Harvey Fierstein’s 35-year-old Tony-winning play "Torch Song Trilogy" is now slimmed down and called simply "Torch Song" in a new Broadway production with Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruhl. Theater critic Howard Shapiro reviews the production this week on In a Broadway Minute Friday (11/16) at 8 am and Saturday (11/17) at 10 am.

Houston Grand Opera is turning to a music-loving armadillo named Sandy in its efforts to cultivate the next generation of opera lovers.

An opera based on an 18th century Chinese work called the “pinnacle of Chinese fiction” by Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang is this week’s Sunday Opera (11/18 3:00 p.m.).  “The Dream of the Red Chamber” is a huge work that features some forty main characters and over four-hundred secondary characters.  In this San Francisco Opera version, the focus has been fine-tuned by librettist David Henry Hwang.  

Teaching has its side effects, and one of those is the need for “calendar art”!  The Dress Circle program this week (11/18 7:00 p.m.) is an off-shoot of that need as we present a Thanksgiving program – of sorts.  In the past, we’ve looked at family, food, and “thanks” as themes, but this time, we wanted to share with you some of the theatergoing events for which we’ve been thankful over the years.