THE BLUEST EYE NCCU Theatre Through April 20 In the musical Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim reminds us that “Children will listen.” Novelist Toni Morrison agrees. In her harrowing novel THE BLUEST EYE, she reveals how good kids are at soaking up and channeling an environment of pettiness and prejudice. We’re struck by the innocence […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
Parade explores the malignant aspects of community
PARADE Hoof ‘n’ Horn Through April 20 In Georgia in 1915, the murder trial, conviction, and subsequent abduction and lynching of Jewish-American factory superintendent Leo Max Frank fomented widespread ethnic and racial hatreds. This would have profound, lasting effects on Southern politics and culture. After an exultant mob celebrated Frank’s public hanging, documenting it in […]
Posted inArt
Machinal
MACHINAL Duke Theater Studies @ Sheafer Theater Through April 13 At the start of MACHINAL, an ensemble of young actors appears to be parsing lines of code instead of reading lines. But not to worry: In director Jules Odendahl-James’ vision of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play, they’re merely placing the brutal lockstep of that era’s gender-based […]
Posted inArt
Murder and madness in Assassins
ASSASSINS PlayMakers Repertory Company Through April 20 With murder writ large in three new Triangle productions, we should note that it’s a red-letter month in the history of homicide, madness and a curious new form of polity. April 4 marked the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in Memphis, while next week we […]
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Visually stunning grotesquerie at Common Ground
Amadeus Leviathan Theatre Company @ Common Ground Theatre Through April 12 Over the last 20 years, terms like “minimalist” and “essentialized” often described the work of local independent theater companies. Economic constraints have mandated considerable ingenuityand often, cutsin everything from crowd scenes and casting to costumes and sets. Organizations that can afford them, such as […]
Posted inCulture
Theater review: a threadbare Lily at Temple Theatre
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily★★ Temple Theatre through Apr. 6templeshows.com All right, I’m convinced. There is an absolutely ripping yarn to be made from the convergence of the following characters. The first three are historical; the latter three, fictive: Lillie Langtry, d.b.a. “The Jersey Lily,” renowned Victorian actress (and paramour to […]
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Grounded is a taut and timely examination of the psychopathology of drone pilots
GROUNDED Through April 5 Manbites Dog Theater It sounds like a cross between the U.S. military’s sensory deprivation experiments in the 1950s and Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies in the following decade: Make a subject stare into a monochromatic video screen for 12 hours per day, seven days a week, while wearing a headset that filters […]
Posted inCulture
Patrick Torres appointed artistic director at Raleigh Little Theatre
Raleigh Little Theater has announced this morning the appointment of Patrick Torres as its new artistic director. Torres will be the theater’s 14th artistic director since its founding in 1936, and the first person of color chosen for that position. The selection comes on the heels of a national search, following the death of longtime […]
Posted inTheater
A new play about Vermeer and his forger
THE ART OF DECEPTION PlayGround Co-operative & Common Ground Theatre Through March 22 Over the past four years, the self-styled collective the Playground has nurtured a number of fledgling playwrights in the region: writers whose works have promise, but aren’t ready for prime time. That in itself is no criticism: Not many plays emerge fully […]
Posted inCulture
Elizabeth Streb: the INDY interview
STREB Extreme Action’s company name is truth in advertising: a group of seven superbly-trained athletes who propel themselves into harm’s way, repeatedly—against walls and floors, off of trampolines and multi-story trapeze-like platforms, into and out of close encounters with a spinning industrial I-beam as it careens across stage, and much, much more. In our Feb […]
