A BIG ‘NIGHT’: Tonight’s the night that Lyric Stage opens The Night of the Hunter in Irving. The production is hotly anticipated because a full orchestra will back the singers on stage. To get you prepped, check out the This Week in the Arts podcast, whose guest this week is lyricist Stephen Cole. And a man who will be singing a lot of those lyrics, Broadway vet Davis Gaines, speaks with dallasnews.com about the show. He plays the Preacher, the part Robert Mitchum played in the 1955 movie.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Also debuting tonight is Stage West’s reading of Molière’s The Miser. The comedy features a man so in love with his money that he’s unwilling to spend it on anything. The play was written in 1668, but Stage West has decided to bring it to at least the early 20th Century. Stage West producing director Jerry Russell, who also plays the title character, says the show’s malleability proves its universality. “Passion, love and money. Anybody can relate to that,” he tells dfw.com. “It’s like a sitcom. If the characters and situations are set up well, it doesn’t matter whether it is contemporary or classic.”

NORTH TEXAS ON TV: Chase, The Good Guys, Lone Star – for the last year or so we’ve heard about all of these network television shows shooting in North Texas. Some of them have been winners (The Good Guys), some of them have already come and gone (Lone Star, My Generation). But the one thing that has stayed in the area is a lot of money. In the fiscal year ending in September, the Dallas Film Commission says that those TV shows spent $132.4 million in the area, which lead to an economic impact of $304.5 million. And, as Joe O’Connell reports in his Shot in Texas column, that’s $100 million more than the year before.