Directed and adapted by Mario Estep, Romeo & Julian is a queer take on the story of Romeo and Juliet, teenagers intoxicated by intense love. As I’m sure most of us remember, those years are fraught with dizzy sexual drive. Every problem is a zero sum game. Every issue a dream or nightmare. Every romance a matter of life and death. He captured animosity between hotheaded teenage boys, venting steam with violent, homoerotic impetus. Romeo’s closest buddy, Mercutio might be crushing on him. Mercutio has a knack for coarse humor. He mocks male brawling, and Julian’s nurse, implying lack of personal hygiene.

Estep’s drama is mostly true to text, with occasional liberties. Mother Lawrence (a drag queen) reassures Romeo with comfort and counsel. Some male characters are played by women. When Julian’s bullied and berated by Lord Capulet we wonder how many queer men replay that from their past. Julian swoons and camps, his loopy effervescence steals the show. Romeo & Julian weaves merriment, while preserving pathos and tragedy. When everything goes sideways, Romeo’s earlier plea: He that hath the steerage of my course. Direct my sail, feels grotesque. Cruelly ironic. Though he and Julian find a solution, they’re so consumed by fear of losing each other, they overreact.

Beacon Theatre’s (dedicated to queer content) production is at once convivial and absorbing. The performers dig deep: chewing scenery, reading some poor soul the riot act, flouncing or pouncing or lost in devastating grief. Their shine and effusion is both exhilarating and exhausting. The gaggle of queens have comic ingenuity: a mix of bawdy chatter, gossip, mama talk and showgirl glamour that will leave you in stitches. They talk us through the perils to come, and dunk on each other. How do they manage such bitchy verve, such cranky affect? Romeo & Julian wields the enigma and mystery of gender in all its shades.

The good folks at The Beacon Theatre were gracious enough to welcome me to the last performance of their inaugural show. Romeo & Julian was dazzling. It takes the myriad of this tragedy’s emotional landscape and hits all the notes. You can feel their need to include us in their enthusiasm. All in all Romeo & Julian is overwhelming, spectacular theatre.

The Beacon Theatre presented Romeo & Julian playing from February 12th-22nd, 2026, at The Cox (tehe) Playhouse, 1517 H Avenue, Plano, Texas, 75074. thebeacontheatretx@gmail.com.

Directed and adapted by Mario Estep, Romeo & Julian is a queer take on the story of Romeo and Juliet, teenagers intoxicated by intense love. As I’m sure most of us remember, those years are fraught with dizzy sexual drive. Every problem is a zero sum game. Every issue a dream or nightmare. Every romance a matter of life and death. He captured animosity between hotheaded teenage boys, venting steam with violent, homoerotic impetus. Romeo’s closest buddy, Mercutio might be crushing on him. Mercutio has a knack for coarse humor. He mocks male brawling, and Julian’s nurse, implying lack of personal hygiene.

Estep’s drama is mostly true to text, with occasional liberties. Mother Lawrence (a drag queen) reassures Romeo with comfort and counsel. Some male characters are played by women. When Julian’s bullied and berated by Lord Capulet we wonder how many queer men replay that from their past. Julian swoons and camps, his loopy effervescence steals the show. Romeo & Julian weaves merriment, while preserving pathos and tragedy. When everything goes sideways, Romeo’s earlier plea: He that hath the steerage of my course. Direct my sail, feels grotesque. Cruelly ironic. Though he and Julian find a solution, they’re so consumed by fear of losing each other, they overreact.

Beacon Theatre’s (dedicated to queer content) production is at once convivial and absorbing. The performers dig deep: chewing scenery, reading some poor soul the riot act, flouncing or pouncing or lost in devastating grief. Their shine and effusion is both exhilarating and exhausting. The gaggle of queens have comic ingenuity: a mix of bawdy chatter, gossip, mama talk and showgirl glamour that will leave you in stitches. They talk us through the perils to come, and dunk on each other. How do they manage such bitchy verve, such cranky affect? Romeo & Julian wields the enigma and mystery of gender in all its shades.

