Review: Love Child

Plays about life in the theater can feel a little cliché — the easy image of the play-within-the-play dating back to Shakespeare, and beyond. For an audience of non-actors, such storylines can be a little too self-absorbed to be relatable. Fortunately that’s not the case with Love Child, now at N.C. Stage.

Review of Fight Girl Battle World

The fast-paced if somewhat chaotic action features bizarre aliens, cool ray guns, girls in tight outfits, a loquacious robot, spaceships and fire-fights, a Chinese dragon ride across a desert planet, an intergalactic zookeeper, copious pseudo kung-fu and/or quasi ninja shenanigans, puppetry so bad it’s good, and an implement of “enhanced interrogation” I’ll call a tickle drill.

Review of Solstice

Solstice is funny. It is tragic without somberness, moving without sentimentality. It’s squalid, but without a trace of self-pity. … It allows its characters to be fatally screwed up and sublime at once, and the list of playwrights who can do that is short indeed.

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.

The Laramie Project could be Anywhere, USA, even Asheville

Heavy hitting. Timely. Controversial. Necessary. Real life. But certainly not depressing. That’s the attitude of Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective managing artistic director Stephanie Hickling Beckman and the actors involved, who are committed to staging plays with a message. “Our mission is to present theatre that confronts issues of social diversity as reflected in the […]

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.