Texas Ballet Theater marks Memorial Day with all-male version of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’
The Texas Ballet Theater’s 2012-13 season has been themed Two Great Cities, One Great Company, and it proves that mission this weekend with its final performance of the season. In commemoration of Memorial Day, the company hosts a three-day celebration of heroism and art with its second annual SpringFest Weekend at the Wyly Theatre. In addition to food, drink and music,
it will also feature two dance performances; Balanchine’s Theme
& Variations, and Ben Stevenson’s encore staging of Mozart’s Requiem, performed by an all-male troupe of dancers.

DEETS: Wyly Theatre, 2400 Flora St. May 24–26. Performances Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees
at 2 p.m. $20–$65. TexasBalletTheater.org.

Friday 05.24

Bobby Lee at the Addison Improv
On eight seasons of MadTV, one of the funniest bits was typically watching schlubby, muscle-tone-less Bobby Lee enthusiastically drop shirt and trou to play a host of ridiculous (and often gay and campy) characters. Lee continues to share his fearless take on topics ranging from his Korean heritage (he does a mean Kim Jung Il) to the humorous news of the day. Lee settles into a weekend-long run at the Addison Improv with
five shows over three days, starting Friday.

DEETS: Addison Improv, 4980 Belt Line Road, Suite 250, Addison. Friday at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m., Sunday at 7:30 p.m. $20. Improv.com.

Wednesday 05.29

Sixth Floor Museum observes JFK birthday
Had he lived, John F. Kennedy would turn 96 on Wednesday, but an assassin’s
bullet on Nov. 23, 1963, prevented that. On this 50th anniversary year of the
Kennedy Assassination in Dealey Plaza, the Sixth Floor Museum marks JFK’s birthday with a conversation featuring key museum founders.

DEETS:  Sixth Floor Museum, 411 Elm St. 2 p.m. Free, but RSVP required. JFK.org.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print editino May 24, 2013

Terry Martin

Terry Martin, the producing artistic director for WaterTower Theatre, announced his theater’s upcoming season tonight, which includes the return of the (often very gay) Out of the Loop Fringe Festival as well as five mainstage productions.

Among the shows are a musical about a country music pioneer, a screwball comedy and several regional premieres, some by gay playwrights.

WTT’s next production, Black Tie (directed by Rene Moreno), opens May 31; the final show of the company’s 2012-13 season will be Xanadu.

Here’s the full lineup for 2013-14:

Hank Williams: Lost Highway (Oct. 11–Nov.3). This jukebox musical features the songs of the C&W legend, who died on New Year’s Day 1953 at the age of 29.

The Game’s Afoot (Holmes for the Holidays) (Dec. 13–Jan. 5, 2014). Ken Ludwig, the Tony-nominated author of Lend Me a Tenor and Crazy for You, wrote this regional premiere, a farce about actor William Gillette — famed for his performances as Sherliock Holmes — solving a real crime.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Jan. 24–Feb. 12, 2014). Another regional premiere, adapted from Mark Twain’s classic novel about the mischievous teenager involved in murder and intrigue.

Out of the Loop Fringe Festival (Mar. 6–16, 2014). The return of the annual celebration of unique theater. No lineup will be announced until next year, but the content usually runs toward racier, edgy productions.

Spunk (Apr. 11–May 4, 2014). Gay director and author George C. Wolfe — probably best known for mounting the original Broadway production of Angels in America, as well as the recent revival of The Normal Heart — wrote this play, adapted from short stories by celebrated African-American author Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God).

Good People (June 6–29, 2014). Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) wrote this comic and insightful character study about old friends and new lives.

Dogfight: A New Musical (July 25–Aug. 17, 2014). Based on the 1991 film, this regional premiere musical, co-written by openly gay composer/lyricist Benj Pasek, is set on the eve of the Kennedy assassination, where a man tries to win a contest by bringing the ugliest girl to a party.

The queens of ‘Priscilla’

It is a small perturbation that the two longest-running Broadway musicals about drag queens — La Cage aux Folles and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, now playing at Fair Park Music Hall — involved plots where gay men have ill-advised sex with women and produce sons, only hoping not to embarrass their offspring. My guess is, this is done intentionally, to remind mainstream hetero audiences that gay or straight, we are all basically the same (as if showing our emotions weren’t already enough).

Still, you can practically hear the jaws drop inside the auditorium during many of the numbers of Priscilla, which makes La Cage look like a church social by comparison. Its outrageousness is less offensive and shocking than merely unbridled: It’s out-and-proud about its camp factor, and you’d better adjust or stay away.

