Theater Critic Picks

Best of 2018-19 get standing O from Dallas-Fort Worth theater critics

It was a strong season for women in Dallas-Fort Worth theater, not just acting-wise but also directing, music directing, writing, designing, leading, and playing musical instruments.

That made it that much harder for the eight critics of the DFW Critics Forum to narrow down our choices for the best of 2018-19. There was much debating, much lobbying, only a little name-calling (kidding), but eventually we finalized our list.

Not everyone's picks made it through the voting process, which needed either more than 50 percent of the votes or a unanimous decision if only two or three critics had seen the production. Look for personal favorites not included here to pop up in critics' end-of-year lists.

Without further ado, here are the awards:

Outstanding Direction:

Tim Bond, Sweat, Dallas Theater Center
Kelsey Leigh Ervi, Everything Is Wonderful, WaterTower Theatre
Joel Ferrell, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Circle Theatre
Jonathan Fielding and Brenda Withers, Artist Descending a Staircase, Amphibian Stage Productions
Alex Organ, Incognito, Second Thought Theatre
Mara Richards Bim and Tim Johnson, Crossing the Line, Cry Havoc Theater Company and Kitchen Dog Theater
Christie Vela, What We Were, Second Thought Theatre
Ashley H. White, Ghost Quartet, Imprint Theatreworks

Outstanding New Play or Musical

Crossing the Line, ensemble of Cry Havoc Theater Company
penny candy, Jonathan Norton, Dallas Theater Center
Jo & Louisa, Isabella Russell-Ides, WingSpan Theatre Company
What We Were, Blake Hackler, Second Thought Theatre

Outstanding Performance by an Actor

Chad Cline, Raptured, Theatre Three
Sonny Franks, The Cake, Uptown Players
Blake Hackler, Twelfth Night, Dallas Theater Center; and Drunk Enough to Say I Love You & Here We Go, Second Thought Theatre
David Meglino, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), Imprint TheatreWorks; and Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, Uptown Players
Steven Pounders, Everything Is Wonderful, WaterTower Theatre
Christopher Llewyn Ramirez, Sweat and Twelfth Night, Dallas Theater Center
Drew Wall, Incognito, Second Thought Theatre

Outstanding Performance by an Actress

Betty Buckley, Hello, Dolly!, Dallas Summer Musicals
Sarah Gay, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Circle Theatre
Ana Hagedorn, Steel Magnolias and The Wolves, Dallas Theater Center; and The Armor Plays: Cinched & Strapped, Theatre Three
Lindsay Hayward, Fur, Teatro Dallas
Jennifer Kuenzer, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), Imprint Theatreworks
Laura Lites, Disaster!, Uptown Players
Shannon McGrann, The Cake, Uptown Players; Raptured, Theatre Three; Incognito, Second Thought Theatre; A Doll’s House, Part 2, Stage West
Christine Sanders, Artist Descending a Staircase, Amphibian Stage Productions; and Obama-ology, Jubilee Theatre
Lucy Shea, Bright Star, The Firehouse Theatre
Sally Nystuen Vahle, Sweat and Steel Magnolias, Dallas Theater Center

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast

Bright Star, The Firehouse Theatre
Crossing the Line, Cry Havoc Theater Company
Ghost Quartet, Imprint Theatreworks
Incognito, Second Thought Theatre
Men on Boats, Circle Theatre
penny candy, Dallas Theater Center
What We Were, Second Thought Theatre
The Wolves, Dallas Theater Center

Outstanding Touring Production

Aladdin, Dallas Summer Musicals
Hamilton, Dallas Summer Musicals
Hello, Dolly!, Dallas Summer Musicals
The Play That Goes Wrong, AT&T Performing Arts Center
Unveiled, WaterTower Theatre

Outstanding Design or Creative Contribution

Vonda K. Bowling, music direction, The Ballad of Little Jo, WaterTower Theatre
Aimee Hurst Bozarth, pianist and musical associate, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Circle Theatre
Design team, Artist Descending a Staircase, Amphibian Stage Productions
Design team, Everything Is Wonderful, WaterTower Theatre
John M. Flores, sound design, What We Were, Second Thought Theatre
Olivia de Guzman, music, and Justin Locklear, lyrics, Doom McCoy and the Death Nugget, Ochre House Theater
Rusty Jones, scenic design, Babette’s Feast, Amphibian Stage Productions
Justin Locklear, score, Elwood, and puppet design, Doom McCoy and the Death Nugget, Ochre House Theater
Kelly McCain, choreography, Bright Star, The Firehouse Theatre
Adam C. Wright, music direction, Ghost Quartet, Imprint Theatreworks

Special Citations

To Katherine Owens (1957-2019), co-founding artistic director of Undermain Theatre, for groundbreaking work in experimental theater and excellence in producing modern classics, staging 35 world premieres in 35 years, and seeding the ground for the birth of exciting new companies in North Texas over the past three decades.
To Cora Cardona, founder and former artistic director of Teatro Dallas, for introducing North Texas audiences to writers from the Spanish-speaking world, giving emerging theater artists a home, creating the International Theater Festival, and keeping alive the legacy of Teatro Dallas.
To Joanie Schultz for her brief but significant contributions during her tenure as artistic director of WaterTower Theatre (December 2016–December 2018), including championing female directors, playwrights of color, and other inclusive initiatives; encouraging new works; and reinvigorating the DFW theater scene.
To Mara Richards Bim, Tim Johnson, Cry Havoc Theater Company, and Kitchen Dog Theater for creating Crossing the Line, a thorough and compelling look at the immigration controversy devised through extensive research that included a trip to the border to gather facts and opinions from a wide range of sources. Bim and Johnson edited hundreds of pages of interview transcripts into a narrative that delved deeply into the immigration issue.

Participating Critics

Lindsey Wilson, CultureMap
Janice L. Franklin, TheaterJones.com
Jan Farrington, TheaterJones.com
Martha Heimberg, TheaterJones.com and Dallas Weekly
Arnold Wayne Jones, Dallas Voice
Mark Lowry, TheaterJones.com
Manny Mendoza, Dallas Morning News
Jill Sweeney, TheaterJones.com

Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum is an organization of professional, paid critics that recognizes outstanding theatrical contributions in North Texas. Members see 40 or more productions per season (Sept. 1-Aug. 31) and are not practicing theater artists.

Circle Theatre's production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street secured awards for director, actress, and creative contribution.

Photo by Tim Long

Circle Theatre's production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street secured awards for director, actress, and creative contribution.

awards theater music bests

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