“It’s great to put a face to a voice,” Joan Rivers told me when I met her after her show last night at the Winspear (I’m pictured, from left, with her her and Voice contributor Howard Lewis Russell). “Phone interviews are hard, but you were a good one.”
Even if she hadn’t paid me a compliment, it would have been easy to say nice things about Joan’s 65-minute act, where she stays in constant motion and talks even faster. (After the set was over, Howard and I were exhausted from laughing; only then did we realize Joan never so much as took a sip of water the entire time.) At 79, she’s an unstoppable force, going to far as to do a sight gag involving climbing on top of a piano — what septuagenarians do you know that still do physical comedy?!?!
But that’s Rivers, who famously never slows down — not in her career, and not onstage. The jokes were more rapid-fire than a sub-machine gun: Some induced groans from audience members uncomfortable with jokes about pedophilia (read: Michael Jackson) and how Chaz Bono needed liposuction more than a new penis. But, as Joan says, if you don’t get some walkouts, you’re not doing your job right.
Of course, she embraced “my gays” — her shout-out to them (“Where are you?”) resulted in a roar and nearly the entire front two rows standing up and hollering. “I love my gays — my one great disappointment is my grandson is not gay,” she joked. “Who else is going to say to me, ‘Really, you knew Judy Garland?!’” Still, she said, gays don’t like two kinds of jokes: Those that poke fun at Princess Di and at Barbra Streisand. She did jokes about both.
And she was right: The gays were out in force. The line at the men’s room before the show looped around the lobby. “Why is the line here longer than at the ladies’ room?” wondered one man aloud. “Because,” I said, “Joan Rivers has turned the Winspear into Dallas’ largest floating gay bar.” “Oh, right,” he agreed.
Gregory Sullivan Isaacs and I have prepared this rundown of the upcoming month in classical music news.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Neil Goldberg was incredibly famous in corporate America … and virtually unknown to the public at large. He wasn’t a CEO or banker or lawyer; he specialized in parties. Huge, lavish soirees that were common … at least until the Dot-Com bubble burst and belt-tightening became the order of the day.
The most important thing you need to know this weekend is that there are only a few chances left to see
What, exactly, is gay about Jekyll & Hyde? You can find out tonight at 7 p.m. I’m continuing my chat series at Hamon Hall inside the Winspear prior to tonight’s performance of the show. It’s only about 15 minutes, and I talk about the show from a queer perspective. Best of all: You get a complimentary glass of wine and the best parking by arriving early! (You can come to the chat even if you don’t have a ticket for the show, though you can always get one and stay.) See you there!
Veletta Forsythe Lill, the former Dallas City Council Member who since 2009 has been the executive director of the Downtown Arts District, spearheading development there since the opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, is stepping down, effective Nov. 1.
It would be impossible to spend more than 20 minutes sitting in the audience of War Horse, now at the Winspear, and not be bowled over by its excellent stagecraft. Of course, there are the celebrated life-sized puppets — not just of full-grown horses, but of foals and birds. But you can see a puppet show at any state fair midway. What makes War Horse special is the evocative way those creatures are presented.
We’ve seen David Blaine be buried alive, frozen and more, but what’s behind the man of magic? Blaine talks about what inspires his death-defying feats and hopefully he’ll throw in some tricks, too.
