Season Announcement

Addison's WaterTower Theatre goes Hollywood for big 27th season

A scene from The Play That Goes Wrong on Broadway.

Photo by Jeremy Daniel

For its first fully produced season back onstage since the pandemic, WaterTower Theatre has four big shows on tap.

First up is perhaps the biggest, especially when you consider that it's the first time in decades this hit show has been produced locally in North Texas, featuring an all-local cast and team. It's Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's iconic rock opera that also happens to have just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

Set against the backdrop of an extraordinary series of events during the final weeks in the life of Jesus Christ, as seen through the eyes of Judas, the show reflects the rock roots that defined a generation and includes the songs "I Don't Know How to Love Him," "Gethsemane," and "Superstar." Directed by Natalie King, music directed by Cody Dry, and choreographed by Kelly McCain, it runs November 30-December 11, 2022.

The regional premiere of The Play That Goes Wrong is next, an Olivier Award-winning comedy that's a hilarious hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and Monty Python. This co-production with Stage West is written by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, and Jonathan Sayer and directed by Harry Parker. Welcome to opening night of The Murder at Haversham Manor, where things are quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous with an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can't play dead, and actors who trip over everything (including their lines). It runs February 1-12, 2023.

Created By Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister and directed by Ashley Puckett Gonzales, The Manic Monologues is having its regional premiere, as well. When creator Zack had his first psychotic break and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in May 2017, he was just finishing his PhD at Stanford University — and his world imploded. Would mental illness dictate his whole life? Would everything change?

Zack was underwater, and his then-girlfriend Elisa (and future co-creator) had no way of knowing whether her happy, gregarious partner-in-crime would ever resurface. One of the hardest parts about those early days was the absence of relatable, lived experiences. Zack and Elisa decided to create a play based on true stories to disrupt the stigma around mental illness. It runs April 19-30, 2023.

The world premiere musical Goin' Hollywood closes out the season, with book and lyrics by Stephen Cole and music by David Krane. Have you ever wished you were born in a different time? Alice Chandler did. Alice does not feel like she belongs in the 21st century, but she never dreamed that while at lunch with her best friend and writing partner, Garson Stein, a magical birthday wish would find them both instantly transported back in time to 1949 Hollywood.

Alice and Garson arrive smack in the golden age of movie musicals, where they land their dream job writing for L. B. Mayer at MGM and are surrounded by glittering stars of Hollywood, but they soon see that under all the glamour lies a studio system crumbling while the blacklist threatens their closest allies, and their eyes are opened to Hollywood's darker side. It runs July 19-30, 2023.

"Season 27 brings forth new voices, new works, and new light indeed," says producing artistic director Shane Peterman, who programmed the season with associate artistic director Elizabeth Kensek. "Two stunning pieces of musical theater, one classic and one world premiere, and two plays, one comedic and an enlightening and educational piece that is very close to my heart. With this season, I think you will agree, WaterTower Theatre is making a thrilling comeback."

WaterTower is also committed to the development of musical theater and will be workshopping two brand-new musicals during its 27th season, beginning with Donald Fowler's Oregon in the Fall. WaterTower Theatre had been planning the workshop of this new musical before Fowler's unexpected death in 2020, and now it has been posthumously completed.

Individual tickets go on sale in summer 2022, but season tickets are currently on sale now, with prices increasing after June 1, 2022. New or renewed season tickets are available for purchase by calling 972-450-6232 or emailing boxoffice@watertowertheatre.org.

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