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The new Legorreta + Legorreta-designed Fort Museum of Science and History is open — a major upgrade in the Cultural District. It features a new planetarium, dinosaur exhibitions and mini-museums devoted to cattle, Fort Worth history, energy (basically, the oil and gas industry) and even the science of CSI. We talk with vice president of development Carl Hamm about balancing education with entertainment in this episode of Think. Think airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on KERA (Channel 13).

• Click here to listen to the KERA radio report about the museum.
• Click here to read about the museum's innovative planetarium.

Kent Williams as Mr. Argento with Tomas, his pet monkey

• Lawson Taitte's review for the Dallas Morning News

• Alexandra Bonifield's review for Critical Rant & Rave

• KERA radio review:

• Expanded online review:

The Undermain Theater is presenting the world premiere of Len Jenkin’s dark comedy, Port Twilight. The play follows several storylines as they trail through the city – and all involve what might be called messages and 'alien contact.' Our narrator-guides to the city of Port Twilight are two out-of-work cabaret performers. They work day jobs at an outfit called OPME (Off-Planet Message Exchange), where they monitor interstellar radio noise for messages from other planets. A rogue biochemist angrily quits his job but soon gets hired by a cheesy filmmaker to work on his latest sci-fi script. It’s about travelling to another planet. And a despairing old rabbi, played by Bruce DuBose, wanders the city streets, peddling amulets and trying to call down the Messiah.

Ian Sinclair and Bruce DuBose, l to r

DUBOSE: “The desperate citizens of Port Twilight no longer believe in the holy names. They’ll starve me to death. No matter. After tonight, all will be changed and the End of Days will be upon us.”

Give a dozen designers the task of creating sets for all this, and the majority would try to replicate some aspect of the city, Port Twilight. They’d be foolish. They’d have to compete with playwright Len Jenkin’s fantastical language, the way his dialogue conjures a shadowy cityscape out of noir movies like Nightmare Alley. But then, his Port Twilight is also deeply surreal like something out of a Fellini film, with wax museums, an organ grinder and an old park –

DACK AND DONNA (the play's narrators): — “beyond the park, Raven Laboratories.
“And the limestone caves where gypsies live. Beyond the caves, the Dark Forest.”
“ Leopards.”
“Wolves.”
[Howling and music fade]

So – what John Arnone did for the Undermain production was skip the whole mythic city and delve straight into Jenkin’s sources of inspiration. Jenkin’s play is a sci-fi noir spinning out various futures: technological, religious and extraterrestrial. It mixes ancient Hebrew predictions with space maidens and genetic experiments. As a result, for the scenery, Arnone has wrapped the Undermain’s entire basement with a long canvas backdrop. He’s had it painted with big, bold images from movie posters, tattoo parlors, Mexican wrestlers' masks and Japanese comics (kudos to painters Linda Noland and Terry Hays). Even some of the scientific instruments used on stage are assemblages of Buddha heads, doll parts and vinyl hosing. The whole production has a neon, trash-culture aesthetic that suits both the play's noir and sci-fi elements, both the future and the decaying past. Think: extremely low-rent Bladerunner.

I’ve gone on about the production design like this partly because not many small stage companies have a Tony Award-winning designer like Arnone. And partly because so much of Port Twilight works on the level of texture, atmosphere and mood. It’s a mood of apocalyptic dread shot through with a vaudeville-baroque delight in theatricality and humor. At one point, we see a line of lab-coated scientists observing the orange flash of an explosion. The next time we see them, they’re a chorus line dancing stone-faced to the music of the “Science Dance.”

[music]

Jessica Cavanagh, Ariana Cook, Josh Blann and Christian Taylor, l to r

Directed by Katherine Owens, the Undermain’s production — everything from DuBose's music to Jeffrey Frank's video design — is a marvelous, funky, pop-culture collage. The cast is strong, including DuBose in two roles (rabbi and filmmaker), Kent Williams in a variety of comic cameos and Christian Taylor as a spookily opaque Messiah. Josh Blann has an electric presence as the spiked-hair biochemist, and Jonathan Brooks and Shannon Kearns-Simmons do a nice job, playing our showbizzy, tour-guide couple who can seem cheerful, sinister and clueless by turns.