Adjust. Do, do adjust, because Priscilla is a hoot, as glamorously trashy and enjoyable as the best drag show you’ve ever seen. Some people didn’t stay through Act 2; that was their loss.

The namesake bus

Three drag performers — gay men Mitzi (Wade McCollum, the one with the aforementioned offspring) and Felicia (Bryan West), and trans woman Bernadette (Scott Willis) —travel the Australian Outback in an elaborate bus on their way to a gig in a remote casino town. Along the way they encounter gay-bashers, weirdos, aborigines, looky-loo tourists, sex workers and, mercifully, tolerant, average folks who embrace differences rather than judge them. It’s the point of the show. (It’s the point of La Cage, too.) I found it telling that the first audience members I saw bail during the performance did so in the midst of a touching rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s song of tolerance, “True Colors.” It was as if those people couldn’t stand the idea they might feel empathy for a man in a dress.

Lauper songs appear elsewhere in Priscilla, a jukebox musical without original tunes but which shoehorns them into the story as they serve both the drag acts and illuminate the characters. Most are ’80s pop and disco numbers, though Mitzi’s version of “Always on My Mind” resonates on a different level as an expression of fatherly love.

But sentiment aside, it’s the fabulosity that carries the show, from the opening number “It’s Raining Men” (followed by a dead-on Tina Turner impersonation) to the scandalous “ping pong ball” routine (unforgettable) to some of the best sets and costumes you’ll ever see. Priscilla is hardly a perfect show, but you accept it for what it is, and gladly. That’s all it asks.

Runs through May 26. Get tickets here.

DAME EDNA IN REVERSE | Like her fellow Aussie Barry Humphries, Caroline Reid (aka airline hostess Pam Ann) uses a drag sensibility in her comedy act, which raises the bar for airline humor. For tickets to Pam Ann, go here.

JONANNA WIDNER  | Contributing Writer

Making fun of modern airline culture is easy to do: You make a joke or two about the food, complain about the guy farting away in the seat next to you, maybe get a little edgy with a terrorism one-liner, and boom! You’re done.

If only it were that simple.

That formula’s probably why airline humor has been mostly relegated to dingy comedy clubs with names like The Laugh Attack — it’s neither particularly thoughtful nor particularly funny.

Not so with Australian comedian Caroline Reid. Reid — better known for her stewardess alter ego Pam Ann — has spent years cultivating an act that revolves solely around airline humor.

It’s not just standup: Reid crafts different characters and scenarios, and her act is campy and conceptual.

But most of all it’s funny.

When Reid brings her latest stage show, Cockpit, to Dallas this week, audiences can expect a raunchy ride hosted by Pam Ann, a Pucci-clad air-hostess straight out of the Mad Men era.

Part of Reid’s appeal to the gay audience is her glamorous portrayal of the past eras of travel. While she may spoof it, she also loves it.

“I like that time in the airline industry when hostesses were so passionate about flying, and about their brand,” she says. “We’ve kind of lost that along the way. Some of the crews today could give a shit who they fly for.”

Many of Reid’s comedy bits riff on the apathy of the modern flight attendant (her beverage cart goof has become a favorite), but she also likes to push the aesthetic limits to drag queen proportions. Her look — which includes costumes based on classic vintage flight attendant uniforms — has evolved into something of a spectacle.

“I’m surrounded by a gaggle of gays,” she notes. “I’ve been kind of like a doll to them. They’re always saying, ‘Bigger! Bigger! More sequins! Higher heels!’ So I’m taking it on. I’ve got really huuuge hair on this tour, which of course will relate to Dallas.”

Part of Reid’s genius is her ability to use airline references as cultural shorthand, in a way that’s humorous rather than insider-y.

“I just love Dallas,” she says. “The accent, it’s so glamorous. In my mind’s eye, when I think of Dallas, I think of women from Braniff Airlines, with their hair so big it hits the overhead bin.”

Reid’s pedigree may be edgy, but that hasn’t stopped her from making a commercial success of herself as well as a comedic one. Pam Ann has been the centerpoint of advertising and training videos for British Airways; her live DVD Come Fly With Me is part of Qantas Airlines’ in-flight entertainment; and she is the face of Heathrow Airport’s SkyTeam Terminal. Reid was hired by Elton John to provide the entertainment on his private jet.

While much of her life is glamorous, it’s clear that Reid’s entire concept is still rooted in the fact that she’s an aviation geek.

