The fall theater season gets off to a rousing start in Dallas with two excellent productions now playing through November 1 at, respectively, Dallas Theater Center and Theatre 3.
At DTC, Ngozi Anyanwu's two hander "The Monsters" centers on the rekindling of an estranged brother/sister bond that finds connection and healing through the brother's mixed martial arts career and expertise. For me, the expertly rendered MMA elements of the play are simply the entry points into a moving exploration of the ties and boundaries of this sibling relationship. Everything about his production is world class- including the precise direction, the perfectly calibrated acting by Tiana Kaye Blair and Akron Watson, the tight staging and effective use of hip-hop music. The positive audience response was palpable and ranged from cheers to tears when I saw this. If you are in Dallas grab a ticket before this show closes on 11/1.
Solo shows are usually not my thing, but for me there are exceptions and one of them is on stage now at Theatre3's downstairs venue- a revival of Doug Wright's 2012 Pulitzer Prize winning "I Am My Own Wife" starring Blake Hackler. Hackler, who also happens to be a Brierley Acting Company member at Dallas Theater Center, skillfully embodies a range of characters, the most notable being Charlotte von Mahlsdorf who despite being trangendered, survived the Nazi and Communist regimes in Germany. The play is relayed in the signature Tectonic Theater docu-drama style (Tectonic's Moisés Kaufman was the play's original director) and explores the fascinating theme of who is or isn't a reliable narrator. On that latter point, seeing this play in tandem with the similarly themed new Fielder/Oppenheim Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" would make for an enlightening theater-film double feature. Garret Storms, the director of this fine production, effectively theatricalizes the script by pushing the boundaries of what can be done in the downstairs space at Theatre 3. And Hackler gives a performance of such warmth and nuance that I preferred this revival to the original production that played on Broadway in 2010. Go see this one too if you can.