The staging's only weaknesses are an occasional lack of poignance, of a human dimension that would let us feel something more for several of these characters, make them more than quick, comic types. A romance, for instance, between Blann's biochemist and a hired-academic screenwriter (Ariana Cook) seems to pop up out of nowhere. For his part, Jenkin has also researched and loaded in so many futuristic scenarios that the best Owens can do sometimes is just have characters stand there and swap ideas about mind-altering nanobots.

A nanobot is a microscopic machine. The theory is that thousands could eventually be injected directly into our brains and they’d shape our senses, our ideas. Language itself is a kind of mind-altering nanobot, and thanks to the Undermain, thanks to Len Jenkin’s language, Port Twilight makes for a haunting, mind-altering experience.

Stephanie "Tefi" Hindall is a Dallas-based jewelry designer who runs her own design studio, Tefi Designs. Not only does Stephanie create some really unusual and creative jewelry and accessories, she is also the founder of EtsyDallas.com, a cooperative craft collective of artists and designers living and working in Dallas. These folks sell their merchandise on the Etsy Web site, as well as at local and regional craft fairs and events, one of which is taking place on Saturday at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas. The 2nd Annual Jingle Bash will feature 50-plus Dallas Etsy artists exhibiting and selling fabulous creations, perfectly timed for the upcoming gift giving holiday season, or for your own personal pleasure.

In an e-mail exchange, we took a peek inside Stephanie's creative and inventive mind as a part of this week's Art&Seek Q&A:

Art&Seek: You are quite the crafty gal. When did you know that you had a knack for creating such wonderful jewelry and accessories?

Stephanie Hindall: It’s a pretty unremarkable story, really: Girl graduates with English degree and no job prospects, girl meets beads, girl starts making necklaces. It was a creative outlet for me at the time (1998) and just blossomed from there into a full-fledged business.

A&S: What sorts of materials inspire your designs?

S.H.: I use top quality beads and findings of all kinds: gemstones, Czech glass, pearls, sterling silver. I also make my own needle felted beads using 100 percent naturally-, ethically-raised wool. For my fabric items (brooches, hair clips) I use designer and vintage fabric.

A&S: I don't particularly like the term "craft." However, when I hear it phrased as "handmade," I want to break open my piggy-bank and shop 'til I drop. What is your take on the world of crafts now, versus, say, 20-years ago?

S.H.: Honestly, I didn’t think there was a world of crafts 20 years ago. That would have been 1989, when I was 14 and starting high school. Back then, “crafts” to me meant lanyards and plastic pony bead stretchy bracelets – you know, the things reserved for summer camp and vacation Bible school. The artists of Etsy Dallas, who I am proud to be associated with, are professional, talented artists who take the term “crafts” to a completely new level – one that is emulated by successful retailers like Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Fossil.

A&E: When you are creating something, do you have the story in your head as to how you’ll describe it? Or is it the other way around?

S.H.: For the most part I make a piece, photograph it, then name it right there on the spot as I add it to my online shop. I draw from my insanely useless knowledge of pop culture as well as all the schooling I got in the English department at UT Austin. You can’t go wrong referencing Heathers or quoting e.e. cummings. People in the art/craft world often take themselves way too seriously. I like to mix it up with a bit of humor and self-depracation from time to time. I’m not curing cancer or rocketing to the moon. I’m just a girl making pretty things that I hope people will like (and buy!).

A&S: You work full-time as a grant writer for a local non-profit serving homeless children, and you are an adviser for La Reunion, a member of the North Oak Cliff Conservation District, a board member of the Oak Cliff Artisans, a wife, a mother and the founder of Etsy Dallas. When do you find time to sleep, much less create these works of art?

S.H.: This word you use: “sleep.” Yeah, I’m not sure what that means.

A&S: Share with me some of the history of Etsy Dallas and what you hope to accomplish (or continue accomplishing). Also, what sorts of artisans can be found among the Etsy Dallas crew?

S.H.: I founded Etsy Dallas back in September 2007 as a response to the lack of inclusive craft groups in Dallas and the need for a leader to step forward and start a cohesive and active craft collective. So I rolled up my sleeves and took the lead. Today, Etsy Dallas is made up of a group of local artists and designers who have been juried into the group for both the quality of their work and their level of commitment to the team.

A&S: Of all the goodies you have for sale, which is your favorite and why?

S.H.: Boy, that’s like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. The newest pieces I am working on are my fabric brooches, which sold very well at this past weekend’s Cliff Fest. But my staple is my original design Peapod pendant necklace, which is a customer favorite.

