Conlon as part of Day 2 of the final round of the Cliburn Competition, Tsujii not only revealed a solid sense of musical architecture but also displayed the ability to produce a consistently beautiful tone. As of today, stock in Tsujii--and Chopin--is way up in Fort Worth.

I'll be the first to rank Chopin not only among the greatest of composers for the piano, but as one of the greatest composers of all time, right up there with Beethoven, Mozart, and J.S. Bach. But I'll also contend that the two works representing Chopin oin the opening night of the final round of the Cliburn Competition--the Rondo in E-flat and the Piano Concerto No. 1--are among the composer's weaker works. Though both have flashes of the genius we associate with Chopin's Ballades, Scherzos, Preludes, and Etudes, neither approaches the depth or consistency of those pieces. Bulgarian Evgeny Bozhanov came close to making a convincing case for his choice, thanks to the Slavic accent he applied to the lyrical but longwinded Concerto (in collaboration with the Fort Worth Symphony and conductor James Conlon); he probably didn't hurt his chances to end up among the top three when the prizes are passed out onSunday. Italian Mariangela Vacatello, however, who never found momentum or purpose in her reading of the Rondo, may have dealt a deadly blow to her chances to take one of the top prizes home to Italy, particularly considering the generally lackluster quality of the rest of her solo recital.

The theater community says "bye for now" to Allison Tolman, who just moved to Chicago this past week. Lawson Taitte refers to her in print as "the greatest actress of her generation". (Hopefully that's not what made her leave town!)

She does raise the bar. The first time I met her she beautifully performed a piece I'd written, a piece which I thought was a rather difficult part to execute. I loved her work and told her so. Well, she said, it was sooooooo easy for her to perform-nothing to it. She had that look in her eye that said "Challenge me more! Make me work!" (I was her fan from that moment on.)

Before she left town I wanted to find out if EVER this starpower babe felt...well, like a fraud. "I, for one," Allison said, "whenever I am introduced to a new group of people, become instantly convinced that they dislike me."

How can this be? She's so incredibly likeable! And she's the greatest actress of her generation. (just teasin' ya, Allison). We're gonna miss ya.

I adore cats, and the idea of a play built around a woman playing a cat was almost fiendishly irresistible to me. But I have to mostly agree with critic Lawson Taitte's review of Indoor/Outdoor, currently on stage at WaterTower Theatre in Addison. The premise is charming, and the actors (Jessica Cavanaugh Wiggers, Regan Adair, Renee Krapff and Joey Folsom) all do their level best. But the script by Kenny Finkle and direction by Terry Martin are all over the place. The script is just plain creepy at times, what with the love story of Samantha (the cat, played by Wiggers) and Shuman (her owner, played by Adair), then the interfering wanna-be "cat therapist" (Krapff) and Oscar (Folsom), an alley cat who's the object of Samantha's affections (much to Shuman's dismay). The cats never once get truly -- well, catty; this love story is far too sweet and gentle for felines, and it's also extremely weird that with all their catting around, Samantha remains kittenless. Also, the play tries way too hard at the end to wrap things up in a nice ball of yarn. Despite its flaws, though, it's a funny, endearing two hours. It'd just be a lot more funny and enjoyable in 90 minutes, with a firmer hand from the director. It runs through Sunday. Go here for tix and more info.

PHOTO: Mark Oristano

Music of Alexander Scriabin, a mainstay of Cliburn Competitions past, has been a relative rarity at the 2009 competition. (Twenty years ago, if I had told you performances of Mendelssohn would be as frequent as Scriabin at the Cliburn by 2009, you would have thought I was crazy.) Which made the performance of the Russian romantic composer's Fifth Piano Sonata by Italian Alessandro Deljavan all the more noteworthy. Deljavan fortunately had the easy technical command of the thousands of notes--and the unique musical language--necessary to pull off this masterpiece on the cusp of romanticism and modernism. Given that there's no Scriabin listed for the recitals in the final round, this radiant performance was the last of the music of that composer for this Cliburn. And, given the cycles and fads in repertoire, look forward to a surge in Scriabin in the next two cycles. Thanks, Mr. Deljavan.

You can go to classical concerts for years without hearing a single piece by romantic-era composers Moritz Moszkowski, Clara Schumann, or Nikolai Medtner. Besides playing with consistently beautiful tone and control, Chinese pinaist Di Wu managed the neat trick of slipping all three into her semi-final recital Saturday night--and making it all make sense. Wu opened with a little Mazurka by Clara Schumann, which provided a fascinating prologue to her more famous husband Robert's more Davidsbundlertanze; next up, a pair of "Fairy Tales" from 1909 by Medtner demonstrated (thanks to Wu's perfect insight) why Rachmaninoff regarded that Russian composer so highly. After the obligatory side-trip into American composer Daron Hagen's Suite (from the required works list for the semi-finalists), Wu returned to the romantic era with Moszkowski's Caprice Espagnol, a pianistic fireworks display that only a performer of extraordinary gifts--such as Wu--should attempt.

