Friends find it ironic that as a working theater critic, I often take vacations to other cities to see theater. That happened again this past weekend in Texas when I tried to see three intriguing regional premieres in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that hopefully will make their way to Chicago soon.
Big-time football
With the NFL draft invading the Windy City, I'm surprised that no Chicago-area theaters signed onto be a part of the multi-city rolling world-premiere play Colossal. The 2014 drama is both celebratory and unflinchingly critical of American football and it has two major Chicago ties since it was written by Gift Theatre ensemble member Andrew Hinderaker ( Dirty, Suicide, Incorporated ) and was created to originally star Gift Theatre artistic director and actor Michael Patrick Thornton ( currently in Lookingglass Theatre's Title and Deed ).
Colossal recently won four Washington, D.C.-area Helen Hayes Awards, including Outstanding Original New Play or Musical for its 2014 Olney Theatre Center production. And for the Texas premiere of Colossal, Dallas Theater Center has pulled out all the stops to stage it by re-configuring its new high-tech Wyly Theatre into a stylized football field complete with scoreboard.
For the cast, director Kevin Moriarty and choreographer Joshua L. Peugh have drawn together genuine football players, modern dancers and even a drumline band to all explore the gladiatorial and ritual nature of college football. But more crucially, the big spectacle of the production also reduces down to a painfully intimate story of a former player with a spinal injury named Mike ( Zack Weinstein ) looking back on the glory days of his younger self ( Alex Stoll ) and his clandestine love for fellow team captain, Marcus ( Khris Davis ).
Paradoxically, Colossal shows up the violent and often anti-gay aspects of football via a viscerally charged production that could also be described as homoerotic. That all makes Colossal extremely timely with all the recent publicity about football concussions and openly gay player Michael Sam's attempts to play in the NFL.
No doubt, if the NFL draft returns to the Windy City in the future, a Chicago-area theater company needs to step up and stage Colossal at the exact same time.
Dallas Theater Center's Colossal continues through May 3 at the Wyly Theatre, 2400 Flora St., Dallas. Tickets are $17.50-$175; call 214-880-0202 or visit www.dallastheatercenter.org .
A musical rarity
Many musicals fall out of the standard repertory despite a superlative score. That's been the case with Lady in the Dark, a musical by composer Kurt Weill, lyricist Ira Gershwin and playwright Moss Hart, which was a smash hit back when it debuted on Broadway in 1941. It originally starred Gertrude Lawrence as a fashion magazine editor who seeks psychoanalytic help, and it launched Danny Kaye to stardom when he played a stereotypical gay fashion photographer.
So when I learned that Lyric Stage in Dallas County was producing Lady in the Dark with Weill's original orchestrations in a recently reconstructed new edition, I had to go. Unfortunately, the production and the script were a bit of a let down.
Lyric Stage is about on par with the production and talent levels of Evanston's Light Opera Works, which also does musicals with full orchestras. Yet Lyric Stage is far more adventurous with its programming of rare musicals. For instance, Lyric Stage's recent production of The Golden Apple prompted record company PS Classics to tape it and issue it as a forthcoming complete cast recording.
Lady in the Dark's major stumbling block is Hart's hopelessly dated script, which was written when psychoanalysis was seen as something bizarre. The gender dynamics are also problematic, so if the Kurt Weill Foundation wants Lady in the Dark to be produced more often, a newly commissioned script adaptation is in order.
Director/Choreographer Ann Nieman's Lady in the Dark production was also under powered with a bare-bones set by Cornelius Parker that didn't visually live up to the hallucinatory "dream operas" that Weill and Gershwin created. Lady in the Dark demands visual splendor and that wasn't delivered here.
Nonetheless, Lyric Stage's Lady in the Dark was interesting to watch as a curiosity, and to soak in the glorious score sung by a game cast and performed by a heavenly orchestra led by music director/conductor Jay Dias ( even if he did rearrange some of the show's dance selections to be exit music ).
Lyric Stage's Lady in the Dark continues through May 3 at the Irving Arts Center, 3333 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving. Tickets are $25-$53. Call 972-252-2787 or visit www.lyricstage.org .
Mother nature vs. opera
The gods conspired against Fort Worth Opera's regional premiere of Dog Days on April 24.
First, a tornado warning was issued an hour before curtain time. Then a partial power outage forced the opening to become a panel discussion with Dog Days creators T. Little and Royce Vavrek with the costumed cast singing selections from the work concert style. And even that was cut short when the audience was asked to evacuate near the end of an aria sung by Tony Award nominee Lauren Worsham due to some kind of fire risk.
I'm sad I wasn't able to fully experience Dog Days because the 2012 chamber work about an American family in a post-apocalyptic situation has been garnering rave reviews. Also, Fort Worth Opera has already commissioned the Dog Days authors for a 2016 world-premiere opera that temptingly might inspire another trip to Texas. The intriguing title and subject matter: JFK.
Remaining performances of Fort Worth Opera's Dog Days are at 7:30 p.m. April 29, May 1 and 2 p.m. May 2 at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, 1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth. Tickets are $17-$75; call 817-731-0726 or visit www.fwopera.org . Los Angeles Opera also stages Dog Days from June 11 to 14. Visit www.laopera.org for more information.
