Of the eight shows announced for the Dallas Summer Musicals 2020-21 season, only two won't be presented at the Music Hall at Fair Park.
That's due to the new-ish partnership between DSM and the AT&T Performing Arts Center, which gives the former up to four weeks of access each year to the Winspear Opera House.
But first, the shows. There are returning fan favorites, fresh adaptations, a play(!), and seven Tony Award winners.
First up is the return of Jersey Boys, which was in Fort Worth in 2019 and ATTPAC's Broadway Series in 2018, but hasn't visited as part of DSM since 2008. Go behind the music and inside the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons in the Tony and Grammy Award-winning true-life musical phenomenon. They were just four guys from Jersey, until they sang their very first note. They had a sound nobody had ever heard, and the radio just couldn't get enough of. But while their harmonies were perfect onstage, off stage it was a very different story. It runs at the Music Hall November 10-22, 2020.
The season continues with the 2019 Tony Award-winning Best Musical Revival Oklahoma!, which has been reimagined for the 21st century. Stripped down to reveal the darker psychological truths at its core, Daniel Fish's production tells a story of a community circling its wagons against an outsider, and the frontier life that shaped America. Upending the sunny romance of a farmer and a cowpoke, this Oklahoma! allows the classic musical — and our country — to be seen in a whole new light. It runs at the Winspear Opera House, December 9-20, 2020.
Based on the Oscar-nominated film, Tootsie follows an out-of-work actor who poses as a woman in order to get a gig. It features a Tony-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band's Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), all in a laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater. It runs at the Music Hall January 26-February 7, 2021.
All rise for Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork To Kill a Mockingbird. Tony winner Bartlett Sher directs this adaptation of what many consider to be the greatest novel of all time, which has continually sold out its run on Broadway. This will be the first play that DSM has presented since Alfred Hitchcok's The 39 Steps in 2010. It runs at the Music Hall March 2-14, 2021.
Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey, composer Jeff Richmond, lyricist Nell Benjamin, and director Casey Nicholaw. Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina's reign, she learns the hard way that you can't cross a Queen Bee without getting stung. It runs at the Music Hall April 6-18, 2021.
Welcome to Hadestown, where a song can change your fate. Winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards including Best Musical, this acclaimed new musical by celebrated singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and innovative director Rachel Chavkin is a love story for today and always. Hadestown intertwines two mythic tales — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone — as it invites you on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. It runs at the Winspear Opera House May 18-30, 2021.
Superstars come and go, but Cher is forever. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The musical is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage. It runs at the Music Hall July 6-18, 2021.
The smash hit Wicked returns as a seasonal add-on, looking at what happened in the Land of Oz — but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin who's smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships, until the world decides to call one "good" and the other one "wicked." It runs at the Music Hall August 4-September 5, 2021.
"We are thrilled to kick off this new decade with a groundbreaking season of direct-from-Broadway hits," says Kenneth T. Novice, president of Dallas Summer Musicals. "I'm especially excited that DSM will be hosting Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and that our patrons will have the chance to experience this seminal piece of American literature brought to vivid life like only live theater can do."
Season packages are currently on sale and start at $265, with an exclusive loyalty pricing offer starting at $230 available to existing subscribers who renew before February 3, 2020. For more information, patrons can visit the DSM website or call 1-866-276-4884. Single tickets will go on sale at a later date.
The Jersey Boys return.