Wayne Lee Gay, who was for 18 years the classical music critic of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is joining Dr. Carol Leone as a guest blogger on the Cliburn Competition. Wayne and I were friendly duelling critics at the last two Cliburns, so it will be good to have his viewpoints represented again.

Wayne is now finishing up a doctorate in creative writing at the University of North Texas.

Cliburn contestants this time have their choice of three Steinway Model D's: a Hamburg and an American both owned by the Cliburn Foundation, and another American brought in from New York. The Hamburg seems to be the most popular of the three.

It seems to be thought chic to favor the German Steinways for their brighter, clearer tone and, some pianists say, more responsive action. American Steinways tend to have richer (some would say muddier) sounds, with far more resonant bass, and mellower treble. But the Cliburn's Hamburg quickly turns steely if pressed, and there's been quite a bit of steely playing.

None of the three U.S. competitors in the Cliburn's first round--or Naomi Kudo, who lists herself as "United States/Japan"--advanced to the semifinals. For what it's worth, the breakdown of semifinalists' nationalities is: two each from China, Italy and South Korea; one each from Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Israel, Japan and Russia.

Tuesday night marked the halfway point in the four-day semifinal round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Each of the 12 semifinalists is playing an hour-long solo recital and, at a separate time, a piano quintet with the Takács Quartet. The recitals and chamber-music performances alternate during afternoon and evening sessions at Bass Performance Hall.

Here's a review of Friday's performances:

Haochen Zhang (18, China) may be the most amazing musical talent I've even witnessed. Though the youngest of this year's competitors, he plays with the depth of a legendary veteran. His Chopin Op. 28 Preludes were sheer magic, unhurried, subtly inflected, the fortissimos on Chopin, rather than Bartók, levels. (Well, they got louder at the end, but okay...) Again and again, he got a warmth of tone, even bass resonance, that has eluded other players on the Hamburg Steinway. It was easy to forgive some overpedaling and some right-hand parts that didn't project quite enough. The spell continued in Mason Bates' White Lies for Lomax. Zhang even found elegance, grandeur and tenderness as well as dazzling virtuosity in the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody.

Nobuyuki Tsujii (20, China). This blind pianist's performance of the Schumann Piano Quintet was only his second ever of a chamber work. If it's amazing that he learns solo repertory by ear, it's even more amazing to contemplate picking the piano part out of recordings. He had done his work well, and, perhaps knowing they couldn't count on visual clues, the Takács Quartet took special care with coordination. (A black mark, though, for an ugly and out-of-tune viola entrance in the second movement.) Tsujii turned some lovely phrases, but crescendos and decrescendos weren't always there when needed, and the third movement was too frantic.

Kyu Yeon Kim (23, South Korea) is clearly a serious, thoughtful musician, but there's such a thing as trying too hard. Arty gestures in the Beethoven Op. 101 Sonata--little hesitations, little lingerings--sounded more self-conscious than organic. The finale sounded bangy and scrambled. In the Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, anything forte and above yielded a hard, steely clang on the Hamburg Steinway. There were more fussy gimmicks even in the "Schmuyle" section. Kim made a fetching case, though, for Daron Hagen's Suite for piano.

For those of you who share a sense of humor with the lawyers in your life...or wonder who the lawyers are in town who can sing and dance..........each year, in June, there's a special theater production by a very special production company- "Bar None". And lawyer coercion is not needed in order to build an audience for this one. BAR NONE is great.

Well, it really is fun. (I may be a playwright, screenplaywriter, mom, grandmother, actor and theater producer in my spare time, but I also work in a law firm.) And Bar None is my exception to the "never watch legal-inspired entertainment because you work in a law firm all day" rule. And NOBODY coerced me to say that.

This year the production, BAR NONE XXIV, is called "Scumbag Billionaire" and premieres on Wednesday, June 17 at the Greer Garson Theatre at SMU and runs through Saturday night, June 20. It's probably close to being sold out by now for many reasons.

The 12 semifinalists were announced around 11:15 Tuesday night:

Evgeni Bozhanov, Ran Dank, Alessandro Deljavan, Kyu Yeon Kim, Eduard Kunz, Andrea Lam, Michail Lifits, Yeol Eum Son, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Mariangela Vacatello, Di Wu and Haochen Zhang.

Amy J. Yang (25, U.S./China). To listen to Yang's Bach French Overture was to marvel that a pianist trained at three of American's top music schools (Curtis, Juilliard, Yale) could evince so little awareness of the last 50 years' research into baroque performance practices. The overture proper began with Lisztian ponderousness, then turned into a shapeless blur, and the succeeding dances were hardly evident as such. Expressive gestures in Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze were right in principle, but everything was overdone, sometimes grotesquely. It was as if a naturally beautiful young woman had slapped on garish lipstick and too much rouge and eyeliner.

