Kristin McCollum tackles Ivy in Osage County

For WaterTower Theatre's first local production of August: Osage County, the Pulitzer-winning drama by Tracy Letts, director René Moreno sticks with the star of his acclaimed 2011 Oklahoma City production, longtime Dallas actress Pam Dougherty, in the lead as matriarch Violet Weston.

She co-starred in 2009 as "Big Edie" in WaterTower's local premiere of the musical Grey Gardens, was featured last fall in Dallas Theater Center's To Kill a Mockingbird and made many critics' year-end "best" lists for her performance last year in Roads to Home, Theatre Three's entry in the citywide Horton Foote festival.

Who scored what role? Get the juice after the jump!

 

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You have until Christmas Eve to catch Dallas Theater Center's robust production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. For this one, the company moves back to its old home at Kalita Humphreys Theater on Turtle Creek, and that's a treat. Kalita really is such a perfectly snug place to stage this classic Christmas ghost story. Every seat feels close to the stage and the production directed by Joel Ferrell makes lavish use of the house's aisles and entrances.

Kurt Rhoads plays Ebenezer Scrooge, making him a fearsome figure who gradually, through the visits by those scary specters, comes to realize his life lived for money has been no life at all. As the beleaguered Bob Cratchit, actor Lee Trull nicely embodies the one-percenter terrified of losing his job with old Scrooge and leaving his family, including disabled Tiny Tim (played by the beyond-adorable Kuran Patel), destitute.

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Given that their core audience comes on buses from places where risk-taking might mean eating dinner past 5, One Thirty Productions is surprisingly edgy with the choice of Greetings! as a Christmas season play. Tom Dudzick, sometimes called the "Catholic Neil Simon," has written something that ventures way outside any neatly wrapped box of Judeo-Christian ideas.

This warm comedy finds a family Christmas interrupted by a mysterious entity, speaking through the voice and body of a mentally challenged adult named Mickey (played with exquisite timing by Ben Bryant). Mickey's parents, the Archie Bunker-like dad (Sonny Franks) and Edith-like mom (Gene Raye Price), are in a tizzy about their other son Andy's fiancée (Julie Osborne). Andy (John Venable) wants his parents to love the girl, but when they discover she's Jewish and atheist, there's a Christmas Eve dinner table meltdown.

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Kurt Kleinmann as Harry Hunsacker in Death is no Small Change

​There's something to be said for seeing the world in shades of gray. For 26 years that's been the philosophy of Dallas' Pegasus Theatre, which performs its annual murder mystery comedy in trademarked "Living Black and White" style.

This year's show, opening at the Eisemann Center in Richardson on December 29, is The Frequency of Death!, another adventure in Pegasus founder, playwright and star Kurt Kleinmann's series of 16 plays about hapless detective Harry Hunsacker. Every Kleinmann production is designed to look like a black-and-white 1930s movie, with costumes, makeup, hair and scenery rendered color-free.

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Elaine Liner

Playwright Eric Steele

For its eighth season, Second Thought Theatre, the small-ensemble company founded by Baylor grads, will move back to where it started -- or close to it. Second Thought is leaving the Addison Theatre Centre's black box studio and relocating to 75-seat Bryant Hall, across the parking lot from Kalita Humphreys Theater. Their first show in 2004 was produced in Frank's Place, the studio space above Kalita.

Co-artistic directors Steven Walters and Chris LaBove, working with their third partner, actor Drew Wall, will present three shows in Bryant Hall next year, starting with a new comedy by Walters premiering February 3.

Second Thought's five-show 2011 season (including two festival entries) stretched the company's resources, but they ended the year several thousand dollars in the black, says Walters. It was a rebuilding year for them, with Walters, who is also a company member at Dallas Theater Center, stepping back in as artistic director, actor and producer. He starred in Second Thought's one-man Thom Pain (based on nothing) and says they'll keep doing small-cast plays like that one and their well-reviewed three-hander Red Light Winter, but with an emphasis in 2012 on comedy.