A&S: I actually shot some video footage of your jewelry at Cliff Fest this past weekend and was really kicking myself for not acquiring some of the treasures I saw. So, I’m very excited to attend Jingle Bash this coming Saturday. Tell me about the event and what visitors can expect.

S.H.: This is the second year we’re putting on the Jingle Bash and have been planning it since April. It’s going to be amazing – a sort of collective community party that happens to have incredibly talented artists selling their handmade wares. Aside from a variety of locally crafted clothing, jewelry, body care, art and more, the Bash will also have two full bars, great home-cooked food, pool and shuffleboard, DJ tunes and live music. And if you’re one of the first 50 shoppers, count yourself lucky because you’ll be handed a free collectible canvas Goody Bag chock full of handmade items.

The Art&Seek Q&A is a weekly discussion with a person involved in the arts in North Texas. Check back next Thursday for another installment.

Heeeere's Auteurism! Chris Hury plays a desperate filmmaker and Martha Harms is his would-be starlet

• David Novinski's review for Renegade Bus
  

• Review by Mark Lowry for Theater Jones

• Review by Lawson Taitte for Dallas Morning News

• Review by Alexandra Bonifield for Critical Rant & Rave

In Allison Moore's stage thriller, Slasher, when we first meet a low-budget moviemaker named Marc Hunter, he's in a Hooters-style joint in Round Rock. He's trading film-school insights about horror films with Jody, a worshipful movie geek who wants to be his assistant (Drew Wall).

What is truly scary, Hunter tells Jody, about director Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is not Leatherface, the masked, mass-murdering maniac who inspired a hundred Michael Meyers and Jason Voorhees knockoffs. No, it's the family — the carnival of freaks who inhabit the old farmhouse with Leatherface. Chainsaw is a takedown of the locked-together, backwoods, American nuclear family and its inherent horrors.

Many theatergoers may think Hunter is blowing cineaste hot air here, trying to inflate a classic bit of gory, grade-Z movie fun with a lot of trendy academic pretension. But Hunter is actually offering a long-established analysis of Chainsaw — and one that neatly sets up the  family conflicts that will come soon enough in Slasher. Playwright Allison Moore clearly knows her stuff, particularly the details and mythology surrounding Hooper and Chainsaw. Round Rock, for instance, is just a smidgen north of where Hooper shot his film — in an empty farmhouse off I-35 in Pflugerville (set-decorated by the late Robert Burns, whom I knew in Austin).

But here's the problem: Marc Hunter actually is being mocked in Slasher. As ably played by Chris Hury in the Kitchen Dog Theater production, he's another Hollywood creep, a smarmy, lecherous moviemaker, desperate to save his dying career by helming his own splatterific entry, Bloodbath. Indeed, some of the better comic moments onstage in Slasher come when  Hunter's sorry, self-loving self gets zinged.

Hunter's remarks on Chainsaw — and how we're meant to view them — begs the larger question: What does Moore herself think of Chainsaw — and of the horror genre in general? You can't tell from Slasher. The play is clever, and a smart take on the topic ("The Horror Film Nexus: Excitement or Exploitation?") would be more than welcome. But for all of its attempts to delight in the happy carnage of the horror film — while also spoofing it and critiquing it seriously — Slasher is a muddle, a bloodbath of unresolved contradictions.

One way to understand the play is as a battle between second- and third-wave feminism, a tug-of-war over women's roles and self-determination in pop culture.  At the Hooter-ish joint, Marc hits on a young waitress, Sheena (Martha Harms), and convinces her that she'd be perfect for his film as the "last girl," the one who conventionally survives the maniac's onslaught. For her part, Sheena sees Bloodbath as her ticket out of her deadend job and out of her constricting family situation. She's supporting both a younger sister (Rebekah Kennedy) and their wheelchair-bound, painkiller-addicted mom. (Where the cannibal family in Chainsaw is all-male, the one in Slasher is all-female.)

For her part, though, Mom hates everything about Bloodbath. And she will do anything, including murder, to stop it.