The good folks at The Beacon Theatre were gracious enough to welcome me to the last performance of their inaugural show. Romeo & Julian was dazzling. It takes the myriad of this tragedy’s emotional landscape and hits all the notes. You can feel their need to include us in their enthusiasm. All in all Romeo & Julian is overwhelming, spectacular theatre.

The Beacon Theatre presented Romeo & Julian playing from February 12th-22nd, 2026, at The Cox (tehe) Playhouse, 1517 H Avenue, Plano, Texas, 75074. thebeacontheatretx@gmail.com.

Tiffany lives in a quaint village with her dad (Aman) who’s a minister. They live and die by the harvest. Tiffany is fresh and beautiful, longing for a husband and children. She seems to be last on everybody’s dance card, and even her father’s insensitive to her need for romance and a spouse. Whether he doesn’t want her to leave, or he’s a schmuck, is unclear. He tends wildflowers and a shrine at the edge of a cliff. His best friend is a great stone, with arms and legs. The story seems to lean into religion more than spirituality, per se. Enter Yanno carrying mother on his back. She’s small and grumbles quite a lot. Yanno patiently reminds her of details that come and go. They have journeyed for a long, long stretch, to pay homage at the shrine. Neither Aman nor Mother are encouraging to their children. The moment Yanno and Tiffany cross paths, kismet smites like a hailstorm. So much in love.

There are no sharper craftsmen than Ochre House, when it comes to political satire. The play functions completely on its own, but the unspoken connection to catastrophic dystopia, never wanders too far. Blood Hammer Girl is obtuse, but then, the smoothest, subtlest social critique always does. Consider Arthur Miller’s The Crucible or David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones or Samuel Hunter’s The Whale. The story of the wee town with gleeful villagers and agrarian ritual interweaves with Draconian values. Punishment isn’t there to enforce the rules, it’s an opportunity for vindictiveness. Slackers are executed, so are folks that make too much noise, after curfew. There seems to be some coincidence in the three day grace period. Transgression only indulged for so long, then it’s Sayonara, baby.

As we watch, parallels emerge between Blood Hammer Girl and the notoriously grisly Grimm’s folktales. Straightforward narratives carry disturbing, terrifying life lessons. Don’t consort with wolves. Avoid candy houses. Chose unwisely and fall prey to torture. When the townsfolk dance their celebration, we notice there are also ghoulish, clown/goblins giggling. A kind of devious chorus. There’s plenty of absurd, innocuous humor, but by the end, it feels like a ruse. A hoax. Tiffany is seduced by flattery to consider the unthinkable. What Tiffany discovers in herself in the midst of prenuptial hi-jinks and familial frustration, falls and falls hard. Like the executioner’s axe.

Ochre House presents: Blood Hammer Girl, playing February 18th-March 7^th, 2026. 825 Exposition Street, Dallas, Texas. 214-826-6273. OchreHouseTheater.org

Benjamin Braddock has just finished college, earned his degree, and returned home. Downstairs his parents are throwing a party in his honor. We gather there are no guests Benjamin’s own age. Dad insists he demonstrate a new scuba diving suit for the party goers, but Benjamin’s not interested. He senses the celebration is less about his accomplishment than an excuse for the parents to cut loose and get inebriated. Pretentiousness seems to permeate the air and why would he have anything in common with these clueless dolts?

He elects to take a drive when he Mrs. Robinson wanders in, plastered. She flashes and puts the moves on him, but Benjamin, flustered, manages to evade her. The next day, he resolves to take a road trip (inspired by Jack Kerouac) ready to embrace whatever life brings. Unfortunately his travels amount only to misadventure, and he returns home, disillusioned and sad.

