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Beneath the Underworld Drama, Un prophète Presents a Riddle of a Young Man’s Soul
On the surface, Un prophéte tells the story of an extraordinarily talented young man who is able to make a wealthy and powerful place for himself in the underworld. But beyond this central drama, the film has a strange power. Un prophéte is transformed into a spiritual tale, and we begin to see Malik’s particular ability to navigate his surroundings as a mark of some divine touch.
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Free. At Last – Andy Warhol: The Last Decade at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
To this day, mention his name and most people only see the Campbell's Soup Cans or pastel Marilyns that were cranked out at the Factory just eight years into an almost 30-year career. That's because long before Valerie Solanas could shoot him in the spleen, Warhol shot himself in the foot, allowing his appetite for celebrity to overcome his gall for making art. But like Hollywood's best our protagonist finds redemption, right before he croaks, in Andy Warhol: The Last Decade, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
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First Repertory Performance of LaBute’s Beauty Plays Opens With a Chilling The Shape of Things
More than once during Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, I heard a disgusted gasp from someone in the audience. Funny thing is, that gasp was usually followed by a nervous titter or sometimes an all-out guffaw. LaBute, known for being one of theater’s bad boy playwrights, specializes in crafting plays about pretty people doing and saying ugly things to each other.
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Cannibal! The Musical Isn’t Theater, It’s Fun – A Night-Out That Traffics in Youthful Confidence
Level Ground Arts continues to pursue their guignol appetite following their production of Evil Dead: The Musical with another show that proves that music goes well with severed limbs and fake blood. This is not a show for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach or the sensitive of ear.
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Though Uptown Players’ Equus Forfeits Some Psychological Tension, Shaffer’s Play Holds Up
If you can get past the Beefcake Bonanza of the first act, the play is strong enough to withstand the production. In the end, we are left feeling for the mixed-up mini-monster Strang and soggy-souled Dysart and wondering about the war inside ourselves between our own Apollonian reason and Dionysian creativity. What bargains have we made to get along in this civilized society? When do we allow ourselves to run with the horses?
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Taken At Face Value, Polanski’s The Ghost Writer Is a Thrilling Game of Cat and Mouse
The Ghost Writer contains a cocktail of typical Polanski themes: a tightening sense of paranoia and claustrophobia, an innocent main character whose curiosity and sense of justice drags him over his head into a criminal plot, and a Kafkaesque maze of facts that serve to question the nature – or even the possibility of truth. And yet for Polanski, the film feels rather conventional – a well-constructed mystery that fascinates while in the theater, but doesn’t stick after you’ve left.
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Copenhagen’s Well-Tested Script is Good, But Stage West’s Actors Are Even Better
In Copenhagen in 1921 and in Copenhagen at Stage West, collaboration produced complex and powerful things. The subject of the play is the events at the place. That’s where scientists Bohr and Heisenberg were exploring the frontiers of physics with atomic implications. These were awesome deeds in a no less awesome production. Michael Frayn has written a challenging play full of complex ideas. But if you oppose the current cult of stupidity – you think twitter makes us twits and possess theatrical fortitude – Copenhagen will take you undreamt places and leave you changed. After all, fluid takes the shape of its container, but art changes it.
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Opus, at Circle Theatre, Is Ensemble Drama in Perfect Harmony
Artists are passionate people. We have been taught this through overwrought plays and movies about famous and not-so-famous musicians, painters, actors and writers, tortured souls who often lived their lives in extremes. What’s so appealing about Michael Hollinger’s play Opus is that he is delivers a compelling story about five classical musicians experiencing a series of personal and professional upheavals without sinking into melodrama.
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“Phantom” Is Brand-Tested, Satis-frying State Fair Style
Sometimes it is hard to separate art from brand. The Mona Lisa is a small, dark painting hidden under bulletproof glass when you seek it out in the Louvre. Why is the experience of the Mona Lisa nothing like the expectation? If you’ve grown up seeing it on T-shirts, how are you going to react honestly when you see the real thing? And so it goes with The Phantom of the Opera or simply “Phantom.” But with such success, they must be doing something right. With my bias duly noted, I went to “Phantom” hosted by Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall at Fair Park and I left satis-fried State Fair style.