LET THEM BE HEARD Bare Theatre @ The ArtsCenter Through March 16 baretheatre.org In 1860, about 331,000 enslaved African-Americans made up a third of North Carolina’s population. Only 176 of them were still around in the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration toured the state to interview people with firsthand memories of life during slavery. […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inTheater
Jazz Age japes in The Wild Party
THE WILD PARTY North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre Through March 23 nract.org Joseph Moncure March’s book-length Jazz Age poem, The Wild Party, more than lives up to its wanton title. Published in 1928 and immediately banned in Boston, it’s a staccato tale of orgiastic sex, drugs, drink and murderous jealousy among the scuzzy showbiz […]
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Science and its discontents
LOVE ALONE Playmakers Rep Through March 16 Ancient Greek culture needed an entity devoted entirely to justice: a group that was implacable, unsleeping and single-minded in pursuit of oath-breakers and those who shed familial blood. Known by the Greeks as the Erinyes, the Romans called them the Furies. We’ve all spent time with them. After […]
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An adaptation of Plato in Durham
REPUBLIC Hoi Polloi/Duke Performances @ Manbites Dog Theater; Through March 1 What would the Greek philosopher Plato have made of THE REPUBLIC, a stage adaptation that Hoi Polloi is presenting now at Manbites Dog Theater? Plato wouldn’t have simply panned it, he would have banished the lot of them from his ideal city-state. But director […]
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Old time music in Sanford
SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN @ Temple Theatre through March 9 Pastor Oglethorpe (Matt Scott) walks something of a narrow bridge when he hosts a six-piece gospel band in SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN, one Saturday night in 1938. In this Appalachian church, where electric lights have only recently been installed, there’s some grumbling in the amen […]
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Mormon at DPAC
The Book of Mormon DPAC Through Feb. 23 It’s scary to think that the same impulse animates empire, progressivism, the Great Awakenings of Protestantism and (egad!) even certain forms of theater criticism. The common impulse is the notion that, having supposedly perfected a particular ideology, its inventors then need to impose it upon the universe. […]
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The Lion in Winter at Theatre in the Park
THE LION IN WINTER 1/2 Theatre in the Park Through March 2 It’s an understandable pity that we seldom see The Lion In Winter on area stages. After witnessing the 2005 production at Theatre in the Park with local landmarks Ira David Wood III and Lynda Clark in the leads as Henry II and Eleanor […]
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Caroline, or Change at Raleigh Little Theater
Tony Kushner’s 2004 musical, CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, is a domestic drama that speaks to the social, economic and racial strife in the deep South during the winter of 1963. It’s also an innovative and curiousif not always successfulhybrid of dramatic and musical forms. His uneven text mixes a profound emotional alienation that separates all of […]
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The Maids at Common Ground
The Maids Common Ground Small Series @ Common Ground TheatreThrough Feb. 15 Jean Genet’s dark classic, The Maids, is a twisted, psychosexual critique of classand a perversely perfect accompaniment, in its way, for the current conversation on increasing economic disparity in the United States. Genet based his drama on the exploits of Lea and Christine […]
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Festen at Little Green Pig
Celebration (Festen) Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern @ The Shadowbox Through Feb. 22 An extended family has gathered at a venerable country lodge to celebrate the 60th birthday of Helge, its most accomplished elder. Dinner and drinks have been served, and a reflective, mellow mood has been established. Then his eldest son, Christian, rises, makes […]