Terry Johnson’s stage adaptation of Charles Webbs novel and Buck Henry, Calder Willingham and Mike Nichol’s film of The Graduate, feeds on the zeitgeist of the 1960’s and Benjamin Braddock’s malaise. The older generation may be vapid and blind, but they’re chipper. Ben and Mr. Robinson share the weariness of a disappointing world, and a need for authenticity, however sketchy that pursuit might be.

It seems the perfect remedy for their anger and bitterness is an affair, where they can forget, forget, forget. Mrs. Robinson’s allure is directness and honesty. The problem is her cunning. She’s disingenuous. The world outside their hotel room would rather believe Ben’s depraved and Mrs. Robinson’s ridiculous accusations.

So The Graduate is an allegory on empty values and emptier values. The distinction between the truth and the actual. Mrs. Robinson’s contempt is useful till she needs to game the system. In the end genuine virtue seems to prevail, at least for the moment.

The novel not withstanding, Henry, Willingham and Nichol’s film is episodic, dark, cynical. Satire emerges from timing, reduction, and cynicism. WaterTower Theatre’s production is a unique slant on the content we find in the novel and film. It explores details neglected in the movie. Mrs. Robinson’s backstory, her relationship with her daughter, Elaine. The mob enraged by the wedding’s interruption. WTT relates the same plot, with broader comedy, more humanity, more forgiveness.

Many thanks to WTT for letting me attend, so late in the run.

WaterTower Theatre presented The Graduate, from January 20th-February 8^{th, 2026. 15650 Addison Road, Addison, Texas. 972-450-6232 watertowertheatre.org} 

 

We join the Antrobus family at the beginning of three catastrophes. The Ice Age, The Great Flood, and World War II. The quintessential nuclear family, each member an archetype. Sabina, the maid, is the conniving, seductive siren. Henry is Cain, the wounded, homicidal delinquent. Gladys the spirited, adventurous daughter. Maggie the fierce, pragmatic mother, protecting the nest. The mainstay of civilization. George the dad, is raucous, pompous, and goodhearted. He has true genius, a spark that nudges humanity forward. The alphabet, the wheel, mathematics. His accomplishments stand with Newton, Einstein, Gutenberg. It’s not simply discovery, but when and how these occur in history.

Playwright Thornton Wilder has assembled a montage. Scraps and torn pieces from experiences of the every day. It might be a ticket to the movies, a parking citation, a foreclosure, a phone bill, a lab result. Despite the disparate nature of purpose and paper, he finds a way to make them fit. To make them work. The result far beyond the sum of its parts. Wilder has made a gloss of the human experience. Over centuries, over tragedies, over warfare, over celebration.

He constructs a home where the Antrobus family struggles to subsist. Chaos besieges from without and within. During the Ice Age they fight worse cold than anyone’s ever known. Sabina’s more concerned with nuisance than keeping the crucial fire going. Henry’s in dark trouble at school. Maggie makes impossible decisions because she must. George offers refuge to transients, when they barely have enough to live on, themselves.

Wilder ignores the fourth wall. We are subject to the extremes of survival. Sandwiches are passed around (Yum!). The show pauses to replace cast members. The fortune teller and Sabina address us directly. He crisscrosses details from different times. Anachronistic turning points are referenced. The Great Flood arrives at the Boardwalk. In contrast to her husband, Maggie discovers nylon stockings and the silkworm. Her inventions less lofty but useful in the day to day.

The Skin Our Teeth assembles the universe (deliriously and fancifully) within the confines of the Antrobus home and the Undermain Stage. It’s a curious allegory mixing the outlandish with the despondent. You might call it: Surviving the Unthinkable. Miseries considered only in the abstract till unavoidable. George, Maggie, Henry and Gladys are flawed but also heroic, just the rest of us. Fractured and lost and vain though we may be.

One imagines director Stefan Novinski spinning plates on sticks like jugglers back in the day. Too many simultaneous elements to follow, but thanks to Novinski, they converge. Narration from a newsreel, a model of the Antrobus home, cardboard houses encircling the perimeter, a reporters desk, puppets, a succession of performers quoting great philosophers. Actors play their parts but also, the “role” of themselves. Wilder sews the thread that proves out humanity. Humanity is the connective tissue. The actors are versatile and focused, shifting between moods and situations, with equal panache. They tuck into disparate characters with fervor.

