ENTERTAINMENT

01/03/2009

Theater Review: Strong acting, dark laughs in 'A Skull in Connemara'

Mark M. Hancock / Special Contributor

Playwright Martin McDonagh has built a career on mayhem. Blood runs in rivers, or sometimes just in rivulets.

01/06/2009

Area community theaters hold January auditions
If you want to be a nun, a hillbilly, a teacher or someone who travels around the world, dust off your acting chops and head to one of several community theater companies holding auditions in January.

01/05/2009

Dance Review: 'Dancing With the Stars' tour rates an 8 at American Airlines Center

COURTNEY PERRY / DMN

Grammy winner Toni Braxton dances with Alec Mazo.

For anyone who really loves the dance aspects of Dancing With the Stars, more so than the celebrity factor ("Who'll be this season's disaster star?"), the live tour is actually a lot more fun than the show. The version that came to American Airlines Center on Sunday night showcased the show’s professionals more than the stars, and rightly so.
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12/29/2008

Year in Review 2008: Theater

Courtesy

The Pillowman and The Drowsy Chaperone

Most area theaters had box office concerns as economic news worsened toward year's end, but 2008 saw good work that gave more reason to hope than fear.

12/31/2008

Year in Review 2008: Look ahead

Jim Mahoney / DMN

Construction continues on the Winspear Opera House, part of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.

It will be hard to find a more significant opening this year than the Oct. 12 arrival of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. City leaders say the Center will complete the vision of the city's Arts District and, they hope, put Dallas on the map as an international arts destination. Its pending arrival tops the list of our arts staff's predictions for 2009.
GuideLive.com Year in Review series: The arts, video games, obituaries, books, movies and more
Dallasnews.com Year in Review series: The best of the best from DallasNews.com and The Dallas Morning News

More performing arts venues charge extra for aisle seats
PORTLAND, Maine – Just like airlines, many performing arts venues are beginning to charge more for ticket-holders to stretch out their legs.

12/30/2008

Year in Review 2008: Obituaries

AP

(Clockwise) Paul Newman, Bernie Mac, Heath Ledger and Bettie Page

Death comes for us all: rich and famous, poor and unsung, Republican and Democrat. It's the ultimate bipartisan movement, building a bridge, we hope, to somewhere. It's the same every Dec. 31, but in the year when pop culture got real, it seems especially fitting that we conclude by listing and remembering all the famous or, in some more anonymous way, significant people who passed in 2008, thus paying tribute to the most real reality there is.
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More: GuideLive.com Year in Review series
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CATS reunion show brings old friends together again
Scott Ward was 5 when he landed his first role at Creative Arts Theatre & School, the Arlington youth theater his mother, Kathey Ward, founded. He played the coach driver in Cinderella.

'Phantom of the Opera' sequel in the works
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber says the long awaited sequel to "Phantom of the Opera" should be ready at the end of 2009, with a possible simultaneous opening on three continents.

Broadway dims the lights to honor playwright
The marquees of Broadway theaters will be dimmed in honor of playwright Harold Pinter.

12/24/2008

Year in Review 2008: Classical music

Courtesy

This was a year of major job-shifting on the classical music scene. Jaap van Zweden took over the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Dallas Opera surprised all with its new general director, George Steel.

12/22/2008

Grapevine arts scene flourishes in its second act

Jenn Ackerman / DMN

The Magic of Christmas is staged at the Palace Theatre, a Grapevine venue that offers a range of entertainment, including movies and art displays.

12/23/2008

George Steel is not leaving Dallas Opera
Rumors that new Dallas Opera general director George Steel has been talking with New York City Opera about the general director's post there are confirmed in an item on Bloomberg.com.

12/18/2008

Theater Review: 'Trysts in Toledo' makes a pretty picture, but seasoned actors run amok

Farah White

Hiring a stable full of fine actors doesn't help that much if they're allowed, or encouraged, to run amok.

12/29/2008

Year in Review 2008: Theater

Courtesy and DMN file

(Clockwise) Sick; The Who's Tommy; Topdog/Underdog; Eurydice

Most area theaters had box office concerns as economic news worsened toward year's end, but 2008 as a whole saw good work that gave more reason to hope than fear. All eyes remained on where new artistic director Kevin Moriarty was leading the Dallas Center as it prepares to move to the downtown Arts District. Mr. Moriarty made good on his promises to open up the Theater Center to local artists of all backgrounds and to produce invigorating new material.
Blog: Share your thoughts
More: GuideLive.com Year in Review series
More: Dallasnews.com Year in Review series

12/23/2008

Year in Review 2008: Classical music

Courtesy

(Clockwise) Jaap van Zweden, The Marriage of Figaro, Alessio Bax and Turandot

This was a year of major job-shifting on the classical music scene. Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden took over as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and overnight he had the orchestra sounding more powerful, pliant and disciplined. The Dallas Opera surprised everyone by going outside the opera world for its new general director: George Steel, who came from Columbia University's Miller Theater.
Blog: Share your thoughts
More: GuideLive.com Year in Review series
More: Dallasnews.com Year in Review series

12/21/2008

Dance review: Metropolitan Classical Ballet presents a delicate, whimsical 'Nutcracker'
The Nutcracker has many charms, not the least of which is malleability. Metropolitan Classical Ballet's version, borrowed from the Bolshoi Ballet, shows its Russian heritage.

