Contemporary Asheville teems with fringe-y performers, with vaudeville, cabaret and burlesque troupes launching and performing frequently. The last two months have been particularly rich, with big shows by the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, Bombs Away Cabaret, Bootstraps Burlesque, Seduction Sideshow, Runaway Circus & The Loose Cabooses and Asheville Vaudeville, among others. Will the scene explode […]
Author: Steven Samuels
Showing 22-42 of 46 results
All aboard!
Sometimes you've just got to seize the means of production. "Vaudeville on Wheels" is one way to describe the increasingly popular LaZoom Comedy Tour, now entering its fourth season. That's not precisely what proprietor/performers Jim and Jennifer Lauzon had in mind when they started Asheville's alternative guided tour in 2006; then again, they didn't know […]
Review of Corney Island Carnival Sideshow Extravaganza
Seduction Sideshow wants you to think about sex; or, rather, reconsider what sexiness is.
Review of Chipola at 35Below
Waylon Wood’s often lyrical dialogue and his understanding of, and compassion for, his characters compensate for structural deficiencies. It helps, too, that each role is perfectly cast and rendered, and that strong acting makes up for the less-believable touches.
Review of The Sloppy Joe Circus
Middle School is a circus, right? But The Runaway Circus and the Loose Cabooses make it fun.
Review of The Laudanum Express
The dazzling entertainers of Bootstraps Burlesque almost max out their gifts.
Review of The Boxcar Children
The first volume of The Boxcar Children series—a fairly realistic tale of four children orphaned during the Depression, fending for themselves until reconciled with their rich, paternal grandfather—was published in 1924, but didn’t achieve true popularity until it was reissued in a revised version in 1942.
Review of Eat Your Heart Out
The most-recent show from Bombs Away Cabaret? Without ever taking itself seriously, it put the moon’s light of love back in the sorely abused word “amateur,” the burla (“joke”) back in burlesque, and the broad back in…well…broad.
Review of True West
The two leads have teamed before, and are well-known and much-appreciated as a light-comic duo. In this play, they also explore dark recesses that may surprise those familiar with their more farcical romps.
Review of Fringe on Wheels
Put your brain on hold. It’s going to be a bumpy night.
Review of Fringe Audio at the 2010 Fringe Festival
Well Dada my Dada: what does it mean these days for art to be “avant-garde”?
Review of The Beautiful Johanna
It’s not the Dublin you’d find today, or even the Dublin of The Troubles. In David Brendan Hopes’ The Beautiful Johanna, Dublin is an apocalyptic nightmare, riddled by bomb blasts, machine gun bursts, and — perhaps most frightening of all — fire. Yet the subject of the play is neither horror nor hell. It’s love.
Review of SciFi-A-GoGo
Deep into its second decade, the neo-burlesque movement appears to be approaching a critical mass of performers that combine the traditional, early-twentieth century blend of comedy, music and striptease with a strong contemporary sensibility.
Review of The Santaland Diaries
The Santaland Diaries at ACT is a loose-limbed, easygoing evening that honors and remakes the original Sedaris work. Even if you’ve seen it in before, you haven’t seen it quite like this.
Review of A Christmas Carol
If you have never encountered the original Dickens tale,or have only the vaguest recollection of it, The Montford Park Players offer you an excellent opportunity to make up this deficiency with their authentic adaptation. Watching it, you may feel yourself transported back to the nineteenth century, not only by the story and its setting but by the acting and staging, too.
Review of Asheville Vaudeville
Asheville’s got talent far out of proportion to the size of its population. Our lovely town’s got the market in eccentricity pretty much cornered, too. Asheville’s also got a generous heart, and its audiences are warm and indulgent. Put them all together and you’ve got Asheville Vaudeville, the latest entry in a burgeoning world of live, variety entertainment.
Review of Return of an Angel at ACT
The Occasional Theatre Company presents Return of an Angel, its drama about the life of Thomas Wolfe.
Are you a boy or are you a girl?
Review of I Am My Own Wife at 35below, the biographical portrait of a transvestite who managed to survive first the Nazis and then the East German secret police.
“It’s in his kiss”… Nerve at N.C. Stage
Subject matter touched upon, besides computer dating, includes tattoos, piercings, bondage, cutting, bathroom sex, stalking, restraining orders, antidepressants, suicide hotlines — oh, and love everlasting.
Review of Walking Across Egypt at HART
Grandma knows best: Walking Across Egypt creates contretemps and confusions, then resolves them nicely, and amounts to a homespun slice of Southern life.
Who is that naked woman? Review of Perfect Wedding at Flat Rock Playhouse
If you enjoy a good British sex comedy (and who doesn’t?), or if you’re intrigued by the premise of a farce that starts with a groom-to-be awaking hungover, on his wedding day, in the bridal suite, beside a naked woman he doesn’t know but suspects he slept with the night before — Perfect Wedding, at Flat Rock Playhouse, won’t disappoint.