Theater Critic Picks

The 13 must-see shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for December

Dallas Theater Center presents A Christmas Carol (2024)

It wouldn't be December without A Christmas Carol from Dallas Theater Center.

Photo by Jordan Fraker

It's December, and we've thrown the rules out the window. There are plenty of shows still running from November that are either holiday-tinged or something you'd be wise to bring out-of-town guests to. After all, isn't most of December just figuring out how to entertain family?

Below are those five savior shows in alphabetical order, with eight soon-to-open plays and musicals following in their typical listing by start date:

A Charlie Brown Christmas
Dallas Children's Theater, through December 22
Discover the meaning of Christmas — or experience the nostalgia of childhood — while sharing laughs with the Peanuts Gang along the way. As a live combo fills hearts with music, merriment, and warmth, the story based on the Charles Schulz classic special is here just in time for the holidays.

A Christmas Carol
Dallas Theater Center, through December 28
Three spirits have come to visit the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and take him on a fantastic journey through Christmases past, present, and future. Brimming with joyful songs, magical spirits, and holiday cheer, this holiday classic embodies a story of joy, redemption, and the spirit of Christmas.

Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings
Lyric Stage, through December 22
The holiday classic by Stewart Ross opens Lyric Stage's 31st season. At first, Francis, Jinx, Smudge, and Sparky aren't sure why they've returned to Earth for another posthumous performance, but a phone call from the heavenly Rosemary Clooney lets them know that they're needed to put a little harmony into a discordant world.

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
Theatre Three, through December 29
The vibrant musical spectacle set in 19th-century Russia, and based on a 70-page segment of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, lets romance and intrigue unfold amid glittering ballrooms and tumultuous relationships. Its score features a unique blend of electro-pop and Russian folk-inspired music.

The Play That Goes Wrong
Stage West, through December 22
WaterTower Theatre, December 31-January 12
At opening night of The Murder at Haversham Manor, things are quickly going from bad to horrible. With an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead, and actors who trip over everything (including their lines), the whole evening is a disastrous smash.

Opening in December:

Shucked
Broadway Dallas, December 3-15
This Tony Award-winning musical comedy features a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn, a score by the Grammy Award-winning songwriting team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, and direction by Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien. The corn-fed, corn-bred American musical is sure to satisfy an appetite for great musical theater.

Christmas with Kenny & Dolly
Casa Mañana, December 3-22
Fort Worth’s own Jolie Holliday returns to The Reid Cabaret for a production that celebrates Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' 1984 quadruple-platinum Christmas album. Get in the holiday spirit with songs like “Once Upon a Christmas,” “I Believe in Santa Claus,” “A Christmas to Remember,” “Silent Night,” and more.

Auntie Explains Xmas
Jubilee Theatre, December 5-15
In this heartwarming journey of holiday cheer from Jubilee Theatre's founding artistic director, Rudy Eastman, the family musical brings the magic of Christmases past and present.

Black Nativity
Bishop Arts Theatre Center, December 5-22
Inspired by Langston Hughes' 1960 Broadway production, Black Nativity returns with hand-clapping, toe-tapping, and finger-snapping theatrical wonderment for the 20th anniversary production at Bishop Arts Theatre Center. The holiday favorite is the heartwarming retelling of the Nativity story that includes Gospel music, dramatic dance, and biblical narrative.

A Queer Carol
Uptown Players, December 6-15
Written by Joe Godfrey, the contemporary retelling of Dickens' classic set in modern-day Manhattan follows Ben Scrooge, a prominent interior decorator, and his assistant Bob Cratchit, who endures the abuses of Scrooge while simultaneously trying to take care of his lover, Tim. With humorous twists on the three Ghosts, including an over-the-top drag queen as the Ghost of Christmas Present, this retelling through a queer lens promises to be a festive and thought-provoking experience.

Christmas Actually
Uptown Players, December 17
This one-of-a-kind cabaret show from Blake McIver (from Full House and The Little Rascals) and Emerson Collins (A Very Sordid Wedding and Southern Baptist Sissies) bring their signature flair, fun banter, and powerhouse vocals to kick-start the season.

Dear Evan Hansen
Broadway at the Center, December 19-21
Meet Evan Hansen, a high school student who always feels like he’s on the outside looking in. After writing a letter to himself that was never meant to be seen, Evan becomes entangled in a lie that was never meant to be told and a life he never dreamt could be his. As a result, Evan finally gets what so many of us are searching for: the chance to finally fit in.

Peter Pan
Broadway Dallas, December 25-January 5
This high-flying musical has been thrilling audiences of all ages for close to 70 years and is now being brought back to life in a new adaptation by celebrated playwright Larissa FastHorse, directed by Emmy Award winner Lonny Price and choreographed by Lorin Latarro.

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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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