Theater Preview

These are the 12 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for July

There's a little bit of everything for the Dallas-Fort Worth theatergoer this month, what with the annual Festival of Independent Theatres, a Broadway tour, the premiere of a new series, and the farewell performance of a North Texas icon. It all starts early too, so hop to it and get your tickets fast.

Here are the 12 shows in order by start date:

Red, White & Broadway
The Firehouse Theatre, June 30-July 3
The DFW theater community is getting patriotic on our country's 240th birthday. Noelle Mason, Gregory Hullett, Elisa Danielle James, Peter DiCesare, and special guest Babakayode Ipaye will join an ensemble of 30-plus singers and dancers, plus a 10-piece live band, for this original tribute. Rumor has it that Janelle Lutz will be reviving her acclaimed Judy Garland character, so don't dawdle.

Stacy Has a Thing For Black Guys
The Tribe, July 1-10
The artist collective known as The Tribe specializes in new works, and this one from Ruben Carrazana (making his professional playwriting debut) definitely sounds provocative. A generic couple has their ideas challenged and pasts uncovered when a guest joins them for lemonade, setting the groundwork for a comedy about sex, race, and the illusions of intimacy. It plays at the Latino Cultural Center.

A Kid Like Jake
Second Thought Theatre, July 1-23
The kids of Second Thought Theatre have certainly been having a challenging year, from the teenage religious zealot in Martyr to the men revealing their childhood abuse in The Great God Pan. Now a gender-fluid toddler is making his parents question prestigious Manhattan schools in A Kid Like Jake, starring Jenny Ledel, Ian Ferguson, Christie Vela, and Kia Boyer.

Festival of Independent Theatres
Bath House Cultural Center, July 8-July 30
FIT is back with a strong lineup from theater groups that include WingSpan, Echo, Proper Hijinx, House Party, Cry Havoc, L.I.P. Service, and Fun House Theatre and Film. Just a sample: Lulu Ward performing Samuel Beckett and a 12-year-old playing Rush Limbaugh.

42nd Street
Performing Arts Fort Worth, July 12-17
Those dancing feet are tapping straight from Dallas Summer Musicals over to Bass Hall in Fort Worth. The national tour includes quite a few Texas faces, from Arlington's Sarah Fagan to Mady Modic of Coppell, and even Peggy Sawyer herself, played by Houston's Caitlin Ehlinger.

Crossing the Line
Amphibian Stage Productions, July 14-August 7
Imagine you and your SO are out for a lovely walk, when suddenly a new policy turns the outing into a ridiculous situation of bureaucratic absurdity. That's the premise of this play by Kieran Lynn, starring Kelsey Milbourn, Matthew Minor, and Justin Lemieux at the acclaimed Fort Worth theater.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder!
Pegasus Theatre, July 15-August 7
Kurt Kleinmann pioneered Dallas' iconic Living Black & White plays, writing the scripts for the comic mystery thrillers and starring as the inept wannabe detective Harry Hunsacker for years. This new play will mark his final performance in the role, as longtime understudy Scott Nixon prepares to take over. See Kleinmann July 14-17 and again August 4-7, and see Nixon July 21-31. If you save your ticket stub from the first show, call the box office and tell them you'd like a "return trip" ticket — and see the other Harry for half-price.

It's Only a Play
Uptown Players, July 15-31
Can't get enough Terrence McNally? On the heels of his somber Mothers and Sons, Uptown Players is mounting his dishy backstage comedy It's Only a Play. B.J. Cleveland is taking on — you guessed it — the role that originated on Broadway with Nathan Lane, with Chamblee Ferguson is playing the part of Matthew Broderick.

Romeo & Juliet
Shakespeare in the Bar, July 18 and July 25
This seems an appropriate choice of plays, since intense, short-lived romances tend to blossom in bars. The first immersive showing of the Bard's tragic love story will be at Eight Bells Alehouse in Expo Park, and the second a week later at the Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff. As always with these wildly popular productions, get your tickets now.

Dallas Cabaret Festival
Denise Lee Onstage and Fair Park Dallas, July 28-30
Denise Lee has been cultivating a cabaret presence in Dallas for a while, but now she's taking it up a notch with the first-ever Dallas Cabaret Festival. It's part of the ongoing "Life Is a Cabaret" series Lee has been presenting at the Women's Building in Fair Park, and it will kick off with an all-star Dallas version of Jim Caruso's Cast Party. The Manhattanite will return to Big D with pianist Billy Stritch. Other performers on tap for the festival include Julie Johnson, Linda Petty, and Marisa Diotalevi.

Billy Elliot
The Firehouse Theatre, July 28-August 14
This Farmer's Branch theater landed the regional premiere of the British movie-turned-musical, and eight choreographers to go with it. That's because (spoiler) there's quite a lot of dancing in this show, which is about a young lad from a tough background who just wants to dance.

Smokey Joe's Cafe
Jubilee Theatre, July 29-August 28
The classic Leiber and Stoller songbook musical is a treat for even those who don't know much about music. That's because from "Love Potion No. 9" to "Poison Ivy" to "On Broadway," chances are you're familiar with at least one of these songs.

Cabaret queen Denise Lee.

Photo by Mark Oristano

Cabaret queen Denise Lee.

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