Undermain Theatre presents: The Skin of our Teeth playing February 14^th -March 8^th, 2026.

3200 Main Street, Dallas, Texas. Tickets at Undermain.org. 214-747-5515/

 

We join the Antrobus family in the midst of three catastrophes. The Ice Age, Great Flood, and World War II. They are the quintessential nuclear family, each member an archetype for the ages. Sabina, the maid, is the conniving, seductive siren. Henry is Cain, the wounded, homicidal delinquent. Gladys is the spirited, adventurous daughter. Maggie is the fierce, pragmatic mother, determined to protect her nest, the mainstay of civilization. George the dad, is raucous, pompous, goodhearted and subject to Sabina’s spell. George has true genius, the spark that nudges humanity toward evolution. The alphabet, the wheel, mathematics. His accomplishments stand with Newton, Einstein, Guttenberg. Not simply discovery, but how they impact history.

Playwright Thornton Wilder has assembled a montage. Scraps and torn pieces from the experience of the every day. It might be a ticket to the movies, a parking citation, a foreclosure, a phone bill, a lab result. Despite their disparate nature, he finds a way to make them fit. To make them work. The result is far beyond the sum of its parts. Wilder has created a gloss of human experience. Over centuries, over tragedies, over warfare, over celebration.

He creates a context where the Antrobus family dwells, and struggles to subsist. Chaos besieges from forces from without and within. During the ice age they must fight horrendous, unbelievable cold. Worse than they’ve ever seen. Sabina is more concerned with petty tribulations than keeping the crucial fire lit. Henry is in dark trouble at school. Maggie makes impossible decisions because she must. George offers refuge to starving refugees when they barely have enough to live on, themselves.

The Skin of Our Teeth ignores the fourth wall. He includes us in the extremes of survival. Sandwiches are passed. The show stops to replace members of the cast. The fortune teller and Sabina address us directly. He crisscrosses details from different times. The Great Flood arrives at the Boardwalk. Anachronistic turning points are referenced in each act.  In contrast to her husband, Maggie discovers nylon stockings and the silkworm. Her inventions are less lofty but more useful in the day to day.

The Skin Our Teeth assembles the universe (with delirious and imaginative surprises) within the confines of the Antrobus home and the Undermain Stage. It’s a curious allegory mixing the outlandish with the interpersonal. You might call it a Handbook for Surviving the Unthinkable. Miseries we only consider in the abstract, until they’re unavoidable. George, Maggie, Henry and Gladys are terribly flawed and also heroic, just like the rest of us. And just like us, fractured and lost and vain though we may be, we deserve to thrive.

One imagines director Stefan Novinski spinning plates on sticks like jugglers from back in the day. So many simultaneous elements to keep track of, but thanks to Novinski, they converge. Narration by newsreel, a model of the Antrobus home, cardboard houses encircling the perimeter, a reporters desk, puppets, a succession of performers quoting the great philosophers. We see the actors playing their parts but also, in the “role” of themselves. Wilder sews the thread as witness to humanity. Humanity is the connective tissue. The actors here are versatile and focused, shifting between mood and situation, with equal panache. They tuck into their characters with furvor.

Undermain Theatre presents: The Skin of our Teeth playing February 14^th -March 8^th, 2026. 3200 Main Street, Dallas, Texas. Tickets at Undermain.org. 214-747-5515

 

We join the Antrobus family in the midst of three catastrophes. The Ice Age, Great Flood, and World War II. They are the quintessential nuclear family, each member an archetype for the ages. Sabina, the maid, is the conniving, seductive siren. Henry is Cain, the wounded, homicidal delinquent. Gladys is the spirited, adventurous daughter. Maggie is the fierce, pragmatic mother, determined to protect her nest, the mainstay of civilization. George the dad, is raucous, pompous, goodhearted and subject to Sabina’s spell. George has true genius, the spark that nudges humanity toward evolution. The alphabet, the wheel, mathematics. His accomplishments stand with Newton, Einstein, Guttenberg. Not simply discovery, but how they impact history.

