It couldn’t be better had it been planned: an opportunity to see productions of two plays by that old Greek, Euripides, in one weekend — The Trojan Women at UNC-Asheville and The Bacchae at Warren Wilson College. Better still: both are presented outdoors, just as the Greeks would have had it.
Bioflyer Productions doesn’t stray far from the Broadway version — should it?
The more shows I see Montford’s intrepid players undertake, the more fond of them I become. It’s community theater at its best, as far as I’m concerned. The vibe with the audience is supportive and enthusiastic, and you can’t help but feel that everyone, both onstage and off, is having a tremendously good time.
The play is good entertainment, full of comic quirks and flights of fancy, and yet it also feels intelligent and profound. If that profundity turns out to be less real than imagined, well, you can’t expect to have your lobster bisque and eat it too.
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 […]
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 […]
Seduction Sideshow wants you to think about sex; or, rather, reconsider what sexiness is.
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.
Middle School is a circus, right? But The Runaway Circus and the Loose Cabooses make it fun.
The dazzling entertainers of Bootstraps Burlesque almost max out their gifts.
To describe Dark Horse Theatre’s Alice Underground is tricky business without giving too much of the play away. On the other hand, one would be hard pressed to say exactly what does take place in this visually lush, creatively rich, brilliantly-acted performance.
I got a call this morning from a man who knows great theatre. The current production at Warren Wilson, on through Sunday, is not to miss, he says.
Dark Horse Theatre presents a “decidedly darker and more absurdist take” on the classic Lewis Carroll adventure.
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.
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.
There’s something to be said for knowing one’s place in the world, and a show presented at “The Usual Joli Grey Admiral’s Vault, Social Aid, Yacht Club, and Speakeasy off Broadway” is one that is definitely not afraid to embrace the local.
Congrats are in order for the young thespians and musicians who excelled at the 2010 Junior Theater Festival, a weekend celebration of musical theatre held in Atlanta recently.
Put your brain on hold. It’s going to be a bumpy night.
Well Dada my Dada: what does it mean these days for art to be “avant-garde”?
Is the festival pushing boundaries as one might expect?
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.
