Theater Critic Picks

These are the 8 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for February

UPDATE: Kitchen Dog Theater's streaming production of Last Ship to Proxima Centauri has been rescheduled to March 5-21. Dallas Theater Center's production of Something Grim(m) will now open on March 18.

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If Netflix and chill is getting old, try putting on a streaming play — you'll actually want to pay attention. This month, there are world premieres, variety shows, interactive experiments, and even a reprise from one of the most entertaining solo performers ever. Two of these picks are also in-person, with plenty of social distancing and creativity.

Here are eight local shows to watch this month:

Bennett & Babs: The Songs of Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand
Casa Mañana, February 9-14
Presented in the Reid Cabaret on the Mainstage, Bennett & Babs features Broadway veterans Jackie Burns and Joe Cassidy as two of the world's most iconic performers. Hum along to tunes like "The Lady Is a Tramp," "The Way We Were," and "Don't Rain on My Parade" while ordering drinks tableside and enjoy a socially distanced evening. Tickets start at $65 and can be purchased here.

Before You Get Married
Bishop Arts Theatre Center, streaming February 11-March 12
Franky D. Gonzalez's play explores the relationship between siblings on the night before the sister's wedding, with the knowledge they may not be related. With the passing night and flowing wine, both siblings struggle to understand what they mean to each other as they reveal secrets of the past and explore the desires of two people at once impossibly connected and separated. Tickets are $18-$28 and can be purchased here or by calling 214-948-0716.

Ghosts in the Kitchen: The Romantic Night
Ochre House Theatre, streaming February 11-28
The avant garde Deep Ellum troupe has created a new series of storytelling through virtual theater, as written and told by core company members Carla Parker, Justin Locklear, Kevin Grammer, and Matthew Posey, filmed and directed by Josh Jordan, and with music by Locklear and Sarah Rubio- Rogerson. First up is The Romantic Night, written and performed by Posey. Athalgarde Christhelmet walks home from his favorite bar, The Rustic Inn, and loses his way and himself in a baffling boozy world. Chance, misfortune, visitations of an angry God, and chaos marble a journey into a secret and wondrous night of a self-destructive boozer who finds redemption by sheer luck. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased here or by calling 214-826-6273.

Love Sucks – An Anti-Valentine’s Day Special
Amphibian Stage, streaming February 13-20
Created to make sure all of us who hate Valentine's Day know we are not alone, the online variety show will take a tongue-in cheek approach to the holiday. Hosted by Broadway veteran Eric Jon Mahlum, the show will feature tales of bad romance from comics Lauren Davis, Erin Harper, Dante Martinez, MK Paulsen, and Hannah Vaughan; a drag performance from Kylee O’Hara Fatale; and more. Audiences should be ready for anything — except the usual Valentine's fare of cheap champagne and teddy-bears. Tickets are $12 and can be purchased here or by calling 817-923-3012.

Something Grim(m)
Dallas Theater Center, February 20-March 6
This creative journey inspired by Grimm's fairytales is a self-guided walking tour through various locations, starting in the Lexus Silver parking garage and then moving around the exterior of the Wyly Theatre. The production will include comic strips, pop-up story books, and pre-recorded video and audio elements, and was created specifically for this cast and this location. Tickets are $17.50-$35 and can be purchased here.

In Search of the Sublime
Moonrise Initiative and Stage West, streaming February 23-March 25
Written and directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni and created by Victoria Cruz, Olivia de Guzman, Shyama Nithiananda, Galen Sho Sato, Garret Storms, Kelsey Milbourn, and Mitchell Stephens, this interactive, live, online experience is part poem, part story, and part something else altogether. Using suggestions from the online audience, the cleansing power of running, and some truly excellent music, you join in weaving together tales of terror and awe in a concerted effort to achieve The Sublime. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here or by calling 817-784-9378.

The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac
UndermainTheatre, streaming February 24-March 14
Clad in exotic dress and sequined makeup, Taylor Mac brings this showcase of work to the stage with a multitude of costumes and props from a giant suitcase and self-accompaniment on the ukulele and mandolin. This virtual stream of the 2010 solo performance, filmed by Katherine Owens, is available only to season subscribers. Subscriptions can be purchased here or by calling 214-747-5515.

Last Ship to Proxima Centauri
Kitchen Dog Theater, streaming February 25-March 14
In Greg Lam's dark science-fiction comedy (a world premiere!), the earth has become uninhabitable. The last escape ship arrives at its new home centuries after all the others. The passengers are not prepared for what they find there: A planet full of unimpressed people of color who are not happy to see them. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here or by calling 214-953-1055.

Get ready to go on a journey with Dallas Theater Center's Something Grim(m).

Something Grim(m) at Dallas Theater Center

Dallas Theater Center/Facebook

Get ready to go on a journey with Dallas Theater Center's Something Grim(m).

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