“I’m very influenced by the ’60s and ’70s [airline] era,” she says. “Everyone was just so passionate about flying. We’ve kind of lost that today.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 17, 2013.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS | The ‘How’m I Doin’?’ mayor pissed off AIDS activists — especially because they felt he should come out of the closet and lead the fight to prevent the spread of HIV.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Life+Style Editor

There’s an old line that politics is for people too ugly to make it in the movies. If that’s true, Ed Koch was a born politician: He had a face like a turkey buzzard and looked, when walking down the street, like an unmade bed. Before the era of pretty-boy politics, Koch was the everyman, nattering away with that Bronx whine, cackling his call-line “How’m I doin’?” like a motion-sensor door to anyone who passed. He was the “Give ’em Hell, Harry” of the 1970s New York governmachine, talkin’ tough and being proudly abrasive.

Only not everybody was charmed. The blacks hated him, and eventually, the gays. He was a craven opportunist in the most detestable way: The way that pits segments of society against each other so he could swoop in and seem like the Great Problem Solver … even though, as likely as not, he helped create the problems.

He’s been ripe for a documentary even before he died earlier this year at 88, an old-school politico who could still teach the new breed a thing or two about tactics (his war stories alone should be worthy of Sun Tzu).

Koch, Neil Barsky’s documentary about the quintessential Noo Yawk character, profiles Da Mayor, who combined theatrics, social liberalism and fiscal conservatism with a can-do, Machiavellian “what’s achievable” attitude — and maybe invented the modern political scene.

Koch was always aware that he was playing “a role” — that of the hard-scrabble chief executive of the Big Apple — and he didn’t always play it right, but with conviction. “I give as good as I get” was his strategic philosophy. Of course, it served him well until it didn’t anymore.

What he demonstrated, though, was tremendous political will, even though it occasioned strange bedfellows (his arch-nemeses, the Cuomos, eventually became useful allies). Koch was always, until the end, dodgy about his sexuality. In his 1977 campaign, his consultant faked a lavender love affair with popular former Miss America Bess Meyerson to fool voters into not believing the rumors. (Koch himself later admitted it was all a ruse. “We were never going to be married, and we were never going to be lovers,” Koch said in an interview conducted for the film.)

Koch sometimes comes off as a bit scattershot, with Barsky favoring a more-or-less chronological history rather than profiling Koch from the standpoint of themes or characteristics. It only suggests how Ed went from being a celebrity (he even had a best-selling memoir called simply Mayor) to celebrated as an elder statesman of New York politics. But love him or hate him, Koch lingers on the political palate like a bitter almond or a sour-apple candy: Pungent, memorable, remarkable … and ultimately hard to resist.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 17, 2013.

VODKA’S SOUTH OF THE BORDER PROFILE | Chris Marriott, left, and Carlo Barone say their pricklypear-based vodka mixes like a tequila, especially good with orange. (Arnold Wayne Jones/Dallas Voice)

RICH LOPEZ  | Contributing Writer
getrichindallas@gmail.com

Gays and cocktails are a match practically made in heaven: Where would we be without happy hour, martini madness or the ever-popular “U-call-it” nights? Bacardi, Absolut and Jose Cuervo may all top the faves list for spirits, but a local company is making headway into the community, putting its vodka where its mouth is.

Spike Vodka — by all accounts, the only gay-owned spirit on the market, and Texas-based at that — wants Dallas gays to know its product isn’t just like all the others. Carlo Barone believed in the product so much, his account rep and marketing firm OneBar joined forces with Nick Spink’s Spike to take over the world one gay bar at a time.

“I have the same gut feeling [with Spike] that [I did with] Ciroc when they targeted the African-American market,” Barone says. “We’ve been ungodly successful in gay bars in New York, California and Illinois. I can’t stress how proud we are.”

Of course, they’ve also made fast strides in the Lone Star State, landing clients in Houston, San Antonio and, of course, Dallas, since the beginning of the year. But in some ways, their sponsorship of last Saturday’s BearDance could be seen as their coming-out party.

“Those guys are just good people and I will do anything they ask me to. I believe so much in what they’re about,” Barone says.

“They have a vested stake in their community and as our primary sponsors, they take an active role in advancing our message of inclusiveness and assisting those most at risk in the LGBT community,” adds Darren Graff, a BearDance board member and longstanding friend of Barone’s.

Many of BearDance’s events will donate proceeds to Youth First Texas, which resonated deeply with Barone, the father of four. While his children are all adults now, Barone believes in mentoring and also wants Spike to even set an example — even as a liquor company.

“We don’t go for silly sex-laced names for our cocktails. We’re not about that,” he says. “Liquor doesn’t have to be abused. Most people are looking for social events and to make attempts to go out and say hello. It’s really about good times and good people and less about drinking abusively.”

With sales, the company has committed to putting percentages back into the community.

