Center Stage
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Theatre Charlotte Brings Thespians to the Movies with ‘The Flick’
When was the last time you saw a play performed in a movie theater? And did it take place among the cinema’s seats? If you answered those two questions with “never” and “no … because never,” you’re not alone. Theatre Charlotte’s Queen City premiere of The Flick, which runs from…
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Blood, Fire and Hebrew in ‘Prince of Egypt’ at Matthews Playhouse
In synagogues around the world where the Five Books of Moses are read in the traditional triennial cycle on the Sabbath, the 21 verses that tell the story of Moses’ birth through his marriage — the basis for Act 1 of Stephen Schwartz and Philip LaZebnik’s The Prince of Egypt…
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‘Scrooge in Rouge’ Nicely Rewards the Naughty
Up in Cornelius, Bob Cratchit still can’t afford new clothes for Tiny Tim and his kiddies as the holiday season approaches. But Ebenezer Scrooge’s downtrodden clerk can take comfort in knowing that the local butcher has been suffering even more. As he reports to his goodwife Martha, the butcher accidentally…
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‘Eureka Day’ and ‘Vanya…’ Disagree Agreeably in Separate Productions
Although conflict and chaos onstage oftentimes shock and alarm us, they can also be the springboards to comedy and satire. On balance, that is likely how you will experience the two new productions that opened last weekend: one at The Arts Factory on the Johnson C. Smith University campus and…
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Stormy Daniels Tells Her Side During Duckworth’s Show
Former adult film star and memoirist Stormy Daniels, a tireless thorn in the side of President Donald Trump, wrapped up her tour in Charlotte on Sunday night at The Comedy Club at Duckworth’s in Uptown with a mix of stand-up comedy, sensational storytelling and a short Q&A session. Daniels, who…
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Theatre Charlotte’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ Is a Clue-ful Poirot Treat
We can thank the Brits for the notion that passenger trains should run with absolute timeliness and precision. Now that Ken Ludwig’s meticulous adaptation has opened at the Queens Road Barn, we can also thank Agatha Christie, Britain’s most avidly read mystery writer, for Murder on the Orient Express. Layer…
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‘Laugh ‘Til You Die’ Is a Sketchy Spooktacular
A vampire visits a comely maiden dressed bewitchingly in black for Halloween. A werewolf goes to a special summer camp for monsters. A strange woman with a cloven head conspires with a mouse to murder an angel. These are among the seasonal dainties served up by Concord-based Post Mortem Players…
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‘Raisin in the Sun’ Remains an Aspirational Reminder
Did somebody just say something about FREE SPEECH?! Yeah, about a billion times per second if you’re tracking social media, college campuses, nation’s capitals, and late-night TV. Still no theatre critic we know would dare suggest in today’s torrid media climate that the subject generates too much heat and too…
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Vox Populi Deafeningly Lauds ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at The Barn
Sunny, frolicsome, dark and bizarre; it’s tough to say whether the best landing spot for Little Shop of Horrors is during the spring, that fragrant time of flowering hope and romance, or the fall, that decaying season of colorful rot and the macabre. All of the Metrolina theatre companies and…
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Charlotte’s Off-Broadway Presents Three Acts in One With ‘Meet & Greet’
Auditions are a kind of interview, and interviews are a kind of audition. You enter, drop a résumé on somebody’s desk, and minutes or hours later, you exit elated or deflated. Instant drama. Singularly human. A paradigm of life. At the VAPA Center, auditions and interviews are the entire evening…
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‘Electricidad’ Electra-fies at the Arts Factory
Maybe by now we’re numbed to the truth. You know how it is: 30 dead, 57,000 acres burned, 18,000 homes and buildings burned to the ground, and 200,000 people evacuated. Not enough problems already in California? Let’s call in masked men from ICE and the National Guard! The upheavals out…
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Upsized ‘Immediate Family’ Has the Buzz, Needs More Heat
Anyone who saw the fine Theatre Charlotte production of Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly this past spring can be forgiven if they feel a vague sense of déjà-vu this month at Booth Playhouse, where a revival of Paul Oakley Stovall’s Immediate Family has been launched with ultra upscale production values…
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‘Sex, Lies, and a Sycamore Tree’ Goes for the Jugular, Almost
Away somewhere in Sycamore Grove, a subdivision in the burbs of a certain fast-growing New South city in the Carolinas, there’s a diversity problem. For the McLeans and the McDaniels, lily-white next-door neighbors in playwright Elaine Alexander’s new comedy Sex, Lies, and a Sycamore Tree, there’s still too much of…
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New Immersive Theatre Production Tackles Mental Health and Misperceptions
The Reynolds are your typical 21st-century family. Natasha Reynolds, the matriarch, suffers from insomnia and anxiety related to her struggles with unemployment. Her daughter Kasey, a recent graduate of East Mecklenburg High School, feels intense pressure to be perfect going into college. Then there’s Auntie Torie, who’s fully burnt out…
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‘Side Show’ Honors Two Little-Known Personalities from Charlotte History
When Louella Parsons, the undisputed queen of Hollywood gossip, saw the Hilton Sisters’ first movie in 1932, she proclaimed: “For pure sensationalism, Freaks tops any picture yet produced. It’s more fantastic and grotesque than any shocker ever written.” At the height of their fame, Daisy and Violet Hilton could draw…
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The Delphic Oracle Sings The Go-Go’s in ‘Head Over Heels’
Heaven, Elysium, Utopia, Paradise and Arcadia are all perfect places in our minds, too placid and static to be considered as settings for comedy, thrilling action or drama. If you were in search of a perfect backdrop for the music of The Go-Go’s, you would more likely pick a city…
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