ARTS Pick: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Three actors, 37 plays and an hour and a half to perform The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Andy Davis, Jack Rakes and Kendall Stewart rip through plots and costumes at a blistering pace, navigating shortcuts with tactics such as turning Othello into a rap and replacing the comedies with an improv Mad Libs […]

Paige Naylor leads a journey of awareness

Sit down, find a comfortable position—lay down, if that’s more relaxing. Close your eyes. Can you find the quiet place in your mind where there are no thoughts, no words, no images? Can you remain in the quiet mind place by listening to all the sounds you can possibly hear, including the most distant sounds […]

Movie review: Marshall succeeds on multiple levels

A civil rights superhero movie? Why not? For a country so enamored with our national mythology, we are remarkably inconsistent when it comes to cinematic depictions of our historical figures. After all, many of our founding fathers owned slaves, and many more recent icons emerged at a time when personal shortcomings could not be as easily […]

Lisa Beane uses “Karma” to address atrocities

Nine years ago I reviewed an exhibition at the Fralin Art Museum featuring the work of William Christenberry. Included in the show was his “Klan Room Tableau,” a peculiar installation of dolls dressed in KKK robes. According to Christenberry, the highly personal work was his means of exposing and exorcising the hatred and violence of […]

ARTS Pick: Liz Carrnage

The laughs arrive via I-64 as Liz Carrnage hosts her funny mates from RVA for a night of clean comedy that’s adult in nature, but not explicit. The former Charlottesville resident returns with a lineup that includes Keith Marcell, Brandon Beswick, Richard Woody and Paige Campbell. Thursday, October 12. $5, 6pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris […]

Erin & The Wildfire releases first full-length album

While playing a 30-minute set at Lockn’ in 2014, Erin & The Wildfire guitarist Ryan Lipps broke a string on every guitar he brought, so to cover the lag in the “squeeze-in-as-much-you-can-set,” drummer Nick Quillen told a long, drawn-out