Spike intends to take a financial and even physical role in lifting up gay Dallas. So it would happen that his “top-selling rep” Christopher Marriott is something of a redemption story.

Barone took Marriott under his wing and mentored him into joining the company. And Barone would have everyone know, it was his best decision.

“We had met and he was I guess something of a lost soul at the time. I got him involved and he’s the single greatest salesmen, and I’ve been in this business a long time,” Barone says.

“These guys coached me into finding out who I really am,” Marriott says. “I had been self-destructive for so long. Good things started to happen when I met Carlo and then he let me fly with my creativity. Every day has just been a confidence builder.”

The style of Spike also sets it apart, Marriott says. The prickly pear-based spirit may technically be a vodka, but is intended to be enjoyed like a tequila. After Spink perfected his distillation process, the liquor went into production in San Antonio. There, Rachel Price heads the product creation and adds to the unique qualities of Spike.

“There’s a very good chance that we may have the only lesbian master distiller,” Barone declares. “She goes out, whacks the cactus, picks off the needles and creates the vodka. She has a true artisan spirit to the drink.”

The pioneering nature of Spike isn’t lost on Barone, but despite his 33 years in the liquor business, he’s also thrown back by the response. In short, Spike is blowing up and at a rapid pace.

“I’ve never seen anybody make a drink out of prickly pear which is vodka but tastes like tequila,” he says. “And beyond gay bars, Del Frisco’s has reached out to us. We have our product at Sigel’s and Spec’s and PK‘s, who was an early ally. I don’t think anyone ever attempted to target our own bars and now we have trendy mixologists and straight bars picking us up.”

They created eight cocktails specifically for their bear fans, but it goes beyond that, Barone says: “We want [the gay community] to know that the company is them.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 17, 2013.

BAM! Comic Con has more celebs than you can shake a gloved fist at
The gays love their icons, whether it’s women who make music (Cher, Barbra, etc.) or men who wear tights (Batman, Superman, Baryshnikov). Well, there’s no ballet at Dallas Comic Con this weekend, but there are plenty of celebrities (among them Capt. Kirk himself, William Shatner, as well as Brent Spiner, Brandon Routh and bisexual Terminator Kristianna Loken), as well as comic authors and artists, and plenty of new titles to keep your summer reading list up to date … at least until Memorial Day.

DEETS:
Irving Convention Center
500 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving.
May 17–19.
Day passes from $25–$40.
SciFiExpo.com

Friday 05.17

Alex Remington photo exhibit of Dallas opens at ilume Gallerie
Out photographer Alex Remington specializes in large-scale portraits of everything from drag queens to wildlife (same thing?), but he’s found a subject that reflects the scope of his eye: The city of Dallas itself. Remington’s new exhibit, Architectura, looks at the iconic buildings and landmarks of our ’burg, which always believes bigger is better. The show opens at the ilume Gallerie, with artist’s reception, Friday.

DEETS:
ilume Gallerie
4123 Cedar Springs Road.
May 17­–June 22.
Reception May 17, 6­­–10 p.m.
ilumegallerie.com.

Saturday 05.18

Turtle Ball moves to Trinity Groves
The Turtle Creek Chorale is accustomed to making music, but they know how to party, too. The Turtle Ball, the group’s annual fundraiser, returns this weekend with something new. It has always had food and drink and a silent auction, but this year it has a fun new location: The Trinity Groves development west of the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. That means not only can you nosh and sip, but shop while bidding on items. And you will get the inside scoop on the TCC’s upcoming season
of music.

DEETS:
Trinity Groves,
3015 Gulden Lane.
7 p.m. $100.
TurtleCreek.org.

In Star Trek Into Darkness, opening today, the crew might as well have rechristened the Enterprise the U.S.S. Kitchen Sink; certainly that’s what they filmmakers have thrown into this, the second film in the reboot of a series rebooted so much, it might have been designed in a cowboy footwear store.

One of the fun things about a reboot is that you get to experience old things as new. This incarnation of the series — which follows a “new” timeline of the original crew — makes ample references to iconic items from the original: There are references to Klingons, tribbles, Dr. Carol Marcus, Khan, photon torpedoes, “the needs of the many” and the Enterprise’s famous “five-year mission.”

It also, sometimes, makes the film unintentionally comic, as recycled lines (especially Dr. McCoy’s penchant for homespun aphorism) sound suddenly cliched. There’s also the problem that the ad campaign promises that “nothing can prepare us” for what happens, though of course, it’s easy to prepare: Just watch Star Trek II.