Correct! That Hand Is Holding a Beer. Now Guess  What's in My Other Hand.  Harms, Wall, Kennedy, Hury and Leah Spillman, l to r, with Hassler avec machete

That's because Mom views the contemporary horror film with horror. Sheena sees slasher films as cheap thrills and sees herself as a bright, resourceful, free agent, choosing to scream and show some skin in order to get ahead (Harms is perfectly believable in this). But for her mother, Saw and Hostel and their gore-porn ilk are pure, patriarchal rape-by-entertainment; they're debasing exercises in sadism and sexism. Mom — played with unrelenting ferocity by Lisa Hassler — merges two types: the terrifying, repressive mother-figure from horror movies (see Carrie, Friday the 13th and even Psycho) and the cliched, old-school feminist, the humorless, sexless hag from, oh, a thousand cartoons, TV sitcoms and conservative talk-show portrayals.

All right, so Mom is an over-the-top caricature. Slasher is an over-the-top play –  staged with riproaring enthusiasm by Kitchen Dog director Tina Parker and her designers (Clare Floyd DeVries, Suzanna Lavender and Christina Vela). But unlike the caricature of Hunter, the director-lecher, the caricature of Mom is not particularly amusing. To add to her unpleasantness, Mom sees herself as a repeated victim (hence, the wheelchair). Wonderful. She's a raging whiner.

Nevertheless — like Hunter — some of what Mom says about Hollywood is quite true: the way the CSI and Law & Order franchises, for example, always seem to have a sexy prostitute-topless dancer-supermodel for a murder victim.

So how are we to take her analysis of the horror film? Shrill Puritanism or rigorous attack on masculine rage and profiteering? Interestingly, at one point, Mom turns to her traditional political enemy — anti-abortion Christian radicals — for help in shutting down the Bloodbath movie set. In other words, when playwright Moore needs to, she can ingeniously mix together unexpected ideological slants. But beyond ramping up the narrative tension with a violent, on-camera showdown of her trio — mother, daughter and director — Moore never really settles anything in their argument. She opts instead for the kind of wink-wink, contrived plot twists on which horror films often rely for their cliffhangers and denouements.

In all of this, of course, I sound very much like Hunter in that first scene, intellectualizing an experience that should be bypassing my brain and jolting me with laughs and frights. Yet this underscores what may be Slasher's greatest weakness: It's not that funny. Or rather, it's not funny enough, not clever enough for me to set aside  how these conflicting takes on the genre don't resolve. It's telling that some of the better laughs come when Jody must step in to play Bloodbath's own Leatherface, wearing a ghoulish mask, flashing a knife, threatening the torn and trapped Sheena — all the while exclaiming,  "Oh, I, ah, gee, I'm — sorry."

It's telling because Jody is deflationary. His little, nebbishy yelps are a surprise. He seems to have stumbled on this  movie set from some other, funnier play.

Charles Dutton in Honeydripper

• KERA radio review:

• Extended online review:

On Saturday — for one night only — Charles Dutton performed his one-man show at Tarrant County College. It's  an autobiographical show — From Jail to Yale — Serving Time on Stage — and unlike many celebrities, Dutton has actually led a life well worth the recounting. But it wasn't his life story that made the evening so memorable.

People may know the Emmy Award-winning actor from TV shows like his old Fox sitcom Roc (he also directed the outstanding HBO mini-series, The Corner). But Dutton first made his name as an actor in the late August Wilson’s stage dramas, notably Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. In 1990, I was lucky enough to see him on Broadway in Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

In fact, Dutton and Wilson’s joint efforts were one of those rare moments in American theater history. A major new dramatist found his stage voice through a major new actor. It was like Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando. Or David Mamet and Joe Mantegna. Seriously: Dutton went a long way toward defining the Wilson protagonist, the young black male trying to fight his way out of the painful legacies of the past — his own, his family's, his race's. They are haunted, burdened but determined — sometimes tragically determined — men.

So getting to see Dutton in Tarrant County College’s Joe Rushing Theater — presented by the Fort Worth alumnae of Delta Sigma Theta — was a remarkable opportunity. Rushing has only 256 seats; it's not much larger than Theatre 3 in Dallas — that’s how intimate it was. Halfway through, you could see Dutton had already sweated through his shirt. That’s how hard he was working. The evening — as a coherent piece of theater — is pretty much two pieces with not much linkage: half-life story, half-acting-demo.

