Arts Blog

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

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

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

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

An open-to-the-public memorial for Douglas Balentine, co-founder of Fort Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre (with Diane and Johnny Simons), will be held Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. at Arts Fifth Avenue. The multimedia tribute will feature video, excerpts from Hip Pocket productions, slide shows, and plenty of chances to share memories.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The marquees of Broadway theaters will be dimmed in honor of playwright Harold Pinter.

The Broadway League says the lights will be dimmed for about one minute at 7 p.m. tonight.

The British Nobel laureate died last Wednesday at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer. He won the Tony Award for best play in 1967 for "The Homecoming" and the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005.

Pinter wrote 32 plays, one novel and 22 screenplays. His masterpieces include "The Birthday Party" and "Betrayal."

His writing featured dialogue with pregnant pauses that reflected his characters' emotional struggles and inspired the phrase "Pinter-esque dialogue."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't usually see shows twice -- it's hard enough to find time to see them once. But my son, David, just can't get enough of Theatre Britain's annual panto (a proper British sillyfest where a man dresses up as a woman, a woman dresses up as a man, a ghost pops in, awful puns percolate and very tasty British treats are sold during intermission).

So there I was Sunday afternoon at Little Red Riding Hood again, but some of the jokes were new. It seems that Kevin Scott Keating, who sashays about as Mother Hood, has been updating his audience chats with Cowboy talk (including his disappointment that the Pittsburgh Pirates line-up did not include Brad Pitt and concerns that the New York Giants might be related to that large fellow who had given Jack in the Beanstalk so much trouble).

But he gives onstage credit for his new Bush joke to one of the trees, played by Sheila Payson (who did actually suggest Kevin comment on the Bushes moving to Dallas). And here's how it goes:

"Why is this part of the forest better than the forest down by the hollow? Because this part of the forest is still filled with big beautiful trees...and the Hollow is being overrun by Bushes."

We warned you that panto jokes can be punderful.

And while we don't know what jokes will make it in upcoming performances, we do know that the Saturday and Sunday shows are sold out with only Wednesday, Thursday and Friday tickets available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beulaville Baptist Book Club Presents: A Bur-Less-Q Nutcracker has been extended through Dec. 28. The show, presented by MBS Productions, is about what happens when the Beulaville Baptist Book Club's fundraising production of The Nutcracker ends up being performed by a burlesque troupe.

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

If anyone is planning a Broadway trip over the holidays, this is truly a chance to catch 'em before they close. According to a story that ran in the The Daily Telegraph today, 15 Broadway shows are about to be shuttered, including Grease, Young Frankenstein, Hairspray, 13 and Boeing-Boeing on January 4.

The pain hits close to home, too. Boeing-Boeing, produced in part by Dallas Summer Musicals and Michael Jenkins, has been a great source of pride here after winning two Tony Awards, one for Best Revival of a Play and one for Best Performance of a Leading Actor in a Play for Mark Rylance.

Up on the following week's chopping block: Spring Awakening and Monty Python's Spamalot.

Even Daniel Radcliffe is stripping for half-empty houses in Equus (which is scheduled to close in February). And if you want deals for family shows, Disney is offering a Kids Go Free! deal for The Lion King, Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid for three months after January.

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

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

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

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

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

Had one too many bell jingled in your direction? One too many chirpy "Happy Holidays" from irrepressibly cheerful store clerks, one too many red-and-green twinkle-lighted nightmare? Contemporary Theatre of Dallas has just the antidote to an overdose of Christmas saccharine ... in the form of one very weary, very tart elf named Crumpet.

David Sedaris' "The Santaland Diaries," based on the essayist's experiences as a Macy's elf, is once again brought to sardonic life by actor Nye Cooper, who has done the show several times previously at Addison's WaterTower Theatre. It seems to fit even better in the Lower Greenville funkiness of Contemporary than in the polished environs at WaterTower. Under Coy Covington's arch direction, Mr. Cooper has never been better, injecting subversive glee into every smirk, scowl and twitch of an eyebrow.

Look for a full review Saturday afternoon at guidelive.com.

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

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

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

Former colleague Tom Sime's My Favorite Animal, his Big Apple debut, closed yesterday in New York. It got our very active playwright some good notices. Onward and upward.

I just had a note from Dallas Theater Center publicist Jake Cigainero that the company's charity drive is going gangbusters:

DTC is collecting money after every performance of A Christmas Carol to give to the North Texas Food Bank when the production closes Dec. 28.A Christmas Carol's message of charity and love really seems to resonate with audience members, because I'm incredibly proud to report that patrons attending the opening performance donated almost $1,200! But it doesn't stop there ... since opening night, we've collected almost $7,500; averaging about $1,000 a performance. I can't wait to see how much we'll collect for NTFB after a month of performances. Every dollar donated to the NTFB provides five meals for those in need.

After seeing A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant at Circle Theatre tonight in Fort Worth, my husband says he's never seeing anything with adult actors again. I could almost agree with him, so splendid were the eight young actor-singer-dancers who star in this perfectly wonderful spoof.

Complete with fabulously awful costumes (the sheep in the manger scene, for instance, is a kid in a sheepskin-lined jacket that's been turned inside-out) and choreography that's terribly inspired (and I do mean terribly), this Obie-winning musical takes the traditional Nativity pageant motif and uses it to tell the story of L. Ron Hubbard and his Church of Scientology, where one of the eternal questions turns out to be, "What does the 'L' stand for?"

The kids, ranging in age from preteen to young teen, have timing and stage presence that could knock the socks off of some local professionals. Oh, and speaking of socks, it's worth the price of admission to see Tom Cruise and his sock-puppet versions of Katie and Suri during the IRS-trial portion of the show. Not to mention John Travolta and Kirstie Alley! And Xenu, the evil alien! It's just the thing to get the sticky-sweet taste of too much eggnog out of your mouth, and replace it with something merrily tart.

Look for a full review Sunday evening on guidelive.com.

I am sad to read of the passing of William Gibson on Tuesday. The playwright of The Miracle Worker, the story of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller was 94 and died in Stockbridge, Mass.

I didn't know that his first success was a novel, The Cobweb, which was sold to MGM and made into a movie in 1955. He turned down the chance to make big money as a screenwriter because he preferred playwrighting. His success with The Miracle Worker (written shortly after Two For the Seesaw) brought him international fame in his 50's in 1959 as a Tony award-wnning Broadway hit and in 1960 as an Oscar-winning film hit.

I love this quote from his obituary in the New York Times: "Good things come to those who wait...far too long."

The Dallas Children's Theater did a couple of wonderful productions of this play under the direction of executive artistic director Robyn Flatt. Ms. Flatt showed an unerring ffeeling for what Mr. Gibson touched on, so exquisitely: the delicate, almost cross-hatched interconnectedness charged by the personal pain and passion required to make a difference.

Annie Sullivan could not have mustered the determination to help Helen without the shadow of the love between her and the little brother whom she couldn't save. And she would not have succeeded without the extreme stubborness and faith in her vision that is required of all visionaries.

He wrote until the end, evidently. And while his name was never as famous as the work he produced, he gave us a gift: ideas to ponder that will endure.

The Butterfly Connection, Fort Worth's experimental theater collective run by Adam Dietrich, opens a new development and rehearsal space with a party on Dec. 6. Here's a snippet from Adam's e-mail about the event:

We will share an Opening Reception with the community on December 6th from 8pm-Midnight at our new home located at 7001 E. Lancaster Avenue Suite 109. It's a 1300 square foot suite where we will develop scripts, perform readings and installation work, produce art exhibits, and conduct ongoing acting classes and digital editing workshops. The Opening Reception will feature our first art exhibit "Lite Bright" featuring art created on Lite Brites by local artists, free drinks, and live music.

The group will continue to perform at the Rose Marine Theatre on N. Main in Fort Worh, with its original show Reindeers Unplugged on view there Dec. 12-21.

Not much time left to see this Mel Brooks musical:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Young Frankenstein is closing after nearly 500 Broadway performances. The decision was announced Sunday by producer Robert F.X. Sillerman. The Mel Brooks cinematic monster spoof will have played a little over a year when it closes Jan. 4. That's a much shorter engagement than his previous stage effort, The Producers. That musical ran for six years and more than 2,500 performances. Young Frankenstein stars Roger Bart as the title character. Bart has been with the musical since it opened in November 2007 at the Hilton Theatre. It was the most anticipated Broadway musical of last season.

I just had an email in my box that Clive Barnes has died -- still a working dance and theater critic at 81. Clive added the New York Times theater beat to the dance-critic job he already had back in 1967, and he was the voice of the Times during the years I lived in and around New York. He was a very good, if not infallible, dance critic. In retrospect, though, he was not a good influence on us East Coast theatergoers during those years. He lured us into some real duds (one was called After the Rain, as I recall). And he discouraged me from seeing the original productions of Sondheim's Company and Follies, which he panned -- and which I have bitterly regretted ever since.

After the Times ousted him, he went over to the New York Post, where his writing became increasingly garrulous and his opinions little heeded. They pushed him down to second chair a few years ago -- but he bounced back when the lead critic fell ill. I've seen him frequently at critics' previews over the last decade, a strange reminder of my remote youth.

I wonder what will happen to that job now. Many newspapers around the company are doing without theater critics...but they can't do that in NEW YORK, can they...?

Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall is offering seats for Neal Berg's 101 Years of Broadway buy-one-get-one-free. The event is next Monday, Nov. 24, at 8 p.m. Here's a link for tickets.