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Photo by Karen Almond

Dallas Theater Center's A Christmas Carol

Part of the fun of Dallas Theater Center's huge production of A Christmas Carol, opening Friday night for a three-week run at Kalita Humphreys Theater, is seeing who plays the ghosts that visit Ebenezer Scrooge. In the spooky adaptation by Richard Hellesen of Charles Dickens' immortal story of greed v. poverty, the ghosts take Scrooge, portrayed this year by Kurt Rhoads, on a journey through time. He revisits his lonely childhood, sees how he screwed up his relationship with his onetime fiancée and learns how his narcissism has affected everyone around him. Then comes the terrifying Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a hooded specter who shows Scrooge his own grave and warns that if he doesn't change his ways, he'll soon occupy it -- with no one bothering to mourn his passing.

DTC and director Joel Ferrell like to keep the identity of said ghost a secret till show time. But we know who it is. And he's ready to talk.

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Elaine Liner

Dancers from SMU perform tribute to Fela.

If the run-through Monday night is any indication of the breadth of talent taking part in the December 6 benefit event called A Gathering, the real thing is going to be quite a show.

In the ninth floor studio at the Wyly Theatre, actors, singers, musicians and dancers rehearsed their pieces of this major collaborative effort involving a dozen arts organizations and more than 100 performers. Everyone is donating their time and talent for the event, which will split all of its proceeds among four local AIDS service organizations: AIDS Arms, AIDS Services of Dallas, AIDS Interfaith Network and Resource Center Dallas.

A Gathering: The Dallas Arts Community Reflects on 30 Years of AIDS, playing one night only at the Winspear Opera House, promises an evening of dance, drama, poetry and song commemorating milestones in the three-decade fight against the disease and the toll it has taken on the arts community. The Turtle Creek Chorale, which will perform in the show, has lost more than 180 members to AIDS and related illnesses.

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The new rock-and-roll musical is called On the Eve. Actor Michael Federico wrote it with his friends Seth and Shawn Magill, the husband-and-wife team who head up East Dallas band Home by Hovercraft. It's about Marie Antoinette, sort of, and you can see its debut, in a pay-what-you-can staged reading, this Friday and Saturday at Nouveau 47 Theatre at the Magnolia Lounge in Fair Park.

Michael and Seth went to SMU together and have been friends forever. They've been trying to write something together for years and finally ended up in the same city (the Magills were in Austin, then New York before moving back here). Says Michael: "We came up with the story of the show together, and then I wrote the book and they wrote the music. The music and the plot aren't typical Broadway musical material, but hopefully that will appeal to some people."

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Elaine Liner

Kevin Moriarty found his lead

Back in March, Elaine had a Giant announcement on Unfair Park: The full Dallas Theater Center's lineup from artistic director Kevin Moriarty, which included the Michael John LaChiusa musical Giant (based on the book by Sybille Pearson).

Well, another Insert-Huge-Adjective-Here announcement just-in-the-in-box: (h/t Robert)

The DTC's officially announced the cast and creative team for Giant, which is running at the Wyly next year. From the press release:

Aaron Lazar will star as Bick. Lazar has appeared in seven Broadway productions and was recently seen in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. He was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his role in the revival of Les Miserables and can now be seen in Clint Eastwood's film J. Edgar. Tony Award nominee Kate Baldwin (Finian's Rainbow) will play Leslie. Baldwin has performed at theaters across the country and has appeared on Broadway in several productions including The Full Monty. The role of Jett will be played by P.J. Griffith who recently starred in the original Broadway production of American Idiot.

Full release is after the jump, but we know the other part you're interest in: tickets. Which are on sale. Right here.

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Get a bunch of local musical theater stars together and there will be singing. Plus some gratuitous kissy-face, lots of hugs and a little gossip about who's got what role where.

Monday night at Kalita Humphreys Theater, dozens of DFW's busiest professional actors mingled with family and friends at a holly-jolly party to launch this year's Holidazzle Act II CD.

It's a collection of 15 upbeat holiday numbers recorded over the summer by some of DFW's best theatrical warblers, including Brian Hathaway, Liz Mikel, Gary Floyd, Denise Lee, Sonny Franks, Cara Statham Serber, Max Swarner, Greg Lush, Michael Serrecchia and Sally Soldo. The performers are part of DFW Actors Give Back, which raises money for local charities. Sales of the $15 Holidazzle recording benefit Jonathan's Place, which provides residential care and special services for abused and neglected children.

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