In the wake of the Giant opening at New York’s Public Theater, Texas Monthly‘s Christopher Kelly shines the stage lights on the theater company that collaborated on the production, the Dallas Theater Center, and wonders if it has now eclipsed Houston’s Alley Theater as the most important theater in Texas.
More than impressing the New York tastemakers with new work, though, the company also continues to do solid work for local audiences: The 2011-2012 season finished on an especially high note, with a moving and intimate mounting of Geoffrey Nauffts Next Fall and a glittery revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dreamcoat.
And here’s the highlight of the piece: when Kelly needed some expert critical opinion on the DTC’s success, he turned to our resident theater maven Liz Johnstone:
“A collaboration with a large, entrenched New York theater like the Public on a show about Texas—that makes total sense,” said Liz Johnstone, a theater critic for D Magazine who panned Giant in its Dallas run. “Taking these risks could pay off for them.”
In truth, Liz didn’t exactly “pan” Giant. Her review was more “meh” than “ugh.”
Update: Edited to clarify that the DTC did not originally premiere the musical Giant; the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, did.
