Sure, we’ve seen ’70s flashbacks on stage before. Still, this one is wicked. Walled off behind a pair of Jackie O. sunglasses, helmeted in a blow-dried, feather-backed tribute to Farrah Fawcett-Majors, garbed in a filmy, opal cocktail dress an untold number of polyesters gave their lives for, actor Nicole Farmer stares blankly at her audience. […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
Justice, at too long a distance
They form something of a continuum, the three major productions of Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie that have been staged in the area in the past decade. In the most conventional of the group, at Raleigh Little Theatre in 1997, the late, great Saravette Trotter delved deeply into the psychology of Amanda Wingfield, a mother blindsided […]
Posted inArt
Solo confrontations
Once upon a time there were two artists: Sara Juli and Miguel Gutierrez. Like all humans, both had issues. Among other things, Juli had felt she really tended to be hypercritical of herself. Plus she worried too much about money–and wasn’t she a horrible gossip besides? Meanwhile, as Gutierrez was becoming more famous as a […]
Posted inArt
A questionnaire for revolutionaries
No doubt audiences were chilled by the season opener for the 2006 American Dance Festival. Paul Taylor’s Banquet for Vultures painted a bleak, if somewhat reductive, portrait of the current geopolitical dilemma during his company’s concert last weekend in Page Auditorium. But since I have no interest in mischaracterizing the political views of those who […]
Posted inArt
Wrong indictment, wrong audience
Picture an over-caffeinated–and venomous–version of those old “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” spots on Saturday Night Live. Then lose the gauzy graphics and imagine it lasting an hour and a quarter, without intermission. Now, picture a one-person show whose only apparent mission is to embody almost every single failing of that genre–but doing this so […]
Posted inArt
ADF Preview 2006: Ideas take the stage
Here they come. Choreographic legends–whose more recent works have come into question. Enigmatic foreign choreographers–some apparently incandescent, others enjoying less than uniform achievement at times. Current journeymen (and women), striving to take their work to a higher level, and to larger audiences. Greatest hits and world premieres–many of which are more than worth the price […]
Posted inGuides
Benevolent Giants Invade Region; Thousands Applaud
When the heat cranks up, the sightings start. A white, kind-eyed crane with tribal markings–but two stories tall and with a wingspan well over 50 feet. Magenta vaudevillians with noses between 1 and 2 feet in diameter. Immense, elliptical rain gods; smiling, dancing, dressed in batiked, multicolored robes. It can only mean one of two […]
Posted inArt
Road shows?
The various backers were gambling on the proposition that nature isn’t the only thing that abhors a vacuum–audiences do as well. So in 2005, they launched a couple of major festivals to shake up the summertime status quo. First came Stoneleaf, the North Carolina Theatre Conference’s ambitious 10-day Asheville invitational featuring companies from across the […]
Posted inArt
Last-minute wrinkles in a grand design?
It’s intended to catch the eye: that massive pane of glass, perfectly centered in the square white wall at back of Matthew Adelson’s austere set for Miss Julie. Beneath its surface, in a shallow, recessed chamber illuminated as if by fluorescent light, three white ramps hang at different heights from top to bottom, veering downward […]
Posted inArt
Severe weather advisory
As Robbie Robertson might say, take a picture of this: Choreographer Robin Harris, a tall, thin, somewhat gaunt-looking woman, is standing alone, a few feet from the end of a wooden pier. She faces us, looking landward, as we stand between her and the shore. Behind her we see a medium-sized inlet, perhaps a kilometer […]
