RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE Thursday, Jun. 28–Saturday, Jun. 30, various times, $12–$43 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham www.americandancefestival.org When the great intersectional feminist writer Audre Lorde asked a question, you wanted to answer, but Ronald K. Brown didn’t have one yet. “She’d always ask her audiences, ‘Are you doing your work,’” the choreographer says. “And I was […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inTheater
Theater Review: Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s Songs Can’t Quite Shine Through a Patchy Production of Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening★★½ Through Sunday, June 17 North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre, Raleigh Spring Awakening, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s triple Tony-winning 2007 musical, is set in Germany a century ago, when public education about contraception was criminalized. Generations of teenage boys and girls, like the ones depicted in the musical, learned by trial and […]
Posted inCulture
Theater Review: Not Every Forty-Year-Old Thriller Still Elicits Gasps Like Deathtrap
Deathtrap★★★★ Through Sunday, June 10 NCSU’s Titmus Theatre, Raleigh To anyone considering a relationship with a wordsmith, a word of warning, from experience: Writers don’t fight—at least, not in any conventional sense. Instead, they just … rewrite. I went from romantic lead to episodic supporting character in one distractible young author’s life while I was […]
Posted inCulture
Theater Review: Some Theater Is Timeless, but Chamber Musical Daddy Long Legs Can’t Shake the Twentieth Century
Daddy Long Legs★★½ Through, Sunday May 27 Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh The chamber musical Daddy Long Legs tries so hard to join us in the twenty-first century. In the book by John Caird (the original director of the mega-musical Les Misérables) and the lyrics by Paul Gordon, two characters strain against the societal conventions of the […]
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Manbites Dog Uses Wakey, Wakey, Its Last Production, to Symbolize Its Own Demise. But the Show Also Speaks to the Ups and Downs of the Venerable Theater’s Life.
WAKEY, WAKEY Through Sunday, June 10 Manbites Dog Theater, Durham www.manbitesdogtheater.org I’d love nothing more than to give Manbites Dog Theater a critical victory lap for Wakey, Wakey, its final show before morphing into an arts-supporting (but no longer producing) entity. No words here could diminish the reputation artistic director Jeff Storer and managing director […]
Posted inCulture
Theatre Raleigh Opens Its Summer Season with the Musical Daddy Long Legs
Through Sunday, May 27 Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh Various times, $33-$35, www.theatreraleigh.com Here’s to the Anonymous Benefactor, that chestnut from Romantic and gothic potboilers of yore. Over the years, Abel Magwitch, John Beresford Tipton, and even Charles Montgomery Burns (on two very special occasions) have all partaken of the philanthropy that dares not speak its name. […]
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Theater Review: Francesca Ferrari Captures a Rock Icon’s Reckless Conviction in A Night with Janis Joplin
A Night with Janis Joplin ★★★★Through Sunday, May 20 Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh It’s the matter-of-fact delivery that makes the line so devastating. “People like their blues singers miserable,” Janis Joplin says. “People like their blues singers to die.” Boom. All the light and air go out of the room as designer Ryan O’Gara silhouettes […]
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Dry Powder, Sonorous Road’s First Repertory Production, Explores the Explosive Relationships Among the Top Officers at a Private-Equity Firm
Through Sunday, May 27 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh www.sonorousroad.com Television and film keep reminding us that the rich are not like you and me. There’s hardly any need to think back to the grisly after-hours proclivities of Wall Street monster Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Contemplating Taylor Mason’s thousand-yard stare on Showtime’s Billions will suffice. […]
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Little Green Pig Wants to Make All of Its Shows Next Season Free with the Aid of More Privileged Sectors of the Community
At a time when it seems like the price of everything is going up, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern is cutting its ticket prices this fall. To zero. Durham’s longtime theatrical mavericks typically charge $15–$20 for a show, but they want to remove that economic barrier while still being able to pay artists for their […]
Posted inCulture
Theater Review: NRACT’s Peter and the Starcatcher Has the Line Item Often Left Out of Production Budgets: Imagination
Peter and the Starcatcher★★★★ Through Sunday, May 6 North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre, Raleigh Sometimes the cheapest theatrical effects have the greatest charm. I remember how an overhead projector, a cake of shoe polish, and a stick once replaced the digital projector and graphics software we couldn’t get for a college production. Voila! Magic […]