The Plays of Summer

Shakespeare Dallas opens the forty-first season of Shakespeare in the Park on Wednesday, June 13th. This year, the plays are Twelfth Night and Coriolanus. One of my favorite plays, Twelfth Night plays the first week, June 13th through the 17th. Coriolanus has its opening week starting on the 21st and running through the 24th. Thereafter, Twelfth Night plays on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with Coriolanus on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, through July 21st.

Twelfth Night is directed by Raphael Parry, the Shakespeare Dallas artistic director. He always does a great job. Cyrano de Bergerac was inspired, last summer. He is also a gifted actor, as he showed with his turn as Polonius in Hamlet. Coriolanus is being directed by René Moreno, a very imaginative and creative director. He directed last summer's excellent version of As You Like It and the superb version of Hamlet last fall. Although this is one of the more obscure plays in the Bard's oeuvre, I am quite looking forward to it. There's an opening reception for Poet's Society members on the 23rd, so we will get a talk on the play and a backstage tour. It's always interesting to see the back of the set.

Shakespeare in the Park is a great way to spend an evening, even in the heat of a Dallas summer. The plays start at 8:15 pm; the sun goes down behind the trees by 7:30 or 7:45, and it is starting to get dark before the play commences. A picnic supper and a bottle of wine is the perfect start. For the Fourth of July, they usually do an extended intermission so that people can watch the Fair Park fireworks just across the freeway.

One last plug for my favorite arts organization in Dallas: membership. It's a great deal - I saw seventeen performances last year, all for free. Members also get preferred seating, so one can get right up at the front of the stage, if that's your thing. There are also special events for members, including the Spring Soiree (previously the Bard's Birthday Bash) and several behind-the-scenes events that were put on just for members.

See you in the park!

Frankenstein is coming...

...to the Angelika.  The National Theatre Live program is reprising its broadcast of the play Frankenstein which they did last year.  The play was a hug hit in London, playing to packed houses.  It will be shown again at the Angelika on June 7th (Thursday) at 7pm with Jonny Lee Miller as Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature, and on June 9th at 2pm with those roles reversed.

This play is quite true to the original Mary Shelley tale, very much a story about what it means to be human - and about the consequences of hubris and ill-considered actions.  The atmosphere has a strong steampunk influence.

The acting, the direction, and the production design are top-notch.  If there is anything in the area that I would call must-see, this is it.  If you can get there, do not miss it.

I've seen NT Live presentations of King Lear (starring Derek Jacobi), The Cherry Orchard, One Man, Two Guvnors (an adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters), The Comedy of Errors and a couple of others, in addition to both versions of Frankenstein. The quality has been uniformly superb.  The entire series is highly recommended for anyone who likes theater.

The Birthday Party

If you did not see this play at the Undermain Theatre, it's too late. It closed last night. I saw it on Friday. The play was good, but I did not find it as enjoyable as God of Carnage the night before. Much like modern art, it is a modern play and demands some thought and experience. It would have been better had I had the opportunity to see it more than once; I regret not being able to get there earlier in its run.

The Birthday Party is one of Nobel winner Harold Pinter's early plays, and it typifies his "comedy of menace" works. The play is set in a seaside boarding house in England, run by an older couple (Meg and Petey Boles). Stanley is their only boarder. One day, two men come to the boarding house, apparently looking for Stanley. They tell the couple that it is Stanley's birthday (which he later denies), setting the stage for an oddly tense and off-kilter birthday party that night. Goldberg and McCann appear to be organized-crime figures of some sort, and Stanley fears them from the start, but the exact story behind their collective presence never becomes clear. Rather, the play focuses on the immediate relationships between the characters, and how they evolve under stress.

