Theater Critic Picks

Dallas-Fort Worth theater critics bestow honors on 2015-16 standouts

Members of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum convened on September 3 for their annual volley of voting, determining who deserves recognition for the 2015-16 season.

In categories covering new works to stellar performances, the six critics fought for their favorites. Not everyone's picks made it through the voting process, which needed either 50 percent of the votes or a unanimous decision if only two or three critics had seen the production, so look out for personal favorites to pop up in those end-of-year lists.

Dallas Theater Center had a stellar year, as did Stage West and Undermain Theatre. Some artists scored both on and off the stage, earning nods for their performances as well as directing and design contributions. Without further ado, here are the awards:

Outstanding Direction

Akín Babatundé, Bootycandy, Stage West, and The Mountaintop, Dallas Theater Center
Emily Scott Banks, The Big Meal, WaterTower Theatre
David Lozano, Blood Wedding, Cara Mía Theatre Company
Katherine Owens, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Undermain Theatre
Artie Olaisen, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Dallas Children’s Theater
Len Pfluger, Grand Hotel, Lyric Stage
Susan Sargeant, Play, WingSpan Theatre Company
Ryan Mathieu Smith, Trainspotting, L.I.P. Service
Garret Storms, The Nether, Stage West
Regina Washington, Harriet Jacobs, African American Repertory Theater

Outstanding New Play or Musical

Clarkston by Samuel D. Hunter, Dallas Theater Center
Deferred Action by David Lozano and Lee Trull, Cara Mía Theatre Company and Dallas Theater Center
Faust by Michael Federico, Lydia Mackay, and Jeffrey Schmidt, The Drama Club
Stacy Has a Thing for Black Guys by Ruben Carrazana, The Tribe
Temple Spirit by Susan Felder, Echo Theatre

Outstanding Touring Production

Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, AT&T Performing Arts Center Off-Broadway on Flora Series
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, AT&T Performing Arts Center Broadway Series
Eric Bogosian’s Bitter Honey: The Best of 100 (Monologues), AT&T Performing Arts Center Off-Broadway on Flora Series
Cabaret, AT&T Performing Arts Center Broadway Series
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, AT&T Performing Arts Center Broadway Series
Ghost Quartet, AT&T Performing Arts Center Off-Broadway on Flora Series
The Sound of Music, Dallas Summer Musicals and Performing Arts Fort Worth

Outstanding Performance by an Actor

Christopher J. Deaton, Grand Hotel, Lyric Stage
Bruce DuBose, The Night Alive, Undermain Theatre
Hassan El-Amin, A Christmas Carol, Dallas Theater Center, and The Mountaintop, Dallas Theater Center
Ivan Jasso, Deferred Action, Cara Mía Theatre Company and Dallas Theater Center
Jason Leyva, The Whale, L.I.P. Service
Barry Nash, I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Kitchen Dog Theater
Alex Organ, Constellations, Dallas Theater Center
Brandon Potter, Richard III, Shakespeare Dallas and Shakespeare in the Bar
Garret Storms, The Big Meal, WaterTower Theatre
Terry Vandivort, The Fantasticks, Theatre Three

Outstanding Performance by an Actress

Emily Scott Banks, Jacob Marley’s A Christmas Carol, Stage West
Jessica Cavanagh, Outside Mullingar, WaterTower Theatre
Amber Devlin, Picnic, Theatre Three
Frida Espinosa-Muller, Blood Wedding, Cara Mía Theatre Company and Deferred Action, Cara Mía Theatre Company and Dallas Theater Center
Tiana Johnson, The Mountaintop, Dallas Theater Center
Jenny Ledel, I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Kitchen Dog Theater
Denise Lee, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Jubilee Theatre
Janelle Lutz, End of the Rainbow, Uptown Players, and Miracle on 34th Street, Dallas Children’s Theater
Karen Parrish, Blackberry Winter, Kitchen Dog Theater
Allison Pistorius, Constellations, Dallas Theater Center
Joanna Schellenberg, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Undermain Theatre
Diane Worman, The Thrush and the Woodpecker, Kitchen Dog Theater

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast

The Big Meal, WaterTower Theatre
Bootycandy, Stage West
Faust, The Drama Club
Grand Hotel, Lyric Stage
Long Day’s Journey into Night, Undermain Theatre
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Dallas Children’s Theater
The Nether, Stage West
Play, WingSpan Theatre Company
The Toxic Avenger, Uptown Players
Under the Skin, Circle Theatre

Outstanding Design or Creative Contribution

Jeffrey Colangelo, fight choreography, Christina Valentine, fight assistant, and Bobby Garcia, martial arts consultant, Animal vs. Machine, PrismCo
Design team, Faust, The Drama Club
Design team, Jonah, Undermain Theatre
Jay Dias, musical direction and orchestration restoration, Anything Goes, Lyric Stage
John M. Flores, sound design, The Thrush and the Woodpecker, Kitchen Dog Theater
Richard Gwozdz, orchestra conducting, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Artes de la Rosa
Kyle Igneczi, puppet design and direction, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, Amphibian Stage Productions
Benjamin Lutz and Dillon White, video design, Trainspotting, L.I.P. Service
Lynn Mauldin and Rebekka Koepke, properties design, The Adventures of Flo and Greg, Echo Theatre
Scott Osborne, set design, The Fantasticks, Theatre Three
Karen Perry, costume design, Dreamgirls, Dallas Theater Center
Gil Pritchett, musical direction, Harriet Jacobs, African American Repertory Theater
Ryan Rumery, original music and sound design, Constellations, Dallas Theater Center
Garret Storms and Nate Davis, set design, The Nether, Stage West

Special Citations

Rose Pearson, co-founder of Circle Theatre, for a lifetime of visionary leadership of professional theater in Fort Worth and support of female theater artists.
Kurt Kleinmann, for his creation of Pegasus Theatre’s Living Black & White productions and 30 years as bumbling noir detective Harry Hunsacker.
Dallas Children’s Theater for providing sensory friendly performances for kids with special needs.

Critics

Lindsey Wilson, CultureMap
Nancy Churnin, Dallas Morning News
Martha Heimberg, TheaterJones.com and Dallas Weekly
Arnold Wayne Jones, Dallas Voice
Mark Lowry, TheaterJones.com and Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Punch Shaw, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum is an organization of professional, paid critics that recognizes outstanding theatrical contributions in North Texas. Members see 50 or more productions per season (September 1-August 31) and are not practicing theater artists.

The joint production between Dallas Theater Center and Cara Mía Theatre Company, Deferred Action, was one of the year's best new works.

Deferred Action at Dallas Theater Center

Photo by Karen Almond

The joint production between Dallas Theater Center and Cara Mía Theatre Company, Deferred Action, was one of the year's best new works.

theater awards

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