Classical CD Review: 'Debussy: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 4' by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

Classical CD Review: 'Beethoven: The Piano Sonatas, Vol. 7 and Vol. 8' by András Schiff
No single survey of the Beethoven piano sonatas can claim to be definitive. But, completed with these two discs, András Schiff's certainly demands to be heard. Beautifully played and recorded, it's a veritable celebration of subtle surprises.

Theater Reviews: 'Billy Elliot', 'Shrek', 'Thirteen the Musical'
Mini reviews on Broadway's Billy Elliot: The Musical, Shrek the Musical and Thirteen the Musical.

Family-focused Broadway shows may alienate some families
NEW YORK – Broadway is pinning its hopes for the future on the family market. The trouble is, Broadway's in New York. What passes for a family show in the Big Apple may be seen quite differently in Dallas, which is following the same trend.

12/20/2008

Classical Music Review: Audience cheerfully chimes in at Orpheus Chamber Singers' Christmas concert
The highest compliment to the Orpheus Chamber Singers may be paid by the audiences that turn out for the choir's annual Christmas concerts. In Saturday evening's concert, the audience-participation carols all but raised the roof of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church.

New York Theater Review: Roundabout Theatre Company updates 'Pal Joey'
NEW YORK – Theater buffs often prefer Rodgers and Hart to Rodgers and Hammerstein. That's because Richard Rodgers and his first partner wrote great, highly sophisticated songs. Unfortunately, the shows they were written for aren't nearly as strong.

12/16/2008

Classical Music Review: Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus deliver holiday chills in 'Stories of Christmas' concert

Sharon M. Steinman/Special to DMN

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's "The Stories of Christmas" will entertain even jaded listeners.

12/17/2008

Classical Music Review: Dallas Bach Society's 'Messiah'
Not even threats of freezing fog deterred a good turnout Tuesday evening for the Dallas Bach Society's Messiah . In fact, with only one person tearing tickets at one door of Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, the line of Handelian devotees stretched quite a distance.

12/16/2008

Classical Music Review: Turangalîla Symphony
NEW YORK – Two major composers' centenaries occurred last week, and both were celebrated in New York concerts over the weekend. The American Elliott Carter, amazingly, is still composing; the Frenchman Olivier Messiaen died in 1992.

12/10/2008

Guess Family Singers debut in 'Beautiful Star'

Jenn Ackerman / DMN

From left: Beckah, 17; Beth, 21; Sarah, 19; and William, 23

Theatrical debuts happen all the time, but seldom to a whole family at once. These siblings have performed together all their lives.

12/15/2008

Opera Review: 'Elektra'
It's a lurid story. Clytemnestra has taken a lover, Aegisthus, and murdered her husband, Agamemnon. Of Agamemnon's two daughters, Chrysothemis just wants to get on with life and make babies. But Electra vows revenge, and when their brother Orestes resurfaces after a period in hiding, he kills Clytemnestra.

12/13/2008

Opera Review: The Met's 'Queen of Spades' is done in style
What would be more apt to a cold December afternoon than a dark, cynical Russian opera? The Metropolitan Opera obliged Saturday with the final performance in a run of Tchaikovsky's also-ran, The Queen of Spades. And the Met did it in style, with a cast that, apart from Ben Heppner's announced indisposition, went from vocal strength to strength.

Theater Review: Horton Foote's daughter stands out in 'Dividing the Estate' on Broadway
Horton Foote disguises himself as a writer of old-fashioned well-made plays. Underneath, the 92-year-old Texas native is a trickster, almost an experimentalist.

Opera Review: 'Tristan und Isolde' alive and gripping at the Met
For both performers and audiences, an opera as long as "Tristan und Isolde" - five hours Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera - challenges concentration. Imagine then, just off the center of your view of the Met stage, a woman fiddling with her PDA, flashing green light and all. That was my experience for the first 30 minutes of the opera's last act Friday. Oh, for some of Isolde's death potion.

12/11/2008

Theatre Britain's 'Little Red Riding Hood' is jolly good at KD Studio Theatre
It may be Kevin Scott Keating's first time in a dress, or so we've been told. But as Mother Hood, he takes to the cross-dressing craziness of Theatre Britain's latest panto, Little Red Riding Hood , brilliantly – to use a favorite British word.

12/10/2008

Kathy Burks puppeteers put on a merry holiday show at Dallas Children's Theater
You know you're in Texas when the Santa marionette comes out in cowboy boots, and a good ol' armadillo gal croons about decorating her cactus for the holidays.

'Pierced' by David Lang

Disc Debuts: Berlin Philarmonic's 'Die Walküre' is a keeper
Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung is showing up on DVD in quite a variety of concepts, from frowsy traditional to loony-tunes revisionist. This is the first release from Stéphane Braunschweig's staging at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Dramatically and musically gripping, it's a keeper.

Appealing concertos by British composers Pitfield and Bowen
When American think about 20th-century British music, they rarely think much beyond Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. But so great was the flourishing of new music during the last century that many worthy works got lost in the shuffle. Hats off, then, to the Lyrita, Hyperion, Chandos and Naxos CD labels for resurrecting so much of this worthy repertory.

12/08/2008

$1 million classical-music prize to honor soprano Birgit Nilsson
$1 million prize honors soprano Nilsson

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