The British farce Not Now, Darling, written by by John Chapman and Ray Cooney, seems so fabulously retro now. In reality, it was just another modern play of the era. But these days, thanks to TV shows like “Mad Men,” “Pan Am,” “The Astronaut Wives Club,” and the subsequent wave of nostalgia, audiences are getting a whole new look at that bygone era.
The show is filled with hard-to-believe conceits and antics, including cross-dressing, mixed-up identities and a few predictable twists. There are just enough sincerely sweet plot lines to make the more loony parts palatable. Regardless, the show had the audience swaying, clapping and cheering at every leg-twisting, hip-shaking turn.
Twelfth Night, Or What You Will continues at Montford Park though Saturday, Aug. 1, with shows Thursday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
Miss Nelson is Missing was “a favorite book growing up,” says ACA founder and director Robbie Jaeger. “The title is meaningful to many generations — our parents read it to us, our peers today are now reading it to their kids, and kids are loving it as much now as when it was originally published in the ’70s.” The play opens at N.C. Stage Co. on Thursday, July 16.
Pump Boys And Dinettes continues its run at North Buncombe High from Friday, July 10 to Sunday, July 19, and Owen High from Friday, July 24 to Sunday, August 2.
The Underpants is a play adapted by Steve Martin from an early 1900s German work by Carl Sternheim — and the results are just as madcap as you might imagine. It’s currently being staged by Attic Salt Theatre Company as part of the Catalyst Series at N.C. Stage Company.
Over The River and Through The Woods continues its run at Flatrock Playhouse Downtown through Sunday, June 21. It isn’t a downer and it isn’t a comedy: it’s a deft portrait of reality, in all of its humor and sadness.
Nunsense is as much old school variety show as anything, relying on a mixed bag formula aimed at one thing: pure entertainment. And HART delivers with a perfectly cast, and tightly directed production.
Sketch comedy-based two-woman show Parallel Lives stars Neela Munoz and Nichole Hamilton, who give nuanced and broadly bodacious performances.
The Magnetic Theatre makes an official return to a permanent facility at 375 Depot St. in the River Arts District. It’s across the street from the space it left a little over two years ago. A soft opening features Brief Encounters, a series of one-act plays.
Before a word is uttered on stage, the audience is awe-struck by the set. Constructed by Jack Lindsay, it fills the wide ACT stage. It looks and feels like it has been plucked out of New Orleans circa 1950 and dropped into downtown Asheville.
Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Haywood Arts Regional Theatre executive director Steve Lloyd brings a nearly three-decade-long labor of love back to the stage.
Tales don’t get much older than Homer’s Iliad — a tale almost as old as time. But An Iliad, now showing at N.C. Stage Company, is a modern variation of the tale, with an intimate approach, giving us a lone poet and a piano player set among the bare stage of a theater.
Once upon a time, before the fast-paced world of entertainment we’re accustomed to, there was Noël Coward. His plays were the height of upper crust British humor, depicting high society and often sinking to the lowest depths of humanity (thereby mocking the stereotype). Coward’s style and wit became the forbear of early cinema and the […]
Everything about the production was magical from the moment the lights went down and the music came up.
Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective has never shied away from uncomfortable themes. In the last five years, the group brought activism to the stage while making a distinct impact on the local theater landscape.
The sparse staging of Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, performed in the Haywood Arts Region Theatre‘s new Feichter Studio, puts the focus on a trio of actors. They are confronted by harrowing pasts and deadly choices in the present that may bend the future of a recently democratized nation. The use of an old […]
Rarely Theatre’s cast for its second outing is a who’s who assembled from a variety of other companies. Theatergoers will recognize the names behind the scintillating production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar — an evening of theater that is both thought-provoking and wildly entertaining in a voyeuristic and slightly sadistic way. Director Scott Keel’s talented group […]
From the side-splittingly funny, fanny-exposing opening to the tear-jerking conclusion, NC Stage Company‘s production of Sharr White’s Annapurna is a tour de force on every level. Charlie Flyn-McIver’s direction is spot on, and the play is set within the tiny, messy slum of a single-wide trailer. That set, by scenic designer Julie K. Ross and […]
The Asheville Fringe Arts Festival’s shows at The Mothlight featured an empowering female double bill that also fully embraced its international heritage with a pair of talented performers from the United Kingdom.
The eclectic double-bill embraced the raw and slightly rough-around-the-edges aspects that make Fringe such a visceral delight to watch.
