2011 Spring/Summer Season — And it's free!
Lights, opera, and dancing cowboys: A Miller Outdoor Theatre "to-view" list
I’m putting the July Theatre Under the Stars revival of "Urban Cowboy: TheMusical" on my list.
Make plans to see LUMA-The Human Light Show.
My favorite is the Star-Spangled Salute with the Houston Symphony.Photo by Leroy Gibbins
While there’s a lot to love about Miller Outdoor Theatre and especially their 2011 spring/summer season, there is one aspect to hate: The overwhelming schedule.
The best bang for your buck (as in $0) in town, Miller has so much music, dance, drama, movies and children’s plays planned, you’d have to set up a hammock in the Hermann Park trees and settle in for five months to catch it all.
This year, I’ve decided to get organized. I’ve divided the schedule up into five categories and picked a must-see from each. Take a look at my recommendations, but check out the Miller schedule and mix and match for yourself.
Touring Shows
While Miller is excellent about highlighting local and Texas talent, it also brings in some original, quirky, and barely describable national and international shows. This season opened with the amazing, shiny, and recyclable Aluminum Show that sculpted comedy, dance, and found aluminum. If you loved that, or would have loved to see it, but missed out, make plans to see LUMA-The Human Light Show this weekend (Friday and Saturday night at 8:15 p.m.).
I caught this show the last time Miller brought it to town in 2009 and I’m not sure who in the audience had more fun, the adults or kids. Dance, music, gymnastics, puppetry, and most of all light, create moving art in the Texas darkness.
Dance
This is an embarrassment-of-riches category, made worse by some companies only being at Miller for one performance. With ballet, modern, swing, hip-hop, Chinese classical and folk dances, tap, and step there is a dance for every taste. I’m going traditional with this category and making plans to see Highlights of the Houston Ballet, a mixed repertory program of three short works. I’m choosing this one because I missed Stanton Welch’s The Core: Gershwin, the Heart of the Big Apple when the Houston Ballet performed it last year and refuse to miss it again the first weekend in May (performance May 6, 7 and 8).
Music
The Gourds, The Grass Roots, Accordion Kings, a Motown revue, a Led Zeppelin recreation, and of course the Houston Symphony, and Houston Grand Opera are all set to fill the pleasant spring and hot summer nights with music. After much internal debate, I find myself most intrigued by Your Name Means the Sea a Houston Grand Opera commissioned chamber opera by Franghiz Alizadeh. The work is part of HGO’s Song of Houston: East+West series, new operas that celebrate Houston as a place where Eastern and Western cultures meet.
There’s only one night, May 21, to see this love story between an American artist and Azerbaijani singer, so don’t let it slip by.
Broadway
Once upon a time in the far off land of Pasadena, Texas, there was a big honky tonk known as Gilly’s. Then there was a Esquire article about the urban cowboys that inhabited it, which was turned into the 1980 movie, Urban Cowboy, starring a young, thin, full-maned John Travolta. Twenty-three years later that movie became a Broadway musical that was cleverly retitled, Urban Cowboy: The Musical. According to the Internet Broadway Database, it ran for only 60 performances.
The New York Times critic, Ben Brantley, wrote the musical provided “a conclusive demonstration that it's possible to be vulgar and bland at the same time.” But, our ever-wise CultureMap Editor in Chief, Clifford Pugh, who saw the pre-Broadway production in Miami, assures me the show was fun.
I’m putting the July 16th Theatre Under the Stars revival of Urban Cowboy: The Musical on my list because with song titles like “If You Mess with the Bull” and “Mr. Hopalong Heartbreak,” I can only see this going one of two ways: fun or so bad it’s awesome. Come on TUTS, give me shirtless cowboys dancing on mechanical bulls or mechanical bulls dancing on shirtless cowboys.
Whichever, I’m not picky.
Shakespeare
Counter the heavy humidity of Houston’s August with the ethereal poetry of the Bard and the Houston Shakespeare Festival. This year’s choices are Othello and Taming of the Shrew. Shrew is not my favorite of the comedies, but it’s usually entertaining to see what directors do with the blatant misogyny in the play, take it seriously, or turn it into the farce some scholars feel Shakespeare definitely intended it to be.
Wrapped within glorious language, Shrew also contains sex jokes and puns raunchy enough to make Charlie Sheen blush. On the list it goes.
Bonus Pick
On the 4th of July, Houston gives us many ways to celebrate, but my favorite is the Star-Spangled Salute with the Houston Symphony. With the Texas sing-along, a musical salute to the branches of the armed forces, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with accompanying cannons, and a fireworks finale, the performance onstage and in the sky and diversity and enthusiasm of the audience can give even the grouchiest cynic a flutter of patriotic pride.
Take a peek at this LUMA preview and then let us know which Miller shows you recommend.
