July 16 in Asheville: So much to do, so little time


You know how there are some days in Asheville where everything seems to happen at once, and even if you gave it your very best college try, you couldn’t possibly cram it all in to one 24-hour period of time? Well Saturday, July 16 is one of those days. Here, to make your time management next to impossible, are five events worth shoe-horning into your schedule (including The Black Rabbits, seen here, who’ll play Westville Pub).

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.

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.

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 One Flea Spare

It’s the 1660s and the silly Restoration has been interrupted by the Plague. A wealthy London family is sealed up in their house by the authorities because their servants have died laden with “tokens” of the scourge, and the nailing up of the windows and the guarding of the doors of afflicted households were all they knew to slow the mysterious progress of the disease.

Review of Rent

It’s easy for community theatre to play it safe, and though Rent is a 15-year-old play and its themes may not seem daring to some, it could be very risky for a community theatre whose audience is often assumed to be conservative.