Theater Critic Picks

These are the 14 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for February

UPDATE: Lyric Stage's production of I Do! I Do! now stars Sarah Gay and Christopher J. Deaton.

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The theatrical community of Dallas-Fort Worth has 14 perfect little valentines for you, spanning the romantic to the thought-provoking. And need we even mention that seeing a show is a date that's sure to impress?

Here are the 14 shows to see, in order by start date:

Lonely Planet
Amphibian Stage Productions, February 1-24
Denise Lee makes her Amphibian debut alongside Jamal Gibran Sterling in Steven Dietz's 1993 play about the AIDS epidemic and how it's rapidly growing among Hispanic and African American communities — yet that fact is rarely discussed. The play was originally written for two men, but director Bill Earl Ray cast Lee as only one way to update a script that still feels frighteningly relevant.

Our Town
Circle Theatre, February 2-March 9
Kelsey Milbourn stars as the Stage Manager in this production of Thornton Wilder's classic. Told in three acts — "Daily Life," "Love and Marriage," and "Death and Eternity" — Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play reminds us of the importance of love, loss, and living in the moment.

An Iliad
Undermain Theatre, February 6-March 3
Bruce DuBose and Paul Semrad are reprising their roles as the Poet and the Musician in Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare's "one-man" play. They first stunned Undermain audiences in 2012, when Katherine Owens directed the modern-day retelling of Homer's classic.

La Llorona: A Love Story
Bishop Arts Theatre Center, February 7-24
Kathleen Anderson Culebro is not only the artistic director of Amphibian Stage Productions, but also a respected playwright. Her piece premiered Off Broadway in 2007, and now Adam Adolfo is directing a cast of BATC newcomers in the haunting, humorous love story where tradition, superstition, and love collide.

High Dive
Echo Theatre, February 8-23
The audience co-stars with Kristin McCollum in Leslie Ayvazian's one-woman play about an American celebrating her 50th birthday in Greece. From their "poolside tables," audience members will be asked to jump in and play various parts, echoing the play's theme about being willing to take risks.

Falsettos
AT&T Performing Arts Center, February 12-17
A starry cast of Broadway names headlines this tour of William Finn and James Lapine's musical, about a dysfunctional family navigating modern challenges and trying to remember that love tells a million stories.

Jersey Boys
Performing Arts Fort Worth, February 12-17
Those street corner-singing boys are back, showing how Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons rocketed to fame and fortune while battling personal struggles and changing the sound of American music.

I Do! I Do!
Lyric Stage, February 14-17
Broadway veteran and Mesquite native Kristen Beth Williams returns to Lyric Stage with her husband, Broadway actor James Ludwig, to star in this musical celebration of marriage. Written by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, of The Fantasticks fame, the show was originally written as a star vehicle for theater legends Mary Martin and Robert Preston.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
Stage West, February 14-March 10
In the regional premiere of Carlyle Brown's play about the tense but necessary relationship between the arts and politics, poet Langston Hughes is preparing to appear before McCarthy's committee for "un-American activities." As Hughes fitfully tries to compose a poem, accusations whirl, censorships abound, and freedoms are called into question.

You Got Older
Kitchen Dog Theater, February 14-March 10
What happens when your life path leads you right over a cliff? In this bawdy, irreverent, and touching new play that reunites Jenny Ledel and Barry Nash, Pulitzer-nominated playwright Clare Barron blends reality and fantasy in a dark comedy about falling apart as you're failing to launch.

Bless Me, Ultima
Cara Mía Theatre Co., February 15-March 3
The beloved Chicano novel by Rudolfo Anaya is brought to the stage in physical style in a highly theatrical production. It tells the story of a young boy facing the toxic masculinity of a society who is mentored by the curandera Ultima, a native healer who uses herbs and magic.

Anastasia
Dallas Summer Musicals, February 19-March 3
Journey to the past with this stage adaptation that boasts a score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens and a book by Terrence McNally. Years after the Russian royal family is executed, a young woman surfaces with knowledge only a princess would have.

First Impressions Festival
Imprint Theatreworks, February 20-23
In its second year, this newish company promises more local works under the guidance of local directors. A complete list of performances hasn't been announced yet, but is promised to be soon.

Guadalupe in the Guest Room
WaterTower Theatre, February 22-March 17
Guadalupe is living in the guest room of her son-in-law, Steve, while she works to translate from English to Spanish the children's books her deceased daughter has written. Overcome with grief and separated by a language barrier, the unlikely housemates struggle to communicate — until they begin watching the same television show. Then the two bond in the most unexpected of ways, leading Guadalupe and Steve to learn that understanding doesn't always require speaking the same language.

Undermain Theatre is remounting its acclaimed production of An Iliad.

Photo by Katherine Owens

Undermain Theatre is remounting its acclaimed production of An Iliad.

openings theater

A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

dso luisi ring wagner recording concerts music symphony