Theater Critic Picks

These are the 15 must-see shows in Dallas-Fort Worth theater for June

"Scenes from The Odyssey" runs in repertory with "Twelfth Night" at Shakespeare Dallas.

Photo by Jordan Fraker

Whether you're ready to spread out a blanket and watch theater under the stars, or escape indoors to that sweet, sweet air conditioning, there are plenty of choices for your viewing pleasure in June.

In order of start date, here are 15 local shows to watch this month:

Thoughts of a Colored Man
Jubilee Theatre, through June 30
This play explores the lives, pressures, and passions of seven contemporary Black men who live in one Brooklyn neighborhood. The characters — never named — are identified by traits they embody: Lust, Love, Anger, Passion, Wisdom, Depression, and Happiness.

Rhapsody featuring Cyndi Lauper
Turtle Creek Chorale, June 1
Grammy Award winner and punk-glamor icon Cyndi Lauper is headline Turtle Creek Chorale’s annual benefit gala. The evening offers an opening reception, seated dinner, luxury live auction, and an exclusive private concert by Lauper with full band and featuring a selection of her greatest hits.

Grease
Casa Mañana, June 1-9
Six queen Adrianna Hicks stars in everyone’s favorite rock-and-roll musical, which features the electrifying hits “You’re the One That I Want,” “Summer Nights,” “Greased Lightnin’,” and more. Fall back in love with the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies and see why Grease is still the word.

Love & Vinyl
Kitchen Dog Theater, June 6-23
This new play by Bob Bartlett is about browsing for records and romance in the digital age. Best friends Bogie and Zane visit their local record store and leave with so much more than a stack of vinyl in this salty/sweet, smart romcom. This production continues Kitchen Dog Theater's season of putting on productions in atypical spaces, and takes place in an actual record store (Good Records).

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear
Stage West, June 6-23
The as-yet-undiscovered genius Vincent Van Gogh presents a most peculiar case to noted detective Sherlock Holmes, his partner Dr. Watson, and his paramour Irene Adler. The trio embark on a rousing caper and find themselves confronting the daughter of Professor Moriarty. With a helping hand from Oscar Wilde, the world's greatest detective attempts to uncover a Post-Impressionist conspiracy. This zany mystery adventure, making its regional premiere, is the opening gambit in a Baker Street trilogy.

Hundred Days
Circle Theatre, June 6-July 6
What would you do if you only had a hundred days to live? To love? This whirlwind rock journey featuring a book by Sarah Gancher and music and lyrics by Abigail & Shaun Bengsons pulls the audience into a world where the thrill of the unknown collides with the poignant beauty of a love story; all intertwined with an intoxicating score.

Hamilton
Broadway at the Bass, June 11-23
Hamilton is the story of America then, told by America now. Featuring a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, R&B, and Broadway, Hamilton has taken the story of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and created a revolutionary moment in theater, a musical that has had a profound impact on culture, politics, and education.

SparkFest
Amphibian Stage, June 13-26
The annual performing arts festival SparkFest shifts its focus to celebrate the AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) community and showcases and develops new plays, offering Fort Worth a unique glimpse into the future of performing arts. The festival will again host a National acting competition, drawing inspiration from the renowned Van Cliburn Festival, offering a substantial $18,000 in cash prizes for the finalists.

Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Three, June 13-July 14
Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious, hopeful musical follows young love-struck Frederic, who has mistakenly been apprenticed to a raucous band of pirates. A smash hit on Broadway in the 1980s, the comical operetta is a colorful, playful romp about love, honor, and cleverness.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Hip Pocket Theatre, June 14-July 7
Love, enchantment, and hilarity ensue under the Texas sky, where audiences can experience Shakespeare’s classic in the magical setting of Hip Pocket Theatre.

Twelfth Night and Scenes From The Odyssey
Shakespeare Dallas, June 14-July 21
The classic Shakespeare romantic comedy, now set in the 1930s, is a classic case of mistaken identity. When Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are shipwrecked on the African coast and believe the other to be drowned, Viola disguises herself as a young man and, under the name of Cesario, gets a job as a servant for the Duke, Orsino.

The second is a show about a modern young woman struggling to understand Robert Fitzgerald's translation of Homer’s The Odyssey when suddenly a Greek muse appears, and the young woman becomes the goddess Athena and a tireless advocate for Odysseus in his struggle to get home. The production highlights the epic story of Odysseus' 10-year journey with characters such as Circe, the Cyclops, Poseidon, Calypso, the Sirens, and more. The two plays will be performed in repertory.

Hairspray
Broadway Dallas, June 18-30
In 1960s Baltimore, 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad sets out to dance her way onto TV’s most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world? Hairspray features hit songs like “Welcome to the '60s,” “Good Morning Baltimore,” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat.”

Lyric Under the Stars
Lyric Stage, June 22 & 29
This new series features Lyric Stage actors singing their favorite songs, everything from show tunes to popular music, all with live music. Guests are encouraged to bring a blanket or lawn chairs and a cooler with snacks and drinks for a night of music and fun.

Wink
Second Thought Theatre, June 26-July 13
Sofie is an unhappy housewife. Gregor is her bread-winning husband. Dr. Franz is their psychiatrist. Wink is the cat. And Gregor has just skinned the cat. Violent desires, domestic terrorism, and feline vengeance at any cost make Wink a dark comedy about the thin, thin line between savagery and civilization.

theater

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