Arts Blog

Atlanta's Theater of the Stars confirmed this afternoon that its touring production of Disney's Tarzan has been canceled. That's the one that the Dallas Summer Musicals has on its upcoming season...and DSM has already invested $250,000 in the show. Obviously a lot of presenters around the country are hopping mad -- and want their money back (most of which seems to have been spent on Atlanta's High School Musical 2).

On a happier note, the young lady cast in the title role of Casa Manana's Annie coming up later this month has already played the curly-headed moppet a couple of times before, including at said Theater of the Stars. Kelsey Lee Smith has also been seen on a recent episode of ABC's Samantha Who? Those who want a preview peek at Annie's orphans can see will perform live at North East Mall Saturday, December 6, 11:00 - 12:30 pm, next to Santa Claus in front of Macy's.

Susan Mansour, who's living in North Texas now and starred in Uptown Players' The Valley of the Dolls last year, is back on Broadway -- in the stage adaptation of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. It's not her first time on the Great White Way; she was featured in the original cast of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Former colleague Tom Sime's My Favorite Animal, his Big Apple debut, closed yesterday in New York. It got our very active playwright some good notices. Onward and upward.

I just had a note from Dallas Theater Center publicist Jake Cigainero that the company's charity drive is going gangbusters:

After seeing A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant at Circle Theatre tonight in Fort Worth, my husband says he's never seeing anything with adult actors again. I could almost agree with him, so splendid were the eight young actor-singer-dancers who star in this perfectly wonderful spoof.

Complete with fabulously awful costumes (the sheep in the manger scene, for instance, is a kid in a sheepskin-lined jacket that's been turned inside-out) and choreography that's terribly inspired (and I do mean terribly), this Obie-winning musical takes the traditional Nativity pageant motif and uses it to tell the story of L. Ron Hubbard and his Church of Scientology, where one of the eternal questions turns out to be, "What does the 'L' stand for?"

The kids, ranging in age from preteen to young teen, have timing and stage presence that could knock the socks off of some local professionals. Oh, and speaking of socks, it's worth the price of admission to see Tom Cruise and his sock-puppet versions of Katie and Suri during the IRS-trial portion of the show. Not to mention John Travolta and Kirstie Alley! And Xenu, the evil alien! It's just the thing to get the sticky-sweet taste of too much eggnog out of your mouth, and replace it with something merrily tart.

Look for a full review Sunday evening on guidelive.com.

I am sad to read of the passing of William Gibson on Tuesday. The playwright of The Miracle Worker, the story of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller was 94 and died in Stockbridge, Mass.

I didn't know that his first success was a novel, The Cobweb, which was sold to MGM and made into a movie in 1955. He turned down the chance to make big money as a screenwriter because he preferred playwrighting. His success with The Miracle Worker (written shortly after Two For the Seesaw) brought him international fame in his 50's in 1959 as a Tony award-wnning Broadway hit and in 1960 as an Oscar-winning film hit.

I love this quote from his obituary in the New York Times: "Good things come to those who wait...far too long."

The Dallas Children's Theater did a couple of wonderful productions of this play under the direction of executive artistic director Robyn Flatt. Ms. Flatt showed an unerring ffeeling for what Mr. Gibson touched on, so exquisitely: the delicate, almost cross-hatched interconnectedness charged by the personal pain and passion required to make a difference.

Annie Sullivan could not have mustered the determination to help Helen without the shadow of the love between her and the little brother whom she couldn't save. And she would not have succeeded without the extreme stubborness and faith in her vision that is required of all visionaries.

He wrote until the end, evidently. And while his name was never as famous as the work he produced, he gave us a gift: ideas to ponder that will endure.

The Butterfly Connection, Fort Worth's experimental theater collective run by Adam Dietrich, opens a new development and rehearsal space with a party on Dec. 6. Here's a snippet from Adam's e-mail about the event:

The group will continue to perform at the Rose Marine Theatre on N. Main in Fort Worh, with its original show Reindeers Unplugged on view there Dec. 12-21.

On Wednesday, the Dallas Museum of Art is offering tickets to its "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition for $19.22 for the first 100 visitors (normal adult prices are $32.50 Friday-Sunday and holidays, $27.50 on other days).

There are also some other discounted dates and times, check them out after the jump.

We just got the sad news that Mike Maza, a longtime editor at The Dallas Morning News, died last night. He apparently developed a blood clot, ending his long battle with lung cancer.

Mike's wife, Jean, said there will be no funeral, but a memorial service will be held in January.

Mike was newspaper pro and an endlessly considerate man.

Before retiring last March, Mike was an assistant Arts editor overseeing classical music, theater, dining, dance and radio.

He came to The News as an assistant arts editor in 1987, where he also was an editor for the Sunday magazine and the Guide weekly entertainment section. In 1989 he started a book column for The News that was distributed nationally. Before coming to Dallas, he covered police and education in Detroit and was a film and theater critic and editor for arts, travel and lifestyles in Phoenix.