Dutton does have an amazing life story. A hard-knock child of the East Baltimore streets, he’s a twice-convicted felon — once for manslaughter, once for assaulting a prison guard. Yet he wound up graduating from the Yale School of Drama. His salvation was an anthology of black playwrights that he mistakenly grabbed just as he was being thrown into solitary confinement (he'd wanted to grab Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth). By the light filtering under his cell door, Dutton managed to read Douglas Turner Ward's comedy, A Day of Absence. He found the play so funny, he set about creating a theater troupe to stage it for the prison's talent show. Mercifully, as he noted, back then, we were still serious about rehabilating criminals instead of just incarcerating them: Dutton simply had to convince the warden he was serious by getting his GED. He eventually earned a two-year associate's degree.

Charles Dutton (left) in the Yale Rep premiere of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

But as engaging as all this was — and as entertaining as Dutton was in relating what must, to him, be very familiar stories — the real payoff came in the show’s second half. Dutton performed scenes from August Wilson’s dramas – including a sizable chunk of Ma Rainey, in which he played four different members of Ma's band. He also played Loomis from Joe Turner's Come and Gone and Boy Willie from The Piano Lesson. It was like watching George C. Scott at the top of his game take a walk through his greatest hits.

Dutton can be that compelling onstage. That's because in prison, what Dutton had discovered wasn’t just theater. From his very first performance, he realized he could command an audience’s attention. But his tremendous stage presence isn’t just a matter of his burly size or voice. It’s that he’s fearless and utterly committed to the part, even if it's a wise old storyteller like Toledo from Ma Rainey.

And on Saturday in Fort Worth, Dutton was spellbinding.

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When Calvin Littlejohn came to Fort Worth in 1934, North Texas was still Jim Crow country. Newspapers wouldn't print photos of African-Americans — unless, says Bob Ray Sanders, they'd murdered a white man or raped a white woman. Yet such segregation proved to be something of an opportunity for Littlejohn: He became the unofficial chronicler of black, middle-class Fort Worth life. The high school graduations and football games, the funerals, weddings and barbershops: Everything the mainstream media neglected, Littlejohn documented until his death in 1993.

Journalist Bob Ray Sanders — columnist for the Fort  Worth Star-Telegram and frequent visitor to KERA — has written Calvin Littlejohn: Portrait of a Community in Black and White, which features more than 150 photos by Littlejohn. Sanders spoke to Krys Boyd about his lifelong friend, about growing up in segregated Fort Worth, about how Littlejohn came to pick up a camera.

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The Undermain Theater opens its 26th season Nov. 14 with the Len Jenkin play, Port Twilight, or The History of Science. The Undermain is the only Deep Ellum stage company founded in the '80s that still survives — still in Deep Ellum.

We took the occasion to talk with Katherine Owens, one of the founding members and the company's artistic director. Owens has directed more than 60 stage productions, including ones in LA, Europe and off-Broadway. She spoke about the Undermain's intractable but invaluable basement space, the sci-fi future that exists in Port Twilight, choosing playwrights for their language and her company's own Campaign for the Future.

Art Conspiracy is a grassroots fund-raiser, art auction, concert and all-around heck of a party.  The venue and the beneficiary change every year, and today details were announced for ArtCon 5.

Here's the skinny:

Date: 7 p.m., Dec. 12

Location: A warehouse at 511 West Commerce, Dallas. It will be transformed into a performance space and gallery for the evening.

The Art: 150 artists contribute their work, all created on Dec. 11, just for the event.

The bands:  Telegraph Canyon, The Crash that Took Me, The Boom Boom Box and RTB2

Your host: The fabulous Paul Slavens, of 90.1 at Night, now on KERA radio, soon to be on KXT.

Admission: $10

The beneficiary: Resolana. The group provides rehabilitative arts programming to women in jail in Dallas.

If you are an artist, and want to participate, you need to take action at noon today.

You'll hear a lot more about Art Con here in the coming weeks, because Art&Seek is partnering with the group on this year's event. So stay tuned for more.

Press release after the jump

Art Conspiracy is Turning Five

December 12^th event is equal parts off-the-grid art show, concert and fundraiser

November 3, 2009 – DALLAS, TX – What started off as a “one time only” fundraiser has become one of the most anticipated annual art events in Dallas.  On Saturday, December 12, starting at 7:00 p.m., Art Conspiracy will mark its fifth year of bringing artists and musicians together to “conspire” for good causes.

This year’s Art Conspiracy will be held at 511 West Commerce in Dallas. Once again the Art Conspiracy crew will transform an empty warehouse into a one-night-only art gallery and performance space. The event will feature music from Telegraph Canyon, The Crash That Took Me, The Boom Boom Box and RTB2, video installations from Edward Ruiz, art from 150 Dallas area artists and emcee, Paul Slavens, host of KERA-FM’s 90.1 at Night.