Yoonjung Han (24, South Korea). What a difference an hour makes. This young Korean struck me as one of the most winning players we've heard. Even a daringly fast tempo in the finale of a Haydn sonata (in E-flat major) worked because everything was so beautifully shaped. The slow movement sounded made up on the spot, a high compliment. There were some overdone fortissimos in the Chopin F minor Fantasy, but both here and in Granados' El amor y la muerte she could stretch and contract phrases quite boldly, without ever sacrificing urgency and overall continuity. Rarely does one hear expression at once so generous and so organic.

Kyu Yeon Kim (23, South Korea) began with some promise, with a boldly characterized Haydn sonata (in C major). But Schumann's Kreisleriana eluded her. As with so many Schumann works, this one makes much of contrasts, but what emerged here was a random collection of unrelated parts. Kim played lovingly in the dreamy movements, but the impetuous ones were too much so, rushed beyond shapeliness and sometimes in a too-clattery fortissimo. Bartók's three Op. 18 Etudes demonstrated impressive technical prowess--never in doubt--but not much more.

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.

Word below from neighborsgo:

The Richardson-based community opera company, The Living Opera, has announced the postponement of their 2009 season to 2010 in a statement from Michael Collier Bradley, opera board chairman.

"As opera-lovers throughout the U.S. know, the recession has already made 2009 a difficult season for opera companies, and many companies of long-standing have closed their doors," Bradley said. "The Living Opera has not been spared."

"After a series of fundraising events the board regretfully decided at its meeting on May 19 that there were insufficient funds to mount our 2009 season as planned, and we have therefore deferred our season until 2010.

Part of the reason the young pianists tend to rush fast music, I'll bet, is that they do most of their practicing in relatively confined studios or apartments, where the sound ends as soon as they release the keys. But you have to allow more time and space when playing in a large and acoustically "live" hall like the Bass. A fast tempo that makes sense at home will sound breathless and blurry in a big auditorium.

That said, there seems to be more rushing than usual this year.

The disparity between practice and performance environments also tends to show up in players using too much pedal -- again apt in a close, dry environment, but not in a big, resonant one. But I've noticed less overpedalling this time.

The one consistent criticism of performances at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has been excessive speed in fast music. Impatience and showing off are provinces of youth, and a certain amount is to be expected from eager, ambitious pianists ages 19 to 30. But if fast is good, faster isn't necessarily better.

All too often, the competitors this year have taken fast movements at tempos that just make no sense, that allow for no shaping of the music. A machine could play these pieces this fast, even faster. But the reason we have humans playing the piano is to provide subtleties that a machine, at least on its own, can't.

Slow down!

Well, THAT got your attention, didn't it? But this issue at hand is shouts of approval at concerts. If you want to appear worldly-wise and impress others, it's "BRAVO" for males, but "BRAVA" for females. Some man at the Cliburn Competition seems determined to shout "Bravo" as soon as possible after every performance, whether by a male or a female pianist. Or has "Bravo" become metrosexual?

The 222-page Cliburn Competition program book is a piece of work, with extensive details on the contestants, jury, auxiliary activities and history of the competition. But, maddeningly, it doesn't tell us nearly enough about the music. No movements are listed, and even the individual pieces in, say, Debussy's Images or Albéniz' Iberia aren't identified separately. Ushers ought to be handing out daily program sheets with that information.

Why is it that so many pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition seem to feel they have to play Liszt? There are Liszt pieces worth playing--the B minor Sonata, some of the late pieces--but I get sick to death of all the empty showpieces. Lots of quadruple-forte runs and chords and octaves seem to excite audiences, but what do they have to do with music? Do the competition judges really enjoy hearing all these musical freak shows?

We've taken a lot of your feedback and have made several changes to the new GuideLive.com, including adding "GUIDELIVE IT!" sections at the top of each tab (Events, Movies, Restaurants and Performers) to help you search for things that matter most to you.

We encourage all of you artists out there to create your own Performer's page where you can tell people about yourself and your art, as well as link to your own sites. Another benefit of creating a Performer's page is that you can add it to art exhibits and other events where you are featured, so people interested in the event can quickly find out more information about you.

Just remember to search the Performers section first, because you might already be in there, in which case you can click "Report an error with this listing" and claim it to gain control over it.

Give us a shout or leave comments below if you run across any other concerns regarding the new GuideLive.com.

Last weekend found me in Minnesota, where I flew to attend the funeral of a friend. I failed to get a return flight on Sunday, which allowed me to check out the Tony "Kushner Celebration" at the Guthrie Theater, a jewel in downtown Minneapolis. I had heard of the Guthrie for years; it has to be one of the best regional theaters in the country. I strongly recommend you check it out -- and believe me, you can do so cheaply. Going to Minnesota, I found, is a bargain -- provided you go before Memorial Day, when it suddenly becomes more desirable. There's a lot going on there: A new, open-air baseball park set to open downtown for the 2010 season, hiking and biking trails, cool restaurants and numerous artistic offerings. I saw the Kushner musical Caroline, or Change, which came to Theatre Three in 2007. Most of all, seeing the Guthrie gave me hope for what will happen before the end of 2009 in downtown Dallas -- a downtown theater.

Photo: The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minn.

