Bright Star
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NCSU Campus: Titmus Theatre 2241 E Dunn Ave - Thompson Hall, Raleigh, North Carolina
Photo courtesy of NC State University Theatre
Bright Star
It was a stinging but well-founded criticism of Edie Brickell and Steve Martin’s popular 2015 Broadway musical, set in the Appalachians in the 1920s and ‘40s: the production was “filled with well-meaning white folk and nary a non-Caucasian,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. At TheatreFest, N.C. State’s summertime repertory series, director Rachel Klem has nimbly flipped the presumed racial stage equation before, in a remarkable African-American 2014 stage adaptation of Clyde Edgerton’s novel, Walking Across Egypt. Noted actor Tina Morris-Anderson anchors this production as Alice Murphy, a hard-nosed Asheville literary editor, while newcomer Benaiah Barnes portrays young writer Billy Cane, just back from the war to end all wars with a story that will ultimately change both of their lives. This intrepid production promises to show another aspect of a story we thought we already knew. Diane Petteway and Ron Foreman share musical direction.
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