- Arts & Culture
‘Million Dollar Quartet’ Raises Cain in Cornelius
By some cosmic coincidence, the publication of Rolling Stone’s special edition listing of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in late 2004 anticipated the great flowering of jukebox musicals on Broadway almost immediately afterwards, with hardly a hiccup since. A good 40 years after my last look at Billboard…
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PaperHouse Theatre’s ‘Reverse Psychology’ Proves Devilishly Ridiculous
Best known for his international comedy hit, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Charles Ludlam and his Ridiculous Theatre Company struggled for 17 years before that 1984 breakthrough brought him financial security. But AIDS took his life, so he couldn’t enjoy his celebrity and notoriety for long. Ludlam was gone less…
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The Count Transforms from Bela to Bowie in ‘Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors’
Even before he became a Muppet or the mascot for a General Mills breakfast cereal, Bram Stoker’s Dracula regularly took on a comical tinge that the novelist could not have foreseen when his masterwork was published in 1897. You can probably place the blame on Bela Lugosi, the first actor…
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The ‘New Argentina’ of ‘Evita’ Suddenly Resembles MAGA USA
As women and as films, Evita and Melania will never be viewed as two of a kind. Yet in recent years, as Ms. Trump’s husband has become more ceremonial, militaristic and authoritarian, a mild kinship and a certain sisterhood have emerged between the two first ladies. There are only a…
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Keston Conquers Again in ‘The Color Purple’ at The Barn
Across the span of nearly 40 years reviewing, reporting and pontificating on the performing arts, quite a few events and performances have etched themselves into my mind. On rarer instances, an audience response will be equally unforgettable, such as press night on April 10, 2008, at Ovens Auditorium, the first…
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‘Oedipus el Rey’ Completes Groundbreaking Three Bone Trilogy
Everybody has a story, but the cruel truth is that an overwhelming majority of them, whether factual or fictional, will be forgotten. So the story of Oedipus, immortalized by the Greek dramatist Sophocles in his Theban Trilogy — and perhaps the cruelest of all stories — is an awesome exception. …
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Keg-Fueled Nights Answer to Title IX Consequences in ‘Actually’
When Anna Ziegler’s Actually was first staged in 2017, looking back on a sexual harassment complaint lodged by one Princeton freshman against another in 2015 or 2016, neither of her protagonists, Amber Cohen or Thomas Anthony, likely knew much about Title IX that would apply to them. Nor would they…
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The Evolution of an Album and a Rock Group Shapes ‘Stereophonic’
Pressure and deadlines are good for creatives. Or as Duke Ellington famously put it, “Necessity is the mother.” What David Adjmi’s Stereophonic explores — at excruciating length — are the consequences of no time pressure at all. Adjmi’s unnamed and ostensibly fictional band closely tracks with Fleetwood Mac in the…
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‘God of Carnage’ Bites but Merrily Refuses to Draw Blood
Human masterworks and monstrosities cover the globe, fly through the air and reconfigure the sky, bringing breathtaking changes to land, sea and climate. So it’s rather quaint to spend an evening with a playwright who has built her reputation on the notion that civilization is a thin veneer clothing our…
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‘King Hedley II’ Marks Latest Stop for BNS on August Wilson’s Century Cycle
With over 3,300 No Kings protests popping up across the USA and on three other continents during its first weekend, you can call BNS Productions’ local premiere of August Wilson’s King Hedley II an example of serendipitous or awkward timing. But you couldn’t deny that Wilson’s tragedy, the first BNS…
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‘The Revolutionists’ Mixes Comedy and High Ambition
Badass. That’s how Lauren Gunderson describes all the women in her feminist fantasia, The Revolutionists. The current Warehouse PAC production of Gunderson’s 2016 script — the second all-female cast to take the stage this month in Mecklenburg on the heels of Blumenthal’s Suffs — underscores one of the subtler achievements…
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Charlotte Ballet’s ‘Boundless’ Celebrates Connection After Fretting Over It
Loud, woolen plaids are back in action — on the loose with louder goofball leggings. And the eternal question, pointedly asked, rings out again at The Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance: “Do you, do you, do you, do you wanna dance?” Like fall 2023’s Breaking Boundaries, Charlotte…
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‘Primary Trust’ Could (and Should) Go Bigger on Joy
Back in the days before social media offered connections to the outside world, growing up Black in a distant little town in western New York probably didn’t offer the best head start one might wish for. In Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, Kenneth has that and other big obstacles to overcome…
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Charlotte Conservatory Theatre’s ‘Wink’ Dares Us to Jump out of Our Skins
If you love cats, you already know the open secret of their appeal; they are all wild thangs. Yes, we can declaw them or inflict various mutilations on their genitalia to superficially tame them, but they will still swat at things floating in the air, still hiss when cornered, still…
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Theatre Charlotte’s ‘Over the River…’ Highlights Script’s Fresh Relevance in a New Age
Back in the days of Woodstock and hippies, my generation spoke solemnly, defiantly, or even sarcastically about the Generation Gap. For a long time, it was sincerely believed by many to be the most telling division in our country. With the return of Joe DiPietro’s Over the River and Through…
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Blood, Fire and Hebrew in ‘Prince of Egypt’ at Matthews Playhouse
In synagogues around the world where the Five Books of Moses are read in the traditional triennial cycle on the Sabbath, the 21 verses that tell the story of Moses’ birth through his marriage — the basis for Act 1 of Stephen Schwartz and Philip LaZebnik’s The Prince of Egypt…
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