Art Conspiracy differs from other arts fundraisers because the artists do their work on site the day before the event. On the eve of Art Conspiracy, artists work in shifts to fill 150 18 x 18 plywood canvasses. During the actual event on Saturday, December 12, all pieces will be sold in rapid-fire live auctions. Starting bids for all pieces is $20.

“We’ve worked to make Art Conspiracy unique, it’s an event built on creativity but the end game is doing good,” says Cari Weinberg, Executive Director, Art Conspiracy. “Art Conspiracy is fun, fast-paced and accessible to everyone. Over the last five years thousands of people have given us their time, talent and support. The result is a collaborative night showcasing the best of the creative community in Dallas while raising money.”

This year Art Conspiracy has formed a partnership with KERA’s Art&Seek, an online community at artandseek.org where creative people can come together to find, discuss, create and react to art. “Art Conspiracy shows that powerful – and really fun –  things happen when artists come together as a community,” says Anne Bothwell, director of Art&Seek.  “And our Art&Seek community shares so many of Art Con’s values and goals, it’s a natural fit. We’re excited to partner with Art Conspiracy as it continues to grow.”

In 2009, Art Conspiracy will donate the proceeds of the event to Resolana, an organization that provides rehabilitative arts programming for women in the Dallas County Jail and Dawson State Jail in Dallas.

“In an uncertain economy, being the beneficiary of the Art Conspiracy is  a tremendous gift . . . a real godsend,” says Bette Buschow, Executive Director, Resolana.  “Resolana has recently been assigned its own classroom space in the new addition to Dallas County Jail and over the last six months, our programming has grown from six hours of classes per week to 16-20 hours per week.  The funding from Art Conspiracy will make a HUGE difference in our ability to support and sustain this growth and in our ability to serve the women at Dallas County Jail.”

Since 2005, Art Conspiracy has raised over $50,000 for groups including

• Preservation LINK, an organization that teaches audio and visual media to students in South Dallas and Fair Park
• La Reunion TX, an arts residency in the making on a 35 acre urban forest engaged as outdoor studio space and gallery.
• St. Anthony Community Center, a center that offers visual art, music and dance to more than 800 children in South Dallas.

Art Conspiracy is street level philanthropy. Members of the creative community in North Texas pool their talents to create bi-annual fundraising events that support other nonprofit arts programs. Art Conspiracy events are designed to be affordable and offer everyone a chance to purchase original artwork at a reasonable level. Art Conspiracy is a 501c3 organization with IRS nonprofit status (so your donations are tax deductible!) More information is available at www.artconspiracy.org

Media Info:

Art Conspiracy organizers, musicians, and artists are available for interviews. For more

information and/or Art Conspiracy artwork, please contact Cari Weinberg at

cari@artconspiracy.org or call 214-794-3510.

Art Conspiracy Details:

Date: 7:00 p.m., Saturday, December 12

Location: 511 W. Commerce, Dallas, TX 75208

Participants: 150 Dallas Artists, 4 Bands

Admission: $10

Benefiting: Resolana

Cedric Neal as Puck and Matthew Steven Tompkins as Oberon

• Lawson Taitte's review in the Dallas Morning News

• Critical Rant & Rave review by Alexandra Bonifield

• Laura Noble's review in SMU's Daily Mustang

• Mark Lowry's review for Theater Jones

• Joan Arbery's review for Renegade Bus

• Elaine Liner's review for the Dallas Observer

• Mary Clark's review for Pegasus News

• Arnold Wayne Jones' review for the Dallas Voice

• Renegade Bus compares/contrasts the DTC Midsummer and the University of Dallas Midsummer

• KERA radio review:

• Expanded online review:

For its debut in its new home in the Wyly Theatre, the Dallas Theater Center has taken William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream — and pumped up the volume.

[music from Keri Hilson's “Knock You Down”]

Despite his efforts with adding music to the play, Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty hasn’t really made a musical comedy out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

He’s made a dance party re-mix.

Moriarty uses big pop hits – like “Knock You Down” by Keri Hilson and “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas – to inject a lot of high energy into this Midsummer. And he’s got youthful energy here as well. He’s filled out the cast with students from Southern Methodist University and Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School. So Shakespeare’s magical comedy of troubled lovers and troublesome fairies undergoes a kind of urban dance club overhaul. We get bubble machines, squirt guns, graffiti art and lots of audience participation.