Not much time left to see this Mel Brooks musical:

Danail Rachev, former assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, has been named music director of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Oregon, starting in fall 2009.

Rachev, who left the DSO last summer to become assistant conductor of the Philadephia Orchestra, will continue to hold that position.

A native of Bulgaria, he was trained at the State Musical Academy in Sofia and at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. He got rave reviews during his three seasons with the DSO, and was much liked and respected by the orchestra's musicians.

The Eugene Symphony has been a career-starter for a number of conductors, including the Fort Worth Symphony's Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony. Giancarlo Guerrero, who has helmed the orchestra since 2002, is leaving next year to become music director of the Nashville Symphony.

Brooke Shields -- yes, Pretty Baby, Suddenly Susan and all, but also ... appalled by Johnny Drama's ardor on Entourage -- is the reliever at Tuesday's Brinker International Forum on Tuesday at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Big Bob is not amused here.

I just had an email in my box that Clive Barnes has died -- still a working dance and theater critic at 81. Clive added the New York Times theater beat to the dance-critic job he already had back in 1967, and he was the voice of the Times during the years I lived in and around New York. He was a very good, if not infallible, dance critic. In retrospect, though, he was not a good influence on us East Coast theatergoers during those years. He lured us into some real duds (one was called After the Rain, as I recall). And he discouraged me from seeing the original productions of Sondheim's Company and Follies, which he panned -- and which I have bitterly regretted ever since.

After the Times ousted him, he went over to the New York Post, where his writing became increasingly garrulous and his opinions little heeded. They pushed him down to second chair a few years ago -- but he bounced back when the lead critic fell ill. I've seen him frequently at critics' previews over the last decade, a strange reminder of my remote youth.

I wonder what will happen to that job now. Many newspapers around the company are doing without theater critics...but they can't do that in NEW YORK, can they...?

Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall is offering seats for Neal Berg's 101 Years of Broadway buy-one-get-one-free. The event is next Monday, Nov. 24, at 8 p.m. Here's a link for tickets.

View a slideshow featuring images from Take your Time, of the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Kimbell Art Museum will announce preliminary plans Tuesday for an addition designed by Renzo Piano.

A previous plan to expand the original building, designed by Louis Kahn and opened in 1972, stirred up a furor in the international architecture community. But Piano, designer of Dallas' Nasher Sculpture Center, is one of today's most acclaimed museum architects, and he seems likely to come up with a more sensitive design.

Look for a story in the Tuesday Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled its May 2009 concert performances of "Madame Butterfly." Instead music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct the Brahms "Academic Festival" Overture and "Schicksalslied" (with the Dallas Symphony Chorus), and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and "1812" Overture.
The soloist for the violin concerto will be announced later.
The change avoids competing with the Dallas Opera's planned May 2010 staging of Madame Butterfly at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House. The new building opens next fall next to the DSO's home, the Meyerson Symphony Center.
Officials at the opera company had been annoyed when the DSO scheduled the Puccini knowing that the Dallas Opera had already booked it.
"We looked at our presentation and their presentation within a year," said Doug Adams, the DSO's president and CEO, "and it didn't make sense. So we're making the programming change.
"I would like to start off with our new neighbor in a real spirit of cooperation."
Patrons who have already purchased tickets for the DSO's Madame Butterfly may keep their seats for the revised program or call 214-692-0203 to exchange tickets.

Regina Taylor, the Dallas-born actress and author of Crowns, is taking time off from her TV series The Unit to appear in the Black Academy of Arts and Letters' Filmfeast on Saturday. She's scheduled to have a public conversation with Vickie Washington Nance at 4:30 p.m. Admission is $5.

You've still got a few days to catch Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe (touring edition) at the Majestic Theatre, presented by the Dallas Summer Musicals. This is undoubtedly the most fun you'll have this week -- and they even have a two-for-one ticket deal going right now (see the DSM Web site for details). The show runs through Sunday.

On Tuesday, troupe members were in fine form, and there was a definite sense that we were seeing the comedy superstars of tomorrow (this is the same group that gave us the Belushis, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, ad infinitum). I confidently predict that Ross Bryant and Tara DeFrancisco will end up on Saturday Night Live, based solely on their spew-your-drink-hilarious sketch about two secret agents playing an absurd version of six (more like 60) degrees of separation. Their improv at the end of the bit was dazzling, and so funny I almost forgave the woman in front of me who didn't stop talking during the entire show. (Yes, you, on Row H in the left section!)

Other highlights included Brian Jack's conversation with a T-Mobile representative who asks an endless series of "identity-proving" questions -- most of the answers had to do with unicorns -- and the entire cast doing an improv that had them trying to guess, Charades-like, the words "symbiotic," "Nicaragua" and "adjudicate." They also did dead-on, sublimely hilarious sendups of Avenue Q and Riverdance.

Just get on down to the Majestic this week; you'll thank me. But don't wear a good shirt, because you're going to end up spewing your beer or wine on it. Go to the Dallas Summer Musicals or Ticketmaster Web site, or call 214-373-8000 for tickets.

From the Associated Press: