Opus PlayMakers Repertory Company Through Oct. 11 The university can be a dangerous place for art-makers, because its security blunts the risks of failure. Often art in the academy has lost its highs and lows. But first-rate artists do sometimes congregate in academic departmentsand occasionally, they thrive there long-term, making a lie of the bitter […]
Kate Dobbs Ariail
Bio: Kate Dobbs Ariail writes about the arts.
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Cirque’s not so dreamy Illuminations
Cirque Dreams Illuminations Durham Performing Arts Center Through Sept. 20 I’d been looking forward to transporting circus acts, but on Tuesday, Sept. 15, when Cirque Productions of Pompano Beach, Fla., premiered its new show, Cirque Dreams Illuminations, as the season-opener in the 2009-2010 SunTrust Broadway Series at the Durham Performing Arts Center, I was not […]
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Burning Coal Theatre’s Hair
Hair Burning Coal Theatre @ Meymandi Theatre at the Murphey School Through Sept. 27 Ever since we entered the actual Age of Aquarius in December 2007 (at least according to nonscientists known as astrologers), the 42-year-old Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, with its celebrated opening anthem, has been revived frequently, perhaps in order to […]
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Even Bolshoi Ballet can have an off night
Swan Lake The Bolshoi Ballet Carolina Performing Arts Memorial Hall, UNC Campus Closed June 14 The Bolshoi Ballet presented its version of the world’s most famous ballet, Swan Lake, to a packed house in UNC’s Memorial Hall on June 13, the first of two performances crowning Carolina Performing Arts’ achievement in luring the grand Russian […]
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Don’t miss the Bolshoi dancers in Don Quixote
Don Quixote Bolshoi Ballet Carolina Performing Arts Memorial Hall June 10-11 Carolina Performing Arts has achieved a dream so far beyond ordinary imagining that, even having experienced the reality, one can hardly believe it. The Bolshoi Ballet is performing in Memorial Hall! The fabled Russian company, source and defender of so much in classical ballet, […]
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both hands theatre’s the abundance project
the abundance project both hands theatre company @ Golden Belt Arts Through June 12 There is a wonderful repeating sequence in Fred Chappell’s I Am One of You Forever in which an older man is asked whether he’d like a little more food. No, thank you, he replies with satisfied courtesy, “I have a gracious […]
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The gift of The Color Purple
Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple Durham Performing Arts Center Through May 17 The prodigal catalytic character Shug Avery gets to utter the title line of Alice Walker’s 1983 Pulitzer-winning novel, the touring musical version of which is now appearing at Durham Performing Arts Center as Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple. The wild-living Shug […]
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Brush with stardom in Jimmy Dean
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean Ghost & Spice Productions @ Common Ground Theatre Through May 2 There are all kinds of transporting, eye-opening theater in the world. Drama may be nearly mute, or rich in language; delicate and oblique, or larger than life with overscaled passions; straightforward, or packed […]
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Legally Blonde The Musical is like the movie…
Legally Blonde The Musical Durham Performing Arts Center Through April 19 “You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” P.T. Barnum’s broad-brush aphorism came to mind during the first “scene” of the dumb and dumber touring version of Broadway show Legally Blonde. Coarse, coy, sentimental and packed with clichés, this production does […]
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PlayMakers Rep takes Jane Austen from page to stage
Pride and Prejudice PlayMakers Rep Through April 19 One thing you have to love about theater people is their nerve. Would you be willing to modify a text that is nearly sacred to legions of Jane Austen worshipers and premiere it opposite the Final Four and while Colin Firth, the actor who most perfectly embodied […]