"I like criticism, but it must be my way," said Mark Twain. That also goes for the actor Val Kilmer, currently portraying Twain at the Wyly Theatre (through April 22) in a one-man touring production he wrote and directed. To be granted tickets to last night's performance of Citizen Twain, we critics had to agree not to review the show.

So I can't offer criticism, positive or negative, on Kilmer's 90-minute performance (plus another 30 minutes of post-show Q&A with the audience). I can, however, imagine how I might review Citizen Twain if you did it. So here goes.

It was weird when you entered singing Nirvana's "Entertain Us" in a raspy Southern drawl.

If you're going to start the show like that, it should be for a reason. Also you should not have changed the lyrics to "Here we are now, enter-Twain us" for a cheap laugh.

More »

Val Kilmer as Mark Twain.

By now, every media slob in Dallas has interviewed Val Kilmer. The 53-year-old actor's been in town for a couple of weeks, rehearsing his one-man Citizen Twain show, playing April 18 through 21 at the Wyly Theatre. He wrote the one-act performance after a decade of research for a movie he still wants to make about the rivalry between Mark Twain and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ Scientist, a religion Kilmer practices.

See also:
Fun House Theatre's New All-Kids Play is Glengarry Glen Ross but with Girl Scouts

The actor sat in the lobby of the Wyly for many hours the other day, doing interviews one after another, some on-camera, some off (he's so accessible, the PR lady says, "He'll talk to you again later, if you want"). He looked good, tanned, with longish hair that's gray at the temples. He wore a smart blue blazer and crisp white shirt, unbuttoned enough to show some chest fuzz. He's a talker -- long answers to short questions -- so he got behind on the schedule. By the time we got him, it was noon and he was hungry, so he nibbled on a meatball sub from Jimmy's Food Store as he talked, licking red sauce off his fingers.

More »

Second prize gets a set of school supplies.

Nobody's doing children's theater around here the way Jeff Swearingen, Bren Rapp and the kids of Fun House Theatre and Film in Plano are doing it. We liked their all-youth Man of La Mancha and were impressed by their all-kid Hamlet. Now they're taking on a darker American classic, but in a fun way, with Daffodil Girls, Inspired by David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, opening May 9.

See also:
At Fun House Theatre, a Bunch of Kids Are Doing Hamlet, and Doing it Really Well

Based on an idea by Rapp, Swearingen has written and directed the comic homage that switches Mamet's plot about the high-stakes competition for "leads" in real estate for the high-pressure tactics some scout troops use to move boxes of cookies.

More »

via

Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy starred The Gin Game at Long Wharf Theatre in the late 1970s.

The best things that can happen to a playwright happened to Dallas writer D. L. Coburn in the 1970s. Then in his mid-30s and working in advertising, Coburn wrote his first play, The Gin Game, a two-act two-hander about a man named Weller and a woman named Fonsia. In their 70s, they meet on the porch of a rundown "old folks home," play cards (she always wins) and learn about each other's lives and infirmities.

From its first small production in Los Angeles in 1976, The Gin Game went on to be produced the following year at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and soon enough on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols and starring husband-and-wife actors Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. It won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for drama and was nominated as best new play by the Drama Desk and Tony awards.

More »

Joan Marcus 2013

Phyre Hawkins, Mark Evans, Christopher John O'Neill in The Book of Mormon, First National Tour

We reported last September that Dallas would finally get a look at The Book of Mormon, the Tony-winning musical from the creators of South Park that has left critics raving and some elderly audience members leaving at intermission after realizing what sort of performance they bought tickets to. The AT&T Performing Arts Center has finally announced dates: August 21 through September 1. New York performances are sold out until three days after the Rapture, so it's best to move quickly if you want tickets.

The rest of the 2013/2014 Lexus Broadway Series Season looks pretty good too, if decidedly less offensive than rapid-fire AIDS jokes and sexual organs on people's faces turning into frogs (I promise that will make sense). Check the full schedule below.

More »

Ayana Hampton, by James Daniel

Ayana Hampton, the "Kayne of Cabaret," has a lot of zingers:

For breakfast I had birth control. For lunch I had happy hour. And for dinner I usually get laid.

How do you expect me to work when there is so much werk to do?

If you love something let it go. Or hold onto that penis so hard with your kegel muscles that he blacks out, forgets everything that came before you, and see what happens.

Hampton's show, The Morning After, directed by Clayton Farris, and with keyboardist Thiago X. Nascimanto as a last minute add-on, made its Texas debut last night at Addison's Watertower Theater as part of the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival (tickets are still available for weekend performances). Although she says the one-woman show (in larger venues there are dancers and more numbers) is filled with different characters, I suspect they're all really Hampton. Her mother, April, was kind enough to confirm the suspicion when we chatted after the show, telling me it's all Ayana on stage.

More »

For the impatient theatergoer, festivals such as WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe are a good fit. Lots of short, provocative pieces. (Most performances come in under an hour.) A mix of dance, music, drama and comedy. Plenty of breaks to mingle with patrons and artists.

Now in its twelfth year, the 10-day Loop Festival in Addison, North Texas' largest fringe theater celebration, runs March 7-17, featuring 18 different shows by local and imported performers whose productions are scattered over a schedule that fills three theater spaces and the lobby at the Addison Theatre Centre. (The Observer is a sponsor.)

More »

First up at the Wyly: Clybourne Park.

By now it's clear that Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty wishes he could fly. This season he has two shows back-to-back with "Fly" in the title: Fly by Night, set during the 1965 New York City blackout, opens at April 26 at Kalita Humphreys Theater; and Fly, opening at the Wyly Theatre July 2, is a new musical retelling of Peter Pan, complete with actors flying over the audience's heads. Moriarty also had Superman winging it in the Wyly a few years ago for his revival of the old musical It's a Bird ... It's a Plane ... It's Superman.

In this morning's announcement of DTC's 2013-'14 season, the theme of human flight is back again with The Fortress of Solitude, a world premiere musical about motherless Brooklyn boys Dylan and Mingus, who develop super powers, including the ability to fly. (The title of the show references Superman's North Pole getaway spot.) Co-produced with Manhattan's Public Theater, Fortress, set in 1970s Brooklyn, opens next March in the Wyly, one of three shows in the "Contemporary Series" part of DTC's new season. Four other shows form the "Classic Series."

More »

Chuck Marcelo

Cal Simpson as Laertes, Chris Rodenbaugh as Hamlet, as Madeleine Norton look on as Gertrude.

There are child actors and there are real actors who happen to be children. At Fun House Theatre in Plano, a company we've praised before, 18 serious actors, ages 10 to 17, are doing an impressive production of Hamlet right now. The lead is played by Shepton High School ninth-grader Chris Rodenbaugh.

This is no simplified Hamlet, no cutesy mini-version. It's full out, five acts, with a few cuts here and there. Director Jeff Swearingen, who co-founded Fun House with artistic director Bren Rapp just over a year ago, has these kids deep down in the Shakespeare.

More »

Dallas Theater Center now has a full-time playwright-in-residence. He is Will Power, recipient of a fat grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is spending $3.7 million to support new playwrights-in-residence programs at 14 regional theaters across the country.

As DTC's in-house playwright and a member of its artistic company for the next three years, Power will write a play or plays and do some teaching, according to the maddeningly vague press release from the theater. (I've asked for clarifications on several points, but haven't heard back from DTC yet.) A second playwright, overlapping Power's residency, will arrive in 2014.

More »