Theater Critic Picks

These are the 11 can't-miss shows in Dallas theater for December

It may not be the 12 days of Christmas, but the 11 shows of December have all the variety and (in some cases) musicality you could want. Whether you want a holiday that's glamorous, nostalgic, mysterious, or Shakespearean, it's all here in Dallas this month.

Here are the 11 shows to see, in order by start date:

The Legend of Georgia McBride
Uptown Players, December 1-17
If seeing Kyle Igneczi in drag two years ago whetted your appetite for more, you're in luck. Matthew Lopez's comedy about a failing Elvis impersonator named Casey who stumbles into a new career — and onstage identity — also benefits from the presence of established drag performers Walter Lee and Chris Herrero, and the funny and grounded Sky Williams as Casey's wife.

Black Nativity
Bishop Arts Theatre Center, December 1-17
Now in its 14th year, this seasonal favorite by Langston Hughes is back to present the Christmas story through praise dance, soul-stirring gospel music, poetry, and folk spirituals.

The Three Musketeers
Theatre Britain, December 1-30
This is the final show for Theatre Britain, which is closing up shop after more than two decades as North Texas' main purveyor of panto productions. Jackie Mellor-Guin's melodrama contains all the traditional panto elements: songs, dances, jokes, exaggerated characters, and lots of audience participation. Don't forget to buy an authentic, imported British snack in the lobby while you're there.

The Great Distance Home
WaterTower Theatre, December 4-17
This movement-based, mainly wordless theatrical event was devised by director Kelsey Leigh Ervi and her cast of five, who take the audience on a journey through one man's life. Kelsey Milbourn, Carissa Jade Olsen, Christopher Llewyn Ramirez, Mitchell Stephens, and Garret Storms use props to create everything from speeding cars to soaring mountains.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
AT&T Performing Arts Center, December 5-17
The beloved cartoon gets the live musical treatment with this stage adaptation, and you may have already spotted the Green One around town (he even paid a visit to Whataburger). If a honey butter chicken biscuit doesn't make someone's heart grow, then there's truly no hope left in the world.

Irving Berlin's White Christmas
Dallas Summer Musicals, December 5-10
Sometimes the closest North Texas gets to snow is this stage adaptation of the cinematic classic, where a pair of Army buddies flirt with two sisters while staging a show at a picturesque Vermont inn. Tony Award-winner Karen Ziemba joins the tour straight from Prince of Broadway on the Great White Way, playing the busybody housekeeper Martha Watson.

Fade
Dallas Theater Center, December 6-January 7, 2018
This new comic-drama by Tanya Saracho, a writer for HBO’s Girls and ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder, poses tricky questions about identity and community. Director Christie Vela says of Saracho's play, "Her language sings, and even though Fade takes place in L.A., the play captures the weird poetry of growing up on the Border, specifically in South Texas."

Stand-Up Tragedy
Oak Cliff Cultural Center and Latino Cultural Center, December 7-16
For the first time, two of Dallas' cultural centers are teaming up to produce a professional theatrical production from the ground up, in collaboration with local theater artists Stephanie Cleghorn Jasso and Ruben Carrazana. With a cast of professional actors and local high school students, Bill Cain's play tells the story of a group of young students and the teachers whose job it is to help them graduate. But they all face one seemingly insurmountable obstacle: the statistics that say that most of these kids are not going to make it.

Trump Lear
Kitchen Dog Theater, December 7-10
Lake Highlands High School graduate David Carl returns in his critically acclaimed solo show, which was created in collaboration with Michole Biancosino and based on William Shakespeare's famous tragedy. Carl channels America's commander in chief, performing a one-man adaptation of King Lear in the work's first showing outside of New York City.

The King and I
AT&T Performing Arts Center, December 19-31
The Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's lush musical takes audiences to 1860s Bangkok, where a British schoolteacher is tasked with education the King of Siam's numerous children. You'll recognize such tunes as "Getting to Know You," Hello, Young Lovers," "Something Wonderful," and "Shall We Dance?"

A Minor Case of Murder!
Pegasus Theatre, December 29-January 28, 2018
It’s New Year’s Eve, 1933, and world-famous detective and aspiring actor Harry Hunsacker (Scott Nixon), his paid-by-the-hour assistant Nigel Grouse (Ben Bryant), and Lt. Foster (Chad Cline) are celebrating at a swanky nightclub, The Black Diamond. When a fatal shot is fired, Harry faces one of his most puzzling cases ever. Don’t miss the special New Year’s Eve celebration, which comes with champagne, cake, and party favors to ring in 2018.

Mitchell Stephens and Christopher Llewyn Ramirez in The Great Distance Home at WaterTower Theatre.

Photo by Evan Michael Woods

Mitchell Stephens and Christopher Llewyn Ramirez in The Great Distance Home at WaterTower Theatre.

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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.”

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