Byron Woods

There is much that is monstrous. But nothing is more monstrous than Man. — Bertold Brecht When we’re denied our monsters, we become them. The famous Canadian and U.S. military sense-deprivation experiments of the 1950s and ’60s, determined that the mind denied all audio, visual and tactile stimulation created vivid and frightening hallucinations. More than […]

Need a quick, in-depth checkup on how your relationship with a spouse or significant other is really going? Take them to see Dinner with Friends – if you dare. Though Donald Margulies’ dramatic script rings with authenticity, and this pitch-perfect PlayMakers’ Repertory Company production resonates with memorable performances, prospective theater-goers should still be advised: Dinner […]

I hope you dance fans out there had a nice long holiday. Because one thing’s for certain: it’s all over now. At last count, seven (count ’em) different companies come calling between now and the end of the month. Even discounting the endless Riverdance at BTI Center, that still leaves a six-pack of challenging fare […]

You just know that Old Wicked Songs can’t be the easiest show to cast. I can see the job listing now: Wanted: two actors, one 60s, one 25. Both must be classically trained pianists, able to convince audiences that they belong on a concert stage. Older has Viennese accent and performs Schumann’s Dichterliebe during play. […]

It’s one of the first things you learn in criticism–all choices are taken as intentional. That strange blouse, the idiosyncratic set, those lights, the casting, all of it falls under Rule Number One: If you see it, they meant it. Generally, you can trust theater companies to tell you if they didn’t. Which is why […]

Best Original Script Howard L. Craft, The House of George, NC Central University “I want to go right up to God, look that cracker dead in his face and say, ‘What the hell did I ever do to you?’” George, a complex and irascible African-American barber, voiced even stronger opinions in Craft’s first full-length play, […]

(Productions listed in alphabetical order) Carolina Ballet: Light and DarkTimour Bourtasenkov stepped forward this year not only as a dancer but as a choreographer of note. The movements of his Light and Dark formed a near-Taoist, near-animist nature study, exploring the relationships between light, color and dark in a field filled with irises. Christopher Rudd […]

At first I thought it was just the desolation of the final scene. If the world doesn’t come to an end with two middle-aged drunks on one final bender in Juno and the Paycock, the house of Boyle, the play’s central family, most certainly does. The room’s been stripped to the walls. The lights have […]

It’s the kind of tale I live to tell: Those who’d already written off Durham’s Triangle Theatre Festival after an admittedly lackluster inaugural season stopped writing just a little too soon. For if the proof’s in the pudding (as they say this time of year), then proof’s aplenty in this Bull City Players production of […]