Theater Critic Picks

These are the 10 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for July

Things have calmed down a bit from last month, so if you're heading out of town on vacation, you needn't feel quite so guilty about missing all the theatrics Dallas and Fort Worth have to offer. But if you're still here, put these shows on your calendar and experience something new and exciting.

Here are the 10 shows to see in order by start date:

Sex Ed
Cry Havoc Theater Company, July 3-14
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, conversations about sexual impropriety are front and center in our collective consciousness. Yet we seem to have collective amnesia when it comes to our own teenage years and the lack of honest, accurate information we received about our bodies. Cry Havoc Theater Company's devised work discusses the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees ... and how "the talk" has become so politically divisive in our culture.

Festival of Independent Theatres
July 12-August 3
Founded in 1998 in an effort to aid local theater companies without a permanent performance space, this festival presents eight one-act shows, paired in two-show blocks and performed in rotating repertory. There will also be two brand new cabaret performances by two divas of the Dallas music scene, Jodi Crawford Wright and Kathryn Taylor Rose.

Gutenberg! The Musical!
Amphibian Stage Productions, July 12-August 18
Anthony King and Scott Brown's two-man musical spoof follows a pair of aspiring playwrights who perform a backers' audition for their new project: a big, splashy musical about printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg. With an unending supply of enthusiasm, Bud and Doug sing all the songs and play all the parts in their historical epic, with the hope that one of the producers in attendance will give them a Broadway contract — fulfilling their ill-advised dreams.

Hello, Dolly!
Dallas Summer Musicals, July 17-28
The bold and enchanting Dolly Gallagher Levi is a widow, matchmaker, and professional meddler. When she decides the next match she needs to make is for herself, she weaves a web of romantic complications for her newest client, the cantankerous "half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder, his two clerks, a pretty hat maker, and her assistant. Fort Worth native and Tony winner Betty Buckley comes home to star in this national tour.

Crossing the Line
Kitchen Dog Theater and Cry Havoc Theater Company, July 18-August 4
Based on interviews conducted in Dallas, via Skype, and at the border, this original documentary-style performance focuses on the immigration debate and the situation at the border.

Godspell
WaterTower Theatre, July 18-28
Stephen Schwartz’s beloved musical is inspired by parables taken from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The fun, modern take on classic stories is mixed with a vibrant score of pop, folk, and gospel music.

A Bronx Tale
Broadway at the Bass, July 23-28
Broadway's hit crowd-pleaser based on the one-man-show by Chazz Palminteri takes you to the stoops of the Bronx in the 1960s, where a young man is caught between the father he loves and the mob boss he'd love to be.

Lungs
Stage West, July 25-August 18
The world is getting hotter, there's unrest overseas — actually, the seas themselves aren't very calm either — and in an IKEA, a man suggests to his partner that they should have a child. What if it grows up to solve the world's problems? What if it becomes a mass murderer? What about its carbon footprint? They leave with nothing they went in for in Duncan Macmillan's play, but come out with a full set of self-assembly dilemmas that they spend a life cycle trying to construct.

John Leguizamo: Latin History For Morons
AT&T Performing Arts Center, July 26
Inspired by the near total absence of Latinos from John Leguizamo's son's American history books, this one-man show take audiences on an outrageously funny, frenzied search to find a Latin hero for a school history project. From a mad recap of the Aztec empire to stories of unknown Latin patriots of the Revolutionary War and beyond, Leguizamo breaks down the 3,000 years between the Mayans and Pitbull into 110 irreverent and uncensored minutes above and beyond his unique style.

Sistas the Musical
Jubilee Theatre, July 26-August 25
After a matriarch's death, the women in the family clean Grandma's attic and find love and old memories packed away, underscored by hit tunes that trace the history of black women from the trials of the 1930s through the Girl Groups of the '60s to the empowerment of the '90s.

Kitchen Dog Theater and Cry Havoc Theater Company's co-production of Crossing the Line examines the crisis at the border.

Photo courtesy of Kitchen Dog Theater

Kitchen Dog Theater and Cry Havoc Theater Company's co-production of Crossing the Line examines the crisis at the border.

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Documentary News

Dallas native directs new Netflix series Waco: American Apocalypse

Waco: American Apocalypse

ATF agents at Waco compound in 1993.

Netflix has a new series on the tragedy that took place in Waco three decades ago: Called Waco: American Apocalypse, it's a three-part series documenting the standoff between cult leader David Koresh and the federal government that ended in a fiery inferno, televised live, with 76 people dead.

The series debuts on March 22, to coincide with the 30-year anniversary of the event which took place from February 28 to April 19, 1993. There's a trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scZ2x7R_XXc.

It's an oft-told tale and not the only new release to try and exploit the 30-year anniversary: Jeff Guinn, former books editor at the Fort Worth Star Telegram, just came out with a book also described as definitive, called Waco: David Korsh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage.

Waco: American Apocalypse is directed by another "local": Dallas native Tiller Russell (Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer), who obtained never-before-seen videotapes of FBI negotiations, as well as raw news footage and interviews with insiders.

Those insiders include one of David Koresh’s spiritual wives; the last child released from the compound alive; a sniper from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team; the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit Chief; journalists; and members of the ATF tactical team who watched colleagues die in the shootout against the heavily armed members of the religious sect.

The FBI videotaped inside the hostage negation room, thinking they'd be there maybe 24 hours, not 51 days.

"These are video cassettes that were sitting in somebody’s closet for 30 years, that show the mechanics of hostage negotiations in an intimate setting - not the hostage negotiation scenarios you see in films, but a team of people grinding, day in and day out, for 51 days," Russell says.

He also procured footage from Waco TV station KWTX, who had a reporter embedded in the initial gunfight.

While the standoff was broadcast live on TV at the time, much of it was out of camera range. The film uses 3D graphics to recreate the details of the compound.

Russell acknowledges that the tale of the cult leader who was also a pedophile, the debate over the right to bear arms, the constitutional limits of religious freedom, dredge up painful conversations that continue today.

"It cast a long shadow, pre-saging the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma, the shooting at Colombine, and a growing distrust of government, but I think it's important to reckon with our past so we don't repeat mistakes," he says.

"So much of what’s roiling in culture today can be traced to Waco, a story about God and guns in America with all these children at the center whose lives were determined by the adults around them," he says. "There was no playbook for what happened, everyone was out on a limb, and people made mistakes. But almost everybody was trying to do their very best."

"I think this is a story that's often recalled in politicized terms, with finger-pointing on who screwed up and how did we get here, but there's a profound humanity to it all," he says.

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