Dallas Summer Musicals 2012 Season Revealed

In 2010, Dallas Summer Musicals inadvertently announced its 2011 season before its head honcho, Michael Jenkins, wanted the press to find out about it. How? The ad listing the next season was in the Playbill for a 2010 show, although it was supposed to have been pulled before that show opened.

This year, the same situation is happening, sort of. The 2012 season for Dallas Summer Musicals has not officially been announced yet, although we've known about some of the big shows since 2010, when they wanted subscribers to rest assure that despite a relatively weak 2011, the big tours of new shows would make it here in 2012.

These previously announced shows include the first national tours of the Tony-winning Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet and The Addams Family, as well as a tour of the most recent Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles, starring George Hamilton. They've been on DSM's website for months, as has one of the other shows, the return of the Beatles extravaganza Rain, which has new momentum after a successul Broadway in 2010 and 2011. (The last tour of Rain was at DSM in early 2010.)

So, what will the other shows be? DSM is still putting off their big announcement, but they forgot to take down the big banner announcing all the shows in front of the Music Hall, on First Street, by the DART rail tracks. It must have been up since early July, because the first two shows listed are Guys and Dolls and West Side Story, which are the final musicals of the 2011 season (G&D has already come and gone).

In addition to the aforementioned five shows, they're also getting the umpteenth return of Mamma Mia!, a new production of Peter Pan (Cathy Rigby and Tom Hewitt are in the tour that starts today in Pennsylvania), and the other new show is a bit of a surprise: The musical Bring It On!, a new show that is about cheerleaders and has the same title as, but is not based on, the 2000 cheerleading movie.

The latter show has been rumored for a Broadway run for a while now, but hasn't made it there. And now that the Dallas-bred cheerleader-heavy musical Lysistrasta Jones is opening on the Great White Way (it began at Dallas Theater Center as Give It Up!), perhaps Bring It On will have to sit on the sidelines, or, a tour.

Here's the website for Bring It On!, which features by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights), and a book by Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q). The Dallas dates aren't on the site yet, but on the DSM banner, it's listed first, so expect it early in the season.

So, although dates and pricing haven't been announced, here's the Dallas Summer Musicals 2012 season at the Music Hall at Fair Park:

• Bring It On 
• Million Dollar Quartet 
• La Cage aux Folles with George Hamilton 
• Rain 
• Memphis
• Mamma Mia!
• Peter Pan
• The Addams Family

We'll let you know when the season is officially announced.