As has been my experience at the Undermain in the past, the actors all did an excellent job with their roles. Bruce DuBose, who I last saw in Beckett's Endgame, is quite good as Goldberg - suave, deceptive, callous, and menacing. Marcus Stimac was also good at the somewhat more thuggish McCann. His menace is of the somewhat more direct variety, combined with unpredictablility and obtuseness. I have seen him in a couple of different roles with Shakespeare Dallas. Gregory Lush does an excellent job as Stanley, by turns intimidated and rebelling against it. Driven by both cowardice and anger, he is the foil against which the other characters play (for the most part). As the Boles, Mary Lang and T. A. Taylor do a good job protraying a down to earth English couple. They do not always know what is going on, but they carry on. Lulu has proably the fewest lines of the six characters, but Katherine Bourne hits it perfectly. As a young woman in a shifting emotional landscape, she is protrayed very well. I look forward to seeing more of Ms. Bourne in the future.

I will be looking to see another version of The Birthday Party when I can. This one was enjoyable, but it definitely bears watching again.

Next up for the Undermain is a staged reading of a portion of Ulysses at the Dallas Museum of Art on Bloomsday, June 16th. I plan to be there.

God of Carnage

Carnage, indeed. Take four people, two couples, and put them together in a stressful situation, and watch the veneer of civility fall away. God of Carnage has played to great reviews in many places, and this production did not disappoint.

Alan and Annette's eleven-year-old son has bloodied the face of Michael and Veronica's son of the same age, and knocked out two of his teeth in a fairly typical childhood altercation. They all meet at Michael and Veronica's house to talk through the dispute. At first, things are cordial and everyone is effusively agreeable. But bumps in the road appear soon enough, and the situation deteriorates into a morass of sniping, shifting alliances, name-calling, and assorted ugliness. Each parent strives to outdo the others in meanness and pettiness. This would not seem to be an appealing story, but this dark comedy never loses sight of the ridiculousness inherent in adults ending up in the same sort of conflict that ended badly for their sons.

I will not indulge in spoilers, save to say that there are two very physical moments on which the play turns. Pay attention - you will want to catch them as they are happening.

All four actors do a wonderful job with their roles. Sally Nystuen-Vahle plays Annette, the initially meek wife of cell phone-wedded lawyer Alan, extermely well. Her character does change over the course of the play, and she manages the transitions with remarkable authenticity, keeping the character at a believable level while exploting the comedy of the deteriorating situation. Chris Hury also does an excellent job as the supercilious Alan, who is condescending to attend this little meeting when he clearly has more important things to do. I've had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Hury in several roles in Shakespeare Dallas productions over the last two years (Posthumous Leonatus in Cymbeline, the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac, and Laertes in Hamlet), as well as in August, Osage County at the Watertower Theater, and he does a consistently good job in his roles. In this one, he succeeds in making a character who is thoroughly unlikeable a pleasure to watch.

Veronica is perhaps the character who most believes in the initial civility. While Annette accepts it because that is how she was taught to behave, Alan pretends to it as long as it is to his advantage, and Michael wants to believe in it but isn't sure he belongs there, Veronica believes fervently in civility and the higher benefits of civilization in general. She is writing a book about Darfur, and one has the sense that she really believes that she can change the world. After seeing Christine Vela in a couple of productions as the Kitchen Dog Theater, most notably a wonderful version of Macbeth last year, I was looking forward to seeing her in this play. I was not disappointed in the slightest; she did a superb job with her character. Completely believable, and you really feel her disappointment as things come apart.

As Michael, Hassan El-Amin succeeds in bringing out the conflicted nature of the character quite well. More of a self-made man, he is a hardware entrepreneur who is a bit intimidated by Alan the high-powered lawyer. In fact, he is somewhat intimidated by all of the other three characters - but he nevertheless holds his own when things get nasty. His role is a hard one, but it is played very well. As we learn more about him, he becomes in some ways more sympathetic and in some ways less. I am impressed by the skill with which El-Amin handles this role.

A couple of notes on specifc things: I have a bottle of English Harbor Antigua Rum on my shelf, and it is very good stuff. Also, mind the hamster.

I would characterize God of Carnage as darky hilarious. It is funny and moving as only the best plays are, and the production does every justice to its source material. As much as any play I've seen, I would call this a must-see production. The Dallas Theater Center production of God of Carnage is playing at the Kalita Humphreys Theater for another two weeks, through June 17th. Don't miss it.

