Theater Critic Picks

These are the 12 can't-miss shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for December

It's perfect: 12 shows for the holiday month of December, though not all (thankfully, some might say) have a festive feel to them. There are new works and old favorites, regional premieres and returning stars, and even a hell-sprite to balance out the elves.

Here are the 12 shows to see, in order by start date:

A Very Judy Christmas
Uptown Players, December 1-16
This world premiere written and directed by B.J. Cleveland pays tribute to the 1960s TV holiday specials, with Janelle Lutz returning as Judy Garland. Share the holiday with Judy and some celebrity friends, including Ethel Merman and Liza Minnelli, along with some of Garland's signature songs and holiday classics performed by a number of surprise special guests.

Fetch Clay, Make Man
Dallas Theater Center, December 5-January 13
Loosely inspired by the real-life friendship of Muhammad Ali and Stepin Fetchit, this new script from DTC playwright-in-residence Will Power brings these two iconic figures together to shape their legacies against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Santaland Diaries
Casa Mañana, December 6-22
David Sedaris' sardonic look back at his time as a Macy's Christmas elf brings some naughty to the holiday season. Zak Reynolds stars as Crumpet, the grumpiest elf in New York City, as he navigates the absurd and hilarious trials and tribulations of a middle-aged elf dealing with cynical Santas, greedy children, and their harried parents.

Black Nativity
Bishop Arts Theatre Center, December 6-23
This retelling of the nativity story by Langston Hughes is returning for its 15th anniversary production. Spoken word, song, music, dance, and theater combine to create a one-of-a-kind Christmas pageant.

Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol
Stage West, December 6-23
Tom Mula's behind-the-scenes look at Charles Dickens' much-loved story returns to Stage West starring Emily Scott Banks. This piece takes audiences along for Marley's amazing and hilarious journey to the Mouth of Hell — and beyond. With the questionable aid of a hell-sprite called The Bogle, Marley concocts a desperate plan to save Scrooge (and himself).

Solstice: A New Holiday
Theatre Three, December 6-30
Stuart and Paulette are back in Dallas for the holidays, decking the Theatre Three halls with more than just boughs of holly. This reworked piece reunites playwright Jonathan Norton with composer Cherish Robinson and adds contributions from Janielle Kastner.

A Christmas Story, The Musical
AT&T Performing Arts Center, December 12-16
Set in 1940s Indiana, a young and bespectacled Ralphie Parker schemes his way toward the holiday gift of his dreams, an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. An infamous leg lamp, outrageous pink bunny pajamas, a maniacal department store Santa, and a triple-dog-dare to lick a freezing flagpole are just a few of the distractions that stand between Ralphie and his Christmas wish.

Chicago
AT&T Performing Arts Center, December 18-23
There's never been a better time to experience this razzle-dazzle smash, the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Come along, babe, for a universal tale of fame, fortune, and all that jazz with one show-stopping song after another and the most astonishing dancing you've ever seen.

The Phantom of the Opera
Dallas Summer Musicals, December 19-January 6
Cameron Mackintosh's spectacular new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's classic is part of a brand-new North American tour, with aa huge cast and orchestra of 52 people.

A Bronx Tale
AT&T Performing Arts Center, December 27-January 6
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.

Everybody
Stage West, December 27-January 27
In this modern, comedic, and heartfelt riff on the iconic medieval morality play, fate decides the roles by lottery each night, so — as is true in life — Everybody could be anybody. And in the end, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins asks, when it's your time to go what will you leave behind and what will you take with you?

Clowning Around With Murder!
Pegasus Theatre, December 29-January 20
The latest Living Black & White takes place in 1935 at the Fripson Clown College, where someone has murdered the founder and head professor. Harry Hunsacker, world famous detective and aspiring actor, along with his paid by the hour assistant, Nigel Grouse, meet a variety of clowns, clues, and a copper in disguise on the trail of a murderer.

Stuart and Paulette are back for Solstice: A New Holiday Adventure at Theatre Three.

Theatre Three presents Solstice: A New Holiday Adventure

Photo courtesy of Theatre Three

Stuart and Paulette are back for Solstice: A New Holiday Adventure at Theatre Three.

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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