Stage
Dark Themes
Presumptions about The Other lead to disaster in Stage West’s production of The Unmentionables.JIMMY FOWLER
“I think any progressive person has the ability to recognize problems in other parts of the world,” insists Jane (Dana Schultes), an American TV actress who’s impetuously joined her missionary fiancé Dave (Jake Buchanan)...
TBT’s Swan Lake: Full Bloom
LEONARD EUREKASince taking over Texas Ballet Theater 10 years ago, artistic director Ben Stevenson has presented a wealth of full-length ballets here that he created during his long tenure with the Houston Ballet. One of the most rewarding i...
Remembering Bruce Wood
Things were beginning to brighten up for the young but legendary Fort Worth choreographer.LEONARD EUREKA
North Texas lost one of its most original choreographers last week. Bruce Wood died in Fort Worth, reportedly of a heart attack and complications of pneumonia. He was 53. Best known for his namesake group, the Bruce Wood Dance ...
Blues Breakers
In Jubilee Theatre’s production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the existential conversation is spiked with racial drama.JIMMY FOWLER
When August Wilson’s scorching drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom made its New York debut in 1985, it was just the second non-musical show authored by an African-American to receive a Broadway production. You had to go back alm...
The Other Place: Catharsis
In Circle Theatre’s current production, a serious subject is handled with nobility and tact.JIMMY FOWLER
For the most part, contemporary audiences have lost their appetite for tragedy as an art form, not to mention the en masse sharing and purging of grief that it allows. Back in the 4th century B.C.E., Aristotle famously describe...
Christmas Songs
Fort Worth Opera tackles an unlikely episode of wartime unity in Silent Night.KRISTIAN LIN
If you think movies are guilty of recycling plots, you should take a look at opera. The art form has been borrowing stories since it began centuries ago (think of Monteverdi ripping off Greek mythology and Roman history), and i...
Fort Worth Opera Swings into Mozart
EDWARD BROWNThe plot for Mozart’s Così fan tutte could easily be mistaken for that of an ’80s sitcom. The maestro and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte used dramatic material (jealous boyfriends, philandering girlfriends, cheating, flirting...
The Healing Arts
Fort Worth Opera’s With Blood, With Ink wrings beauty out of tragedy.EDWARD BROWN
Composed by Daniel Crozier with a libretto by Peter Krask, With Blood, With Ink poses a centuries-old question: Can art palliate human tragedy? Many people find comfort in socially conscious art. Works like the Oklahoma City Na...
Orlando Blooms
A man is transformed to a woman in Stage West’s production of a Woolf classic.JIMMY FOWLER
Although John Gray’s bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was a pop culture phenomenon more than 22 years ago, its basic premise –– that the sexes are controlled by virtually insurmountable, biologically det...
Hunting and Gathering: Rootless and Roofless
In Amphibian Stage Productions’ latest, “home” is more than just an address.JIMMY FOWLER
“How come all the jobs I can do are not the jobs that will pay me to live like an adult?!” angrily declares Ruth (Lydia Mackay), a New Yorker in her late 30s without a regular home or stable employment. Ruth is the oldest o...