Playwright Thornton Wilder has assembled a montage. Scraps and torn pieces from the experience of the every day. It might be a ticket to the movies, a parking citation, a foreclosure, a phone bill, a lab result. Despite their disparate nature, he finds a way to make them fit. To make them work. The result is far beyond the sum of its parts. Wilder has created a gloss of human experience. Over centuries, over tragedies, over warfare, over celebration.

He creates a context where the Antrobus family dwells, and struggles to subsist. Chaos besieges from forces from without and within. During the ice age they must fight horrendous, unbelievable cold. Worse than they’ve ever seen. Sabina is more concerned with petty tribulations than keeping the crucial fire lit. Henry is in dark trouble at school. Maggie makes impossible decisions because she must. George offers refuge to starving refugees when they barely have enough to live on, themselves.

The Skin of Our Teeth ignores the fourth wall. He includes us in the extremes of survival. Sandwiches are passed. The show stops to replace members of the cast. The fortune teller and Sabina address us directly. He crisscrosses details from different times. The Great Flood arrives at the Boardwalk. Anachronistic turning points are referenced in each act.  In contrast to her husband, Maggie discovers nylon stockings and the silkworm. Her inventions are less lofty but more useful in the day to day.

The Skin Our Teeth assembles the universe (with delirious and imaginative surprises) within the confines of the Antrobus home and the Undermain Stage. It’s a curious allegory mixing the outlandish with the interpersonal. You might call it a Handbook for Surviving the Unthinkable. Miseries we only consider in the abstract, until they’re unavoidable. George, Maggie, Henry and Gladys are terribly flawed and also heroic, just like the rest of us. And just like us, fractured and lost and vain though we may be, we deserve to thrive.

One imagines director Stefan Novinski spinning plates on sticks like jugglers from back in the day. So many simultaneous elements to keep track of, but thanks to Novinski, they converge. Narration by newsreel, a model of the Antrobus home, cardboard houses encircling the perimeter, a reporters desk, puppets, a succession of performers quoting the great philosophers. We see the actors playing their parts but also, in the “role” of themselves. Wilder sews the thread as witness to humanity. Humanity is the connective tissue. The actors here are versatile and focused, shifting between mood and situation, with equal panache. They tuck into their characters with furvor.

Undermain Theatre presents: The Skin of our Teeth playing February 14^th -March 8^th, 2026. 3200 Main Street, Dallas, Texas. Tickets at Undermain.org. 214-747-5515

Solange and Claire are sisters who live in the garret of an aristocratic woman, addressed only as “Madame”. On this particular evening the Madame is out, her boyfriend in jail and Claire and Solange left to their own devices. They’re involved in role play. Claire playing the part of their Mistress, and Solange herself, serving and indulging. Claire puts her in one of Madame’s sumptuous dresses, a gesture of noblesse oblige. Her behavior a mix of gratitude and subtle arrogance. Even when Madame’s abusive Solange is compliant. Then they switch places. Even in the thick of it, they keep an eye on the clock.

Madame arrives unexpectedly, light, without a care. She’s more gamine than Claire (if that’s possible) flouncy, but sweet. Her white clothes startling in comparison to Claire and Solange’s uniforms (black dresses, white aprons, slight frills) and the lush crimson comforter. The contradiction striking between the Madame’s behavior, and each sister’s version of misuse. Is their perception accurate, or an ache for exploitation? When Patricia asks Michel (in Godard’s Breathless) if he would rather be abused or ignored, he replies: Who would want to be abused?

