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    Best Onstage

    The 7 most memorable onstage moments in Dallas-Fort Worth theater 2016

    Lindsey Wilson
    Dec 26, 2016 | 2:30 pm

    The Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum (of which I'm a member) already honored its favorites from the August 2015-September 2016 season, but there are a few onstage moments from this calendar year that I personally can't shake.

    Rather than declare an overall best shows list, here are seven of those moments within the play or musical that made it especially clear that we were experiencing live, raw, human theater.

    The stagnant cigarette smoke, 'Night, Mother at Echo Theatre
    When Jessie tells her mother that before the night is over she will kill herself, she's sitting at the kitchen table calmly folding tea towels and smoking a cigarette. After Jessie drops her bombshell, she forbids her housebound mother, Thelma, to call friends or family to stop her and then heads off to find her father's old gun.

    Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a struggle of power and emotion between these two women, who were embodied fiercely by Jessica Cavanagh and Amber Devlin in Echo Theatre's production. As we watched Devlin cycle through panic, fear, desperation, and sadness, a cloud of Cavanagh's cigarette smoke hung, in a barely moving cloud, above the table as a reminder of Jessie's presence.

    I can't say for certain if this happened at every show, or if the one I attended just happened to avoid the air conditioner at just the right moment, but it was a haunting, almost menacing, addition to the scene.

    Mary Tyrone's morphine haze, Long Day's Journey Into Night at Undermain Theatre
    ​Joanna Schellenberg's fragile performance was only one part of Undermain's excellent production, but anyone who's familiar with Eugene O'Neill's intense family drama knows that there's a difficult scene that can make or break an actor's portrayal of Mary Tyrone. Near the end of the three-hour play, the Tyrone matriarch finally succumbs fully to her morphine addiction and appears in her wedding gown, disoriented and glassy eyed and finally beyond the reach of her family.

    It's easy to go heavy handed here, making Mary into a cartoonish ghost, but Schellenberg and director Katherine Owens made sure to retain recognizable bits of the Mary we saw earlier. With the eerie fog rolling at her feet, Schellenberg dipped in and out of reality with just the right touch of otherworldliness.

    The twist in The Nether at Stage West
    I'm still not going to ruin this techno-thriller's surprise, because it was so satisfying to hear all the gasps and exhales when the audience figured out the truth. In a mere 70 minutes, director Garret Storms and his cast created an immensely detailed and superbly creepy dystopian world wherein people could assume an online identity, enter a "realm," and commit gruesome acts that have no real consequences (think Westworld but with avatars instead of robots).

    You could feel the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats each time a character leapt into this online world, and hear a murmur of concern for each dreadful emotional and physical act, but when playwright Jennifer Haley's big reveal happened the reaction was priceless.

    Audience participation at Ghost Quartet presented by Flora Off Broadway
    AT&T Performing Arts Center's experimental season of smaller, quirkier shows expanded all the way into Deep Ellum for the tour of Ghost Quartet, which was unlike anything DFW audiences had seen or heard before. Composer Dave Malloy currently has a hit on Broadway with his Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, but he was here in the spring with two Natasha cast members and a fourth musician to perform this circuitous meditation on death.

    It was a weird show for sure, with music that wasn't always pleasant to the ear, but it also defied audiences' preconceived notions about theater. The performers would interact with the spectators, some of whom were seated on cushions right beside them, by passing off instruments for them to play and at one point doling out a few bottles of whiskey. Watching the confusion, then disbelief, and finally delight on people's faces as they poured themselves a stiff drink was a fitting reaction for this show.

    Familial generations in The Big Meal at WaterTower Theatre
    ​Dan LeFranc's 90-minute play had a complicated structure that flowed effortlessly thanks to Emily Scott Banks' precise direction. In short bursts we saw Nikki and Sam meet, fall in love, break up, get back together, marry, reproduce, receive grandchildren, and live out their lives together. Not a particularly unusual story, but the emotions — and there were a lot of them — came from the unique way it was told through the eight-person cast.

    The six adult actors each took a turn at playing the couple at different points in their lives, but when Lois Sonnier Hart as the elderly Nikki glanced around at the family she had created, something about the wonder in her realization softened this mean critic's heart and brought on the waterworks.

    Preacher with a secret, Bootycandy at Stage West
    Each of the vignettes in Robert O'Hara's scathingly funny play about race, sexuality, and class had at least one laugh-out-loud moment and several truth bombs. But Djoré Nance truly grabbed the audience early on as an impassioned preacher delivering a sermon about the "questionable" behavior of some of the choir boys. He says that he received a letter signed "by the folks who pay your salary" that expresses concern that these boys may be homosexual or engaging in improper behavior.

    You think you know where this speech is going, but director Akín Babatundé conceals the preacher's true message until the last possible moment. Nance steps out from behind the pulpit to reveal he's wearing high heels (and a fabulous gown, when he sheds his robes), then basically tells the congregation they can shove their judgmental concerns where the sun don't shine. Commitment doesn't even begin to describe Nance's performance in that scene.

