The Asheville Playback Theatre held a couple performances at N.C. Stage over the weekend. On Saturday, Jan. 7, the crew of six helped to showcase personal stories presented by volunteers from the audience with the overall theme “The First Time I Ever.” Using improvisation and comedy, the troupe reenacted comical and heartfelt first times.
Review of A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens was never one to shy away from good old-fashioned sentimentality, but his A Christmas Carol is downright shellacked with it. Stage versions of the story typically either give it one more half-hearted buff, or try somewhat desperately to scrape away the goo with a little irony. Now, however, we may rightfully speak of a third option: Cram the whole damn thing into The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and populate it with Children of the Corn. Oh, and throw in a little cross-dressing for good measure.
Review of The 12 Dates of Christmas
We live in a world of two Christmases. One is a jingly, happy, merry, glass-clinking, snow-cavorting good time. The other is marred by a harsher reality.
Review: Brief Encounters at the Magnetic Field
Brief Encounters was a bit like riding shotgun with a friend who has just learned to drive a manual transmission — jerky, slightly uncomfortable, but very fun.
A review of Rock Saber at the Magnetic Field
“Songs are so antiquarian,” laments Heyman, the frontman of the faux band The Old Gray Goose is Dead, a brigade of inept, if well-intentioned, scumbags. The Magnetic Field’s deliciously disgusting Rock Saber, a “rock ‘n’ roll anti-musical,” features what is advertised as “possibly the worst band you’ll ever see,” devoted to shocking crowds with abuse of their instruments. In Rock Saber, Goose bandmates traverse between a venue creepily called “The Suppositorium” and their porn-den of a shared hovel. What ensues is 90 minutes of filth, sometimes outright hilarious, and sometimes too inane to process. Recommended for cheap — but very loud — laughs.
Review of Angels in America, Part II
Angels in America Part II: Perestroika is crazy in the head. If you happen upon it without having experienced Part I: Millennium Approaches, you might wonder if you’ve just lost your mind, or if the world is going mad. Then again, that seems to also be the position of many of the show’s characters. At least you won’t be alone.
Review of Angels In America, Part I
The play won writer Tony Kushner a well-deserved Pulitzer, so it goes almost without saying that the script could be poorly acted or just straight-up read, and still come off as an arresting, emotional quest for truth. But, it’s a treat to see it so well-acted and well-produced as it is here at N.C. Stage.
Review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Michael Sheldon’s presence in character alternates between a stumble and a swagger — some kickass combination of Cher and Johnny Rotten. Despite his years performing in drag, his Hedwig doesn’t come off like a drag queen so much as … well, a bitter old German lady whose sex-change operation went awry.
Sightlines on temporary hiatus
The Xpress theater blog is currently being revamped, but never fear … we’ll be back.
Review of Yugen
This is dance as poetry and metaphor. Like poetry, it makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
Review of Solo Shots
While I applaud artistic directors Susan and Giles Collard for giving the dancers a crack at creating their own choreography, the results prove something we already knew: that a good dancer does not necessarily a choreographer make. Beautiful movement is not enough. What we hope for is movement that expresses something significant, something urgent — something, moreover, that cannot be expressed any other way.
The Dixie Swim Club at ACT
This 2008 Outer Banks-set play by Asheville-based writing team Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten is a light and funny comedy with plenty of Southern-fried punch lines. It’s also (surprise!) a serious meditation on aging, friendships and what’s really important in life.
Review of Comedy of Errors and Double Falsehood
This month, Jason Williams directs a double-feature at Montford, and if anything at all unites the two plays, beyond the hardworking cast itself, it is that they are both done somewhat in the style of Bollywood.
Review of The Witches’ Quorum
I love the director and the entire cast and crew of The Witches’ Quorum — including all the designers and the handsome ticket-takers — because they stand on the winning side of what seemed an experiment in finding out how good a production you can get out of David Eshelman’s lousy script. For Quorum is, in fact, a decent evening of theater, built as if by magic on a play that seems to have nothing to recommend it but the effort that talented people expended upon it.
Review of The Glass Menagerie
Otherwise, Hans Meyer’s direction reveals an admirable clarity and restraint that allow his actors to do the work the play requires. The staging is remarkably streamlined and well-integrated, with none of the directorial caprice one sees all too often scrambling a play’s signal.
Review of Prime Ribbing
At least for the 90 minutes of its life, this show owns the whole treasure of Broadway. The lyrics are smart and funny. One expects that. But they are also allusive, intelligent, challenging, and while one is laughing one’s head off, one is taking thought as well.
Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville at Flat Rock Playhouse
Flat Rock Playhouse’s current offering, a revival of the original (1975) Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville, embraces this “it’s-all-fun-and-games” ethos magnificently. In keeping with the current trend at the Playhouse, under (still relatively new) Producing Artistic Director Vincent Marini, the show is a lavish spectacle, with production values comparable to those of Broadway.
Review of The Family Tree
Twisted family dynamics grow tall in The Family Tree, written by Lucia Del Vecchio and directed by Steven Samuels.
The Family Tree continues at The Magnetic Field at 364 Depot St. Thursdays through Saturdays, May 19-21 and 26-28, with two shows per night, at 7:30 and 10:00. Tickets are $12-$14 with open seating.
Review of Rattlesnake
If you have recurring nightmares involving venomous serpents, Rattlesnake is a show you would do well to avoid. Or perhaps a direct confrontation with your primal fears would be therapeutic?
Review of Love! Valour! Compassion!
The characters are for the most part washed up, jealous, bitter, uncertain about careers, their own attractiveness, the fidelity of lovers, and in the case of the two who bring AIDS into the little loving company, their very lives.
Review of Full Gallop
You may not have heard of Diana Vreeland before you see Asheville Community Theatre’s current production of “Full Gallop,” but afterwards, you will never forget her.