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.

Chinese competitor Yue Chu has dropped out of the Cliburn because of a hand injury. Here are the details.

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.'

The 5 Browns truly entertained at the Meyerson Symphony Center on Friday night, captivating the nearly full house with the same program as Thursday -- the one special contributor Chris Shull deemed boring in his review for The Morning News. OK, I'm no music scholar, nor is my companion, but we had a swell time. Judging by the big grins in the audience, most everyone else did as well.

We witnessed in the 5 Browns high energy, a sense of humor and genuine willingness to share their love of music. I don't even pity those rude people who left during the ovation, for they missed the encore -- and we didn't. I thought the Carnival of the Animals had all the playfulness Shull says was lacking -- a tortoise dancing the can-can, indeed. The second half of the evening, just the 5 siblings onstage, felt as if we were eavesdropping on a classical jam session, rather than a formal night at the symphony. If that's what the 5 Browns intended, they pulled it off smashingly.

The performance repeats tonight at 8 p.m. at the Meyerson.

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 seen a lot of musical theater. I'm old. But I must say, the production of Rent currently on stage at the Music Hall at Fair Park (a national tour brought in by the Dallas Summer Musicals), is probably the best musical I've ever seen, on or off of Broadway, period. The friend I was with agreed, and I agree with everything Lawson Taitte said in his review.

To summarize: Get yourself down there before the show closes Sunday. This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, made even better by the appearance of three of the original cast members, including leads Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal (that picture shows them in 1996, and they still look just the same; I want to know what kind of moisturizer they use), as well as Gwen Stewart, who blows everyone else off the stage toward the end of "Seasons of Love."

At Thursday night's performance, the DSM did a really nice thing and invited some local high school kids who'd been forbidden to perform the school edition of Rent on their campus earlier this year. In a Q&A with the very gracious cast after the performance, the students asked great questions, such as what it's like to play to audiences who often have the material memorized. "We have one chick who's been following us around, from city to city," Rapp said with a laugh. "When [the character] Maureen is getting everyone to go 'Moo,' she always has to jump up and be the first person in the audience to shout, 'Moo!' " And if you don't know what that refers to ... well, that's another reason to mooooove yourself (sorry, I couldn't resist) to the Music Hall, post haste.

Ticketmaster has times, prices and tickets.

Photo by Joan Marcus: Anthony Rapp (left) and Adam Pascal

In 2002, the almost brand new Uptown Players got a huge boost in audience built by its production of a little play by Del Shores called "Sordid Lives." As I recall, (because I was IN IT) our production opened the same time as the movie by the same name.......and its star, Leslie Jordan, was in our opening night audience. Monica Green gave us an opening night party at the now absent, but so swank, Cuidad. And the cast was treated like British royalty (in drag) everywhere we went for at least a month.

Uptown Players was obviously off to a great start and I was in a show I would NEVER forget (for MANY reasons). I finally got a chance to catch up with the playwright today and thank him for one of the most wonderful onstage experiences ever.........and since he will be in town next week, it's a great time to tell you about what he's up to.

Watching the musical Sarah Plain and Tall at the Dallas Theater Center affords audiences here a rare opportunity to watch a diamond emerge from the rough: so brilliant and fascinating already, you wonder how they're going to make it better, even as you know they will.

Like seeing Mike Modano play junior hockey, or Roger Staubach hurl footballs at Navy, or hearing LeAnn Rimes at the Johnny High Revue when she was age 8 -- greatness takes shape in front of you.

One of the most rousing songs, "Let's Never Do That," joined the action just four weeks ago, we were told during the audience conversation after final bows. Catchy music, reminding one audience member of Aaron Copland, evokes the geography as well as the characters. Not canned music, folks -- six musicians just offstage add untold richness to this wealthy production. We want the cast CD.

(Photo of Kate Wetherhead, Herndon Lackey and Becca Ayers, left to right, from Dallas Theater Center)

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 don't remember when I read it or why I read it, but I have never forgotten a review I read of a Dallas Children's Theater production of "James and the Giant Peach." The review made me sick and it made me sad.

The reviewer viewed this "Giant Peach" as a dirty play and thought that children's theater is actually fun for adults to experience when it's layered with nasty stuff. Huh? Whoever wrote the review (I can't recall - but hopefully it was not the DMN) found plenty of dirty innuendoes in the set and in the story. Well, whatever......dirty children's theater would not be fun for me- I have a kid- and I'm thinking the whole point to children's theater is children.

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.

From reporter Michael Granberry: Achmed the Dead Terrorist and his "master," the wildly talented comic-ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, will now play American Airlines Center on Friday night instead of Saturday night, because of the Dallas Mavericks needing the arena on Saturday. So, Dunham will take the stage at 8 p.m. Friday, 24 hours earlier than expected. A graduate of Richardson High School and Baylor University, Dunham has gotten so big that he is now selling out arena shows. His popularity is due, of course, to his frequent appearances on Comedy Central (where he's about to have his own show) and to hundreds of millions of hits on YouTube, where Achmed ("I kill you!") has become a major star. My favorite line from Dunham's recent European tour (yes, he and Achmed have even toured Europe): Achmed expressed frustration in Sweden because when he said, "I kill you!," the Swedes thought he was saying "Ikea."