It’s no surprise Jean Genet lived by this sad truth.  No worse torture than virtual invisibility.  Deliberately trivialized. Even if you’re made to grovel, mocked, battered, or humiliated, at least you’re acknowledged. On some level, you matter. Genet’s The Maids was his take on Lea and Christine, The Papin sisters, who murdered their mistress and her grown daughter, on February 2^nd, 1933, in Le Mans, France. The two were subjected to degradation, paid next to nothing, subsisting on paltry provisions, despite their wealthy employers. Great intellectuals of that time: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacque Lacan (and certainly Genet) took up their cause, citing their circumstances as a quintessential case of class struggle. Numerous artistic explorations emerged: plays, films, a documentary and spoken word.

Sartre himself lived a life of destitution, surviving by thievery. When he was thrown in prison, he was subjected to successive, violent, sexual abuse. In time, after his release, he became one of the world’s great authors. He found a way to resolve abject misery in dedication to craft. Some kind of compassion and beauty in the grotesque. His surreal, stylized slant on atrocity, driven by the need to salvage his spirit.

The Maids achieves staggering, devastating, disturbing, theatre. It doesn’t roar like a tiger, it waits like a snake. The air seems suffused with lavender and opium. There’s a pervasive sense of the malignant, the decayed. There’s a fire consuming the chateau and they’re ignoring it. Or they can’t notice. They create a devious actuality, a sinister gentility. The women seem intoxicated by the rough hum of bumble bees, the hushed gnawing of vermin. You can’t take your eyes off them. The drowsy flowers of Genet’s dialogue drop from their tongues, these diaphanous, priestesses of chaos.

This Classics Theatre Project’s production of The Maids is beyond subversive. Beyond expectations. It’s a once-in-a lifetime experience.

The Classics Theatre Project presents Jean Genet’s The Maids, playing February 6th-March 8^th, 2026. Stone Cottage (adjacent to Addison Water Tower Theatre) 15650 Addison Rd. Addison, TX 75001. (214) 923-3619. tctpdfw@gmail.com. theclassicstheatreproject.com

Saturday, January 31^st, I saw Firehouse Theatre’s Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash. I’ve been attending musicals at Firehouse for a very, very long time, and (hand to God) I’ve never once been disappointed. Not once. The sets, performers, costumes, were always impeccable. The actors lively and authentic, the stories absorbing and songs memorable. So, naturally, my expectations last Saturday night were high.

Ring of Fire details the life of Johnny Cash, preeminent country singer, master of heartbreak, romance and devotion. Each song ties in handily with the convivial and somber times of his life: devastating flood, loss of his brother Jack, auditioning for a studio, his first connection with bride to be. Vivid imagery nails the situation just right. I ain’t seen the sunshine. I walk the line. I jumped in to a burning ring. The lyric and melody are deeply touching, raucous and chipper, soulful and filled with faith. I have always admired the frank, steady, poignant stories of country music. It’s not easy to do well. To communicate the impact of God in our lives. The hope of seeing our loved ones who have gone before. The confidence that even through the inexplicable, that God has our back. Knowing that He cares.

We explore Johnny Cash’s empathy for the lost souls of Folsom Prison, his declaration of fidelity to June Carter, sweet and joyful times around the kitchen table. Each episode adds another piece to the story. The cast (Ben Meaders, Gideon Ethridge, Nathan Benson, Bryson Morlan, Audrey Reidling) is confident, versatile, with sunshine to spare. The double and triple casting must be quite a workout. Their heads are definitely in the game. The spirited music is contagious. It pulls you right in, and gets you hooked. In the best possible way. We’re helpless to enjoy and embrace those warm, human moments.

Mr. Benson. It seems I was sitting right in front of your folks. They said they had no idea you played the horn.

Get your tickets now for Ring of Fire: A heartfelt, boisterous, inspiring evening of jubilation!

Firehouse Theatre Presents: Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash. Playing January 30^th, February 15^th, 2026. 2535 Valley View Lane, Farmers Branch, TX, United States, 75234. thefirehousetheatre.com. (972) 620-3747