This Midsummer is colorful, it’s physical, it’s fast. But it also lacks subtlety — to say the least. Moriarty has seriously cut and re-written Shakespeare's text. In perhaps his biggest change, he's dropped the entire sub-plot of the changeling child, the cause of the break-up of Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies. He covers this hole, for instance, by replacing "Indian boy" — a reference to the child — with "donkey boy," an unmetrical joke about Bottom being turned into an ass.

Other changes are more trivial, which actually makes them puzzling on occasion. Why does Bottom announce that the play he and his fellow mechanicals have devised for the nuptial feast at the end is not "preferred" — Shakespeare's original term — but "chosen"? What difference does it make?

In any event, I don’t object to cutting Shakespeare on principle. It's far more significant that in his direction, Moriarty has streamlined the characters and emotions of any darkness or doubts. This Midsummer's pell-mell race never pauses, never complicates. We don't encounter much that's truly heartfelt or thoughtful. By the end, passion's blindness, the bitter war between the sexes, these all get quickly resolved with Nerf guns. Would that we could.

Matt Tallman, Rukhmani Desai, Lee Trull as troubled lovers

Matthew Tompkins and Liz Mikel do manage one tender moment when they reconcile as the quarreling fairy king and queen. Kudos to them. Cedric Neal and Abby Seigworth are also likable as Puck and Helena. And once again, we get to enjoy Neal's terrific singing voice, previously showcased in last year's Tommy.

But we're more aware of these actors’ exertions as triathletes. Moriarty shows off the Wyly’s many levels and stairs by turning the space into an elaborate aerobicise center. The frantic cast runs and clambers and spins and climbs.

And then they dance-dance-dance.

[music from I Gotta Feeling – including the exhortation, “Jump on that sofa.”]

“Jump on that sofa.” Yes, this is a celebration — and a welcome one. With the Wyly, the Theater Center has a new home at last. Moriarty uses Shakespeare’s royal wedding party (and the blessing of the house) at the end of Midsummer to mark the occasion. The play may well have been written for an aristocratic wedding; the rituals chime with the moment at the Wyly. He’s also cast Robyn Flatt as Egeus, a mother of one of the young lovers (originally, Egeus is a father). Flatt, of course, is the head of the Dallas Children’s Theater. She’s also the daughter of Paul Baker. He was the founding artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, and he died last Sunday. So the theater company’s past and its future are wedded here.

But by the end, one begins to feel less a sense of joy than of overkill. Chamblee Ferguson is one of our finest local actors, and he plays Bottom, Shakespeare’s great and touching comic creation. (As a member of the amateur acting company that puts on a play for the royal wedding feast, Bottom is also Shakespeare's most significant font of acting lore outside of Hamlet — not for nothing is the gentle Bottom rewarded with a most rare vision that he also, poignantly, loses.) But when Bottom must perform his tragical-comical-heroical death in the play, Moriarty has Ferguson die again and again and again, trying to top each death scene with something ever more outlandish. It's classic comic shtick and a bravura moment for Ferguson, but it's more than a little hammered home.

And then Moriarty actually has Marcus Mauldin as Flute, the bellows-mender, try to top that.

This betrays a certain –  insecurity. As with the climbing and the comedy, Moriarty can't seem to leave well enough alone, doesn't trust the text: The audience is being pummeled into enjoyment. After all, it’s one thing to end Midsummer – as Shakespeare himself does – with a collective physical release, a welcome dance number. Moriarty provides two dance numbers. Then a third, then a fourth and then the balloons cascade down — like the ending of a prom dance.

I don’t intend it as condescending when I recommend the Dallas Theater Center’s production to any parent who has a young teen they want to introduce to Shakespeare. This Midsummer is big, noisy fun. Shakespeare's most poetic romantic comedy has been turned into a clattering, knockabout farce — with dance grooves.

But is that all that Midsummer should be? Considering what Shakespeare has to say about love and madness, about marriage and sexual warfare, is big, noisy fun – enough?

[music from “I’m Yours”]

This is the last in our series of exclusive video interviews with the AT&T Performing Arts Center's architects. You can find the interviews with the Wyly Theatre's designers, Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, here and here.

Questions for Foster and de Grey from our sitdown interview:

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From the press conference:

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