First post! Seriously, every blog needs a first post. One hopes for some sort of statement of pupose, a summary of what the blog is about. So:

This blog will be about what I like in the arts, primarily in the Dsllas-Fort Worth area. I make no pretense to a critical evaluation of what I see; my qualifications are best described as an enthusiastic amateur. I will talk about what I like, and what I think might be interesting to others. I will start this out by talking about some of my favorite places.

The Dallas Museum of Art. I get here three or four times a month. If you didn't see the Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties exhibit, you missed something quite special. It closed last Sunday. They just opened a new exhibit of the work og George Grosz, which is quite interesting. There is a lot of Dallas history, as well as some political work by a German artist who emigrated to the United States to flee the Nazis.

The Nasher Sculpture Center - an architecturally beautiful small museum across the street from the DMA. The garden is an exceptional space in the midst of an urban landscape. Unfortunately, some condo developers have chosen to build adjacent to it, a mirrored building which concentrates sunlight in a fairly unpleasant way, and has spoiled one of my favorite things in the garden, Tending, (Blue) by James Turrell It is closed until the artist decides how to reconfigure it to account for the condo tower. The Nasher is a wonderful building, and small enough to see in an afternoon. The cafe is also excellent, and they hace a very good events calendar. The current featured exhibit is Cuddle on the Tightrope, by Ernesto Neto. It consists of a single work, Kink, which fills one of the gallery spaces. It is a sort of crocheted suspension bridge on an aluminum frame. I was fortunate enough to be able to get to the artist conversatino event with Mr. Neto. Fascinating to hear about his creative process, straight from the artist, and to get his perspective on the exhibit. Take a walk through it - it is fun, if nothing else. The preceding exhibit, The Bacchae by Elliot Hundley, was a quite remarkable combination of sculpture, collage, and assemblage. The Nasher did acquire one of my favorite pieces from it, Alas!, and I look forward to seeing it again. The Nasher also has an exceptional museum store.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is one of the best small museums around. Their collection is exceptional (though I wish that they would put their Turner out), and the museum can also bee seen in an afternoon. Perhaps a long afternoon, depending on the major temporary exhibit. Currently, that is The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clark, through June 17th. This is the only United States stop for an exhibit of historical scope. See it - no exceptions.

While you are in Fort Worth to see the Impressionist exhibit at the Kimbell, by all means stop at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art to see the four Jonh Singer Sargent paintings from the Clark that they have through June 17th. Fumée d'Ambre Gris is one of the most beautiful works that I have ever seen.

And then there is the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Worth seeing just for the building, but the collection is also excellent. I am working hard on my appreciation of modern art, and The Modern is a big reason. Aschenblume, by Anselm Kiefer, is a striking and important work, and one of my favorites. Café Modern is the best museum restaurant that I have experienced; the food is exceptional. And the museum store is on a par with that of the Nasher, which is saying something. The current major exhibit is by Glenn Ligon. It is a powerful poitical statement, and well worth seeing.

The McKinney Avenue Contemporary is a good small museum, particularly for emerging artists. Their member show is coming up in August - not to be missed.

The Kitchen Dog Theater shares the MAC's space. They do a great job with new works, and a fresh look at more traditional plays. I'm a season subscriber. Highly recommended. The current play is Ruth, a contemporary take on the Biblicl tale. I have not seen it yet, but I have heard good things.

Another very good local theater is the Undermain Theatre. They do a very good job with important modern works such as Beckett and their current production, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. Be prepared for some unconventional work, even odd, but the productions are always very well done. The theater really is under Main Street - a basement in Deep Ellum. I try to get ot all of their plays. I will be seeing The Birthday Party on Friday.

To bring this to a close, I will be seeing the DTC (Dallas Theater Center) prodcution of God of Carnage at the Kalita Humphreys Theater tomorrow night (Thursday). I have heard good things about the play, and I love the building itself - a Frank Lloyd Wright design. If I'm serious about this blog, you will be able to read my reactions to it on Friday. Or maybe Saturday.

See something beautiful today!