Photo: Achmed the Dead Terrorist, left, and Jeff Dunham

I'm pretty much in total agreement with Lawson Taitte's review on this one: The main reasons to go see Frost/Nixon during its brief run at the Majestic Theatre, presented by the Dallas Summer Musicals, can be summed up in two words: Stacy Keach. I vividly remember sitting in front of the TV, at age 13, watching Nixon resign and feeling literally sick to my stomach with disgust. I never thought I'd see a performance that could actually make me feel, if not sympathy, at least a modicum of respect for Nixon, his intelligence and his absolute (if horribly misguided) belief that he was completely innocent of wrongdoing.

I was also quite impressed with Alan Cox, who as David Frost gets that 1970s-British-smarmy-reporter personality just right. His breezy performance early in the play is the perfect set-up for the serious turn he eventually takes. The production is also stunning, with a gigantic-screen TV that allows audiences to see Keach's expressions of anger and (brief) self-doubt very up-close and personal.

I wasn't that fond of the play itself, though -- the middle section, with those parts of the Frost/Nixon interviews that weren't really all that interesting, aren't all that interesting on stage, either. But go anyway -- when Stacy Keach finally wins the household-word acting acclaim he's long been due, you can say you saw him when. The show runs through Sunday. $15-$85. Ticketmaster.

Photo by MONA REEDER/Staff Photographer: Stacy Keach as Richard Nixon.

The Dallas Summer Musicals just announced that seats in the orchestra pit will be made available for $20 for every performance of Rent, which runs next Tuesday through May 10.

The tix will go on sale at the Music Hall box office, day of performance only, two hours prior to each show. They're available to anyone, cash only, with a limit of two tix per performance. The tradition of $20 tickets began in New York when the show moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at a small downtown theater.

Student rush tickets will also be available, for 50 percent off regular ticket price, one and a half hours before and up to curtain for each show. Current student ID will be required.

For more info, go here, or call 214-691-7200.

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

The National Endowment for the Arts is awarding more than $1 million in grants to nonprofit arts organizations in Texas, including many in the Dallas area, officials for the NEA announced Thursday. Thirty-two arts organizations in Texas will receive $1,884,500 out of a nationwide commitment of $82,477,100. Those receiving grants in the metropolitan area include:
-- Amon Carter Museum of Western Art ($50,000), Fort Worth. To support the Works on Paper Digitization and Documentation Project, which is part of the museum's strategic plan to digitally document its entire collection.
-- Amon Carter Museum of Western Art ($90,000), Fort Worth. To support the touring exhibition "American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White."
-- Big Thought ($15,000), Dallas. To support the Family Access to Artistic Excellence program.
-- Big Thought ($80,000), Dallas. To support the Creative Solutions Program.
-- Dallas Chamber Music Society ($5,000), Dallas. To support the Claremont Trio's performance of American chamber music and related educational activities.
-- Documentary Arts, Inc. ($40,000), Dallas. To support the touring exhibit "Masters of Traditional Arts."
-- Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Association ($30,000), Fort Worth. To support a touring program of concerts and educational activities in rural communities in Texas.
-- Lyric Stage ($10,000), Irving. To support the preservation and production of the 1939 musical comedy Too Many Girls by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
-- University of Texas at Dallas ($35,000). To support professional development opportunities and publications for literary translators.
For a complete list of organizations receiving grants in Texas and for more detail, click here. For the full release by the NEA, click here.

Photo: West Side Story being performed at Lyric Stage in Irving, one of several local arts organizations to receive grant money from the NEA.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's 2010 European tour is the latest casualty of the ongoing international recession. Originally scheduled for next February and March, the tour is being postponed until 2012.

The Philadelphia and Boston Symphony orchestras have also cancelled European tours in 2009 and 2010 because of the economy.

The DSO's ticket sales are said to be strong, but the recession has taken a toll on corporate and individual donations as well as endowment investments. A major part of the European tour was to have been underwritten by two special touring endowment funds.

This was to be the orchestra's first European tour since 2003, and its first under music director Jaap van Zweden. The nine-city ininerary included concerts in van Zweden's native Amsterdam as well as Berlin and Vienna.

The orchestra still plans to appear at New York's Carnegie Hall in May 2011, when it will perform the Steven Stucky oratorio "August 4, 1964."

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)

Arts writer and film historian Donald Bogle will speak Saturday, May 16, at a "Writer's Roundtable Breakfast" sponsored by the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. He'll talk about the status of African-Americans in film, television and theater, from battling stereotypes to achieving acclaim as major performers.

The event will take place at 10 a.m. in Room T314 of the Dallas Convention Center theater complex, Canton at Akard streets. For more information and tickets ($15 for breakfast and discussion), call 214-743-2400.

Wanted! Enthusiastic, seasoned actresses who still look cute in their jeans.