    Mother Holly in Wild, Wicked, Wyrd: Fairytale Time by The Drama Club
    The latest original work from this collective of DFW theater artists was uneven, with three of the four short plays failing to gather much steam. But Mother Holly, penned by Michael Federico, wove a dark tale about a kind-hearted girl who's desperate to save her family and the forest witch who grants her wish. Jeffrey Schmidt's simple set — three large W's that could illuminate when needed — and Amanda West's lighting started the creep factor before Korey Kent's costume for the witch, played with terrifying physicality by Nicole Berastequi, truly began to inspire nightmares.

    When Berastequi finally revealed her face, a twisted mask with glowing red eyes, and climbed onto the middle W like a creature stalking its prey, it was a chilling visual that lasted long past Halloween.

    Joanna Schellenberg and Bruce DuBose in Long Day's Journey Into Night at Undermain Theatre.

    Undermain Theatre presents Long Day's Journey Into Night
      
    Photo courtesy of Undermain Theatre
    Joanna Schellenberg and Bruce DuBose in Long Day's Journey Into Night at Undermain Theatre.
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    Season Announcement

    Uptown Players Dallas reveals glitter-drenched new season for 2025-26

    Lindsey Wilson
    Apr 30, 2025 | 10:09 am
    Urinetown: The Musical at NYCC Encores
    Photo by Joan Marcus
    A New York production of "Urinetown: The Musical" was produced in early 2025.

    The newly-released 2025-26 season of Uptown Players Dallas comes with a knowing wink behind the titles, with a goal to provide comfort, commentary, and chuckles.

    It's the 24th season for the company, one of the leading regional theaters in the DFW area, with a blend of satire, spectacle, and heartfelt storytelling in five bold productions celebrating queer joy and resilience.

    Highlights include a holiday misadventure, fairy tale revue, the political satire Urinetown, and Paula Vogel’s Mother Play. The season runs December 2025 to August 2026 at Dallas venues.

    It begins with festive flair during the holidays, as Carol Ann Knipple — first seen in 2021's When Pigs Fly — returns forStar of Wonder: A Carol Ann Christmas.

    Micah Green stars in this world premiere, with book and original lyrics by Mark Waldrop and additional material by B. J. Cleveland. After her beloved Melody Barn theater in Minnesota burns to the ground, Carol Ann refuses to give up her dream and relocates her Christmas spectacular to a Dallas stage she doesn’t fully understand. What follows is a merry misadventure of casting chaos, theatrical surprises, and side-splitting parodies, all led by Carol Ann’s blissfully misguided vision and unstoppable spirit. It runs December 5-14, 2025, at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

    Pure Glitter, a dazzling new comedy by Chicken & Biscuits playwright Douglas Lyons, is a love letter to the shimmering chaos of chosen family and queer friendship.

    The story unfolds during a surprise 10th anniversary bash thrown by Stan for his husband Tony. But when a handful of uninvited guests arrive, the night explodes into a whirlwind of secrets, sass, and unexpected truths. This Texas premiere runs March 20-29, 2026, at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

    The beloved fundraiser Broadway Our Way returns with a mischievously magical new theme: Fractured Fairy Tales.

    Written and directed by B.J. Cleveland, this all-new musical revue turns “happily ever after” on its rhinestone-covered head, blending Broadway’s biggest hits with a wild world of rogue royals, sassy witches, enchanted misfits, and storybook rebels. Whether you're team villain, fairy godmother, or a prince who prefers heels, this sparkling spectacle promises a magical night of laughter and inclusive storytelling. It runs April 30-May 3, 2026, at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

    In a city where private restrooms are banned and a corporation controls the most basic human need, a rebellious uprising takes shape in Urinetown: The Musical.

    This fiercely funny, Tony Award-winning satire skewers capitalism, bureaucracy, and environmental collapse, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. A timely production by Uptown Players will turn a sharp eye on justice, activism, and the enduring power of community to challenge the status quo. For marginalized communities, the musical’s central fight — for dignity, voice, and bodily autonomy — feels deeply personal. It runs July 10-19, 2026, at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

    Closing out the season is Paula Vogel's Mother Play, which ran on Broadway just last year with Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Jim Parsons.

    This raw and resonant semi-autobiographical work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright spans from 1962 to the present, following Phyllis, a fiercely independent single mother, and her two children as they navigate evictions, emotional upheavals, and the fragile balance between love and self-preservation. It runs August 21-20, 2026, at Theatre Three.

    Season tickets are on sale now, with discounts on both premium and regular seating. Season tickets can be purchased online at www.uptownplayers.org or by phone at 214-219-2718. Single tickets will go on sale September 2, 2025.

    uptown playersurinetown the musicalbroadway our waymother playlgbtqtheater
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