Another downside is that the screenwriters (here and in Star Trek) have seemed more interested in reinventing most of the characters for their own uses, and sacrificing what we have come to love about them. The most awkward fit of these is the relationship between Kirk (Chris Pine, pictured right — who is, sadly, shirtless only once) and Spock (Zachary Quinto, pictured left). The original actors, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, invented the ultimate bromance, two men who occasionally argued but were never disrespectful of the other. Here, they snipe like cats in a bag. And the plot changes focus so much, it’s difficult to tell the good guys from the villains.

Still, such quibbles aside, director J.J. Abrams has concocted a rip-roaring sci-fi action picture with great special effects (the 3-D is well used) and a touching, keenly played performance by Quinto. It’s hard when you’re supposed to be the only emotionless character on screen to show the heart of a picture, but Quinto does it. And, considering his all-out brawl with the bad guy (Benedict Cumberbatch) on the streets of San Francisco, it’s to his credit that the audience experiences it as a duel, not as a gay-bashing.

In wide release.

So Help Me God!, a re-discovered 1929 comedy by Maurine Dallas Watkins (Aug. 8–Sept. 1). The author best known for the play on which the musical Chicago was based wrote this equally racy tale of back-stabbing divas.

Assassins, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman (Sept. 26–Oct. 27). The gay composer’s oft-praised but infrequently performed Tony Award winner will reach Dallas in time for the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It tells the stories of famous political murderers and wannabes, from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley.

Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz (Nov. 21–Dec. 15). This recent Tony nominee from the gay creator of Brothers & Sisters makes its Southwestern premiere about family conflict.

On the Eve, music and lyrics by Seth Magill and Shawn Magill, book by Michael Federico (Jan. 16–Feb. 9, 2014). Already announced as playing this season, this production revives a show staged locally last year at Fair Park’s Margo Jones Lounge, pictured, was my No. 1 show of 2012.

Less Than Kind by Terence Rattigan (Mar. 6–30, 2014). This play by the late, gay British playwright, well-known for such classics as The Winslow Boy and Separate Tables, will receive its American debut after being forgotten for decades after the playwright died.

Seminar by Theresa Rebeck (Apr. 24–May 18, 2014). I saw the Broadway version of this play by Smash creator Rebeck last year, and it’s juicy, hilarious stuff getting its Southwest premiere.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by  Lynn Nottage (June 19–July 13, 2014). The story of a headstrong African-American actress from the 1930s.

Additionally, Theatre Too will continue to run Avenue Q until audiences grow weary (no sign of that yet), or January, when the gay-authored I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change returns for a month-long run.

A half-dozen or so disaffected New Yorkers, linked together by fate or coincidence, sing about coping with death, loneliness, aimlessness. If that sounds like Rent, or even Avenue Q … well, it’s not, but it is just as smart and entertaining, with a little big of Robert Altman thrown in.

Fly By Night, a newish musical making its regional debut at the Kalita thanks to Dallas Theater Center, combines elements and tones culled freely from The Twilight Zone, Spring Awakening, Magnolia, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, (500) Days of Summer and chamber musicals like those of Jonathan Larson and William Finn and Little Shop, to create a spiritual but not ponderously didactic piece that plays with lovely insight within the intimate space of the Kalita. (I imagine it working well in the black box of the Wyly, too.)

It’s November 1964 — the era of Mad Men — and the sole foray by schlubby Harold (Damon Daunno, pictured left with Michael McCormick) into advertising is misspelling the sign on his boss’ sandwich shop. Harold meets Daphne (Whitney Bashor), a perky transplant from South Dakota, and falls for her fast. But Daphne’s mousy older sister Miriam (Kristin Stokes), resignedly alone, meets a fortune teller who predicts she and Harold are meant to be together … and that it won’t end happily. (It doesn’t.) Everything in their lives, though, seems to be zeroing in on that day in 1965 when the Eastern Seaboard went black due to a power outage, and the fortunes of everyone were changed.

This is the kind of show where even its weaknesses exude a goofy likability. The second act is easily 20 minutes too long, and the character of an aimless playwright is a waste of actor Alex Organ’s sizeable talents. (The entire plot about a constantly revised play-within-a-play comes off as excessively twee.) You also want to spend more time with Harold’s father (David Coffee), although his last-act solo makes the wait worth it.

Fly By Night casts a spell on you in any number of ways, from the melodic appeal of the Disney-esque songs (“I Need More” and “I Am a Turtle” linger, as do the voices of their singers) to the appealing actors to Bill Fennelly’s creative staging. And it does all this not by dazzling, but by reassuring us of the beauty of life even in those moments of desperation. It makes living in the dark of the universe not seem so scary.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd. Through  May 26. DallasTheaterCenter.org.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 10, 2013.