Well, producers and directors, if you want 'em, we got 'em- they actually can remember their blocking. And playwrights- start writing for them- they can remember their lines, too.

Here's three of those vintage babes- all good friends, too.

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!

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.)

Pianist Alessio Bax, an SMU alum now on the adjunct faculty of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, is one of five winners of the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grants. The winners--also including pianist Inon Barnatan, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein and violinists Augustin Hadelich and Arnaud Sussman--were announced today at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at New York's Lincoln Center.

The $25,000 grants, which have been awarded since 1976, are designed to help young artists early in their careers. Previous recipients have included Jonathan Biss, Hilary Hahn, Anne-Marie McDermott and the Miro Quartet.

Bax, 31, attracted international attention as winner of the Leeds and Hamamatsu competitions. He studied in his native Bari, Italy, in France with Francois-Joel Thiollier and at the Chigiana Academy in Siena, Italy, under Joaquin Achucarro. He moved to Dallas in 1994 to continue his studies with Achucarro at SMU, receiving a master's degree and artist certificate. Now living in New York with his wife, pianist Lucille Chung, he continues to teach part-time at SMU.

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:

If you've tried to order tickets for the Fort Worth Opera festival and had problems, try again. The opera offices have had phone and internet snafus off and on since Friday, but all is now working.

The festival opens Saturday with "Carmen," with "Cinderella" opening Sunday afternoon. "Dead Man Walking" launches May 2.

Call 817-731-0726 or go to www.fwopera.org.

Ivan Moravec is probably my favorite living pianist. I discovered his now legendary Connoisseur Society recordings while an SMU student a "few" years ago. And during the decade I spend as music critic of The Kansas City Star he played in the city's Friends of Chamber Music series almost every other year. I'll never forget performances so beautiful, so eloquent, that they left me literally in tears.

Last Friday, he returned to Kansas City's Folly Theater. Figuring the Czech pianist, now 78, won't be touring many more years, I decided to use a Southwest Airlines coupon for a KC weekend.

In a program of Janacek, Debussy and Chopin, the playing was stll amazing. The Folly's Steinway, which I used to like a lot, has gotten hard-toned, and that got in the way. But Moravec's marvelously subtle, imaginative performances still worked magic. The Chopin G minor Ballade alone was worth the trip.

It was lovely, too, to get to say "hello" to Ivan and his wife, Zuzana. They're the warmest, sweetest people imaginable, and both speak English very well. Having performed and recorded with the DSO, Ivan immediately asked, "How is the Dallas Symphony doing?" He was glad to hear about the great work Jaap van Zweden (whom he didn't know) is doing here.

Once again, I found myself wishing Dallas had a classical presenting series as extensive and sophisticated as Kansas City's Friends of Chamber Music. Cynthia Siebert, who started the series and still runs it, is one of the sharpest impresarios anywhere; I keep wishing she'd start a Dallas spinoff. And would that we had such a great chamber-music hall as the Folly, a turn-of-the-20th-century vaudeville house that's been beautifully restored and modernized.

Saturday will be "Speight Jenkins Day" in Seattle, thanks to a mayoral proclamation honoring Dallas-born Speight Jenkins for 25 years as general director of Seattle Opera.

Jenkins is widely credited with raising Seattle Opera to national prominence, notably with a series of Wagner "Ring" Cycles. Before moving into opera administration, we was a music critic.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, music director of the Fort Worth Symphony, will lead the Atlanta Symphony in three programs of Latin-American music between May 27 and June 6. The concerts are part of a "Musica Ardiente" Festival to be held at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta.

Complete with meet-and-greet with music director Jaap van Zweden, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is holding an open house from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday (April 25) at the Meyerson Symphony Center. The free occasion will include performances by DSO musicians Mary Preston (organ) and Bruce Patti (violin), a string quartet from Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts and the winner of that morning's Lynn Harrell Concerto Competition.

Guests can meet van Zweden and orchestra musicians and get guided behind-the-scenes tours of the Meyerson. There will be a special $3 rate in the Arts District Parking Garage.

The Meyerson is at 2301 Flora St., at Pearl.

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.

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.

Nearing the end of my first year as Local Casting Director for Dallas Theater Center, I have seen close to four hundred local actors audition. They have sung songs, perfomred monolgues, read cold from a script, and even sent in videos. What I have learned is that just about every rule I learned in colege about auditioning is a rule I'd like to see broken. I want to hear 32 bars of a song -- not 16. I don't mind if someone sings a song or performs a monologue from the show they are auditioning for -- in some cases it's more helpful. I like it when they look right at me when they are acting instead of at some made up character just over my shoulder. A lot of times I wish we could all skip the audition process and just go get a cup of coffee. I'll see them in plays or get to know them as people and if the right role pops up we'll try it out. I don't like auditions anymore then they do -- they can be impersonal and strange. I like to see people's work, read about them in the press, hear about them from other theaters, and see them around town. This week we have our general auditions and I'm thrilled to see so many actors I haven't seen before and I emplore them not to worry about all the RULES for auditioning. Just relax, show off, have fun, and don't worry-- we're nervous too!

Audiences were often small and the productions were very often "cheap", but theater in the 90's was a mix of audience and show as sophisticated, inventive, educated, and striking as anywhere. I personally loved dimly lit productions performed in cavernous spaces- the Undermain theater for example- my favorite shows there, "Therese Raquin," "Camino Real," "St. Nicholas", "The Seagull," young, hip, uber-sexy they were (I am not sure uber was quite the term then, but....).

Recent works by four American composers have been picked by contestants in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, coming up May 22 through June 7 in Fort Worth. The works are:

"White Lies for Lomax," by Mason Bates,
"Turning," by Derek Bermel,
Suite for Piano, by Daron Hagen, and
Improvisation & Fugue, by John Musto.

Twenty-eight composers submitted works for what is, in effect, an add-on competition to the piano contest. A jury of composers and other musicians narrowed the field, and then each of the Cliburn Competition pianists was required to pick one of the pieces to perform in the competition's semifinal round.

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.

Putting God Goliath together has not been a quick process for local playwright Angela Wilson -- the play first got a staged reading by Kitchen Dog Theater 10 years ago. Wilson then let it stew in her mind for a decade, and now it's had another set of staged readings, Thursday and Friday, produced by WingSpan Theatre at the Bath House Cultural Center. Director Beth Bontley said the script had gone through seven drafts over the most recent two-month course of development.

Well, it all payed off magnificently. The play's a doozy -- it's got mystery, magic, seduction, the threat of imminent death, historical figures and the kind of dialogue that actors would kill for.

Before I go any further -- full disclosure: I've known Angela forever, and she's one of my best friends, which is why I would NEVER actually review of play of hers. If this gets to full production somewhere -- and it should -- it's all yours, Lawson! But this being blog-land, I can at least tell you my honest thoughts (and believe me, if I'd hated it, this would be a VERY short post !).

The Dallas Symphony is one of seven North American orchestra invited to a new Carnegie Hall festival scheduled for May 2011. Called "Spring for Music," the festival is intended to encourage imaginative programming.

This will be the DSO's first New York appearance under its new music director, Jaap van Zweden.

The DSO, with soloists and the Dallas Symphony Chorus, will reprise the Steven Stucky oratorio "August 4, 1964," which it premiered last September in Dallas. Commemorating the centenary of Texas-native President Lyndon B. Johnson, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, the DSO-commissioned work explores pivotal events on the 1964 date.

Also participating in the nine-day New York festival will be the orchestras of Albany, N.Y.; Atlanta; Montreal, Canada; Oregon; and Toledo, Ohio; and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
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I'm not talking about patrons murmuring during performances. I' m talking about presenters and performers talking before concerts. And it's become a veritable plague around here.

Talk, talk, talk -- hey, folks, we come to listen to music, not hear you relish the sound of your own voices over loudspeakers. One of the worst recent examples was Monday's Dallas Chamber Music concert. Pre-concert announcements, introductions, recognitions and what have you, by three different people, took fully 10 minutes.

I wish Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya didn't feel he had to talk before every single FWSO concert. And he's not really all that good at it -- as opposed to, say, former Dallas Symphony music director Andrew Litton, who DID have a natural way of talking to audiences. And Litton didn't do it very often.

Pre-performance comments are effective in inverse proportion to their frequency. Like every third concert, max.

Last Thursday's Dallas Symphony concert was the first time I had ever witnessed a total train wreck in an orchestra concert. Playing the piano as well as sorta-barely conducting the Bach D minor Harpsichord Concerto, guest conductor Asher Fisch got lost at one point in the first movement, but caught up again after vamping for a bit. But in the third movement he had a complete memory meltdown, and stopped playing. He started flipping desperately through a score, trying to find his place, with no luck. Orchestra musicians gradually dropped out one by one--shades of the Haydn "Farewell" Symphony--until Fisch gave a cutoff, then announced a point in the score to start up again. The performance resumed, but...

Afterward, I wrestled with how to treat this in the review.

This was a literally once-in-a-lifetime experience, by definition newsworthy. Should it be the lead in the review? (The old cliche of news coverage: If it bleeds, it leads.) Or should I be nice and bury it toward the end?

I ended up doing the latter. (Take THAT, you who think I'm mean and nasty.) From what I've heard from quite a few readers, they all got to the end of the review and were astonished to read what happened. But I still wonder if I did the right thing.

Ten young singers won prizes in the Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition Saturday. The contest was held in Gooch Auditorium at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

For the first time in the competition's 21 years, two singers--baritones Steven LaBrie and Michael Sumuel--both were awarded the $6,500 first prize. No award was given for second place. Mezzo Catherine Martin took third place ($3,000) and soprano Icy Simpson won the People's Choice award ($1,000). Two $500 encouragement awards went to tenor Juan Jose De Leon and Mary-Jane Lee. Four additional finalists received $200 awards.

The annual competition is open to Texas singers 18 to 30 who aspire to professional careers.

That fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime concert I told you about a few weeks ago -- the Dave Brubeck Quartet at the University of North Texas, playing with the UNT Orchestra, Grand Chorus and One O'Clock Lab Band on Feb. 26 -- is now available on CD and DVD. The Feb. 27 performance, with the Dave Brubeck Quartet only, is also available. CDs cost $10, DVDs are $15.

You can pick them up at the UNT College of Music office on campus (using a credit card, cash or check), or you can mail a check to have them shipped (add $3 for shipping costs). To order by mail, specify shipping address, which concert (Feb. 26 or 27) and whether you want the CD (audio only) or DVD (audio & video), and mail your check to: UNT School of Music Office, 1155 Union Circle #311367, Denton, TX 76201.

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.

For anyone headed to a Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra performance this weekend, be sure to bring along some foods to donate. The orchestra is participating in Orchestras Feeding America, the first national food drive by America's symphony orchestras. Non-perishable food items will be donated to the Tarrant Area Food Bank.

Pick-up times are 6:30-8pm today and Saturday, and 12:30-2pm Sunday in Bass Performance Hall's lobby. Curbside drop-off is also available on Fourth Street underneath the angels in front of Bass Hall. For info on what types of food can be accepted, visit www.fwsymphony.org.

Soprano Ava Pine all but stole the show in the Dallas Opera's December 2008 "Die Fledermaus." Now Pine, who started around here singing lighter fare with the Orpheus Chamber Singers and our early-music groups, is singing Pamina in the Florentine Opera Company's "Magic Flute." The three performances, at Milwaukee's Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, are April 17, 18 and 19.

Pine was booked as the Milwaukee opera company's sixth Marie Z. Uihlein Artist, funded by an endowment established in 2004.

Ned Rorem's operatic version of the Thornton Wilder classic is getting four performances in Denton, thanks to the University of North Texas Opera. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday (4/3), Saturday (4/4) and Tuesday (4/7), and at 3 p.m. Sunday (4/5) in the Lyric Theater of the Murchison Performing Arts Center, at I-35E and N. Texas Blvd. Conductor Stephen Dubberly will give a talk one hour before each performance.

Tickets are $15 to $35; $35 tickets include dessert and wine. For information, call 940-369-7802 or go to www.thempac.com.

Check out this video of the in-progress Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. Among the numerous performing arts organizations and touring productions, the building will provide space for the Dallas Opera and Texas Ballet Theater. More info on the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts can be found on their Web site.

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

If you've ever stared at a piece of modern art and been utterly perplexed, or thought, "Well, gee, I could come up with that," or, conversely, if you've ever bought or admired a piece of art that your friends just didn't understand, Art is the perfect show for you. Yasmina Reza's biting comedy (translated by Christopher Hampton), about three friends whose relationship is sorely tested when one spends $100,000 for a white-on-white painting (with bits of palest gray, we're assured, if you peer at it long enough), explores all sorts of touchy subjects, most explicitly the nature of art and friendship.

Circle Theatre's production, directed by Jaime Castañeda, gets the downward spiral of the men's friendship just right -- it quickly, hilariously, turns from gentle teasing into crisp viciousness, and the cast could hardly be better. David Fluitt has the showiest part as the volatile, mordantly witty Marc, whose disdain for Serge's (Paul Jung) purchase sets the, dare we say it, deconstruction of a long friendship in motion. But he's matched here by Jung's slow burn (when he finally lets loose, it's wicked funny), and Jakie Cabe, as the nebbishy Yvan, has a monologue about impending marriage that brings down the house.

Kudos also to Circle's beautifully redesigned lobby, all done in tones of black, red and gray in a sort of industrial chic that works perfectly in Circle's basement space off Fort Worth's Sundance Square. The "circle" theme is played up in artwork, fixtures, even the carpeting, to nice effect. For this show, however, I couldn't help wishing they'd festooned the walls with all-white art for the audience to ponder pre- and post-show.

The show runs through April 11. Tickets and more info available here.

For a full review of Art, check guidelive.com Monday afternoon.

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.

Here I was, dying to hear Christine Brewer's Brunnhilde in the Met's "Ring" Cycle, coming up next month. But today came word that she's withdrawn from all scheduled performances because of a knee injury. Her place will be taken by Irene Theorin and Katarina Dalayman.

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.)

The Dallas Opera has another partner, the State Opera of South Australia, in commissioning and performing the forthcoming Jake Heggie opera Moby-Dick.

Based on the famous Herman Melville novel, the opera will be premiered at the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House in April 2010. After six performances here, it will go on to the four other companies co-commissioning the new work: San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and the Australian company.

The new opera, with libretto by Gene Scheer, will be presented in Adelaide in 2011.
Star tenor Ben Heppner will sing the lead role of Captain Ahab, with Morgan Smith as Starbuck and Stephen Costello as Ishmael.

For information and tickets for the Dallas Opera's 2009-2010 season, call 214-443-1000 or go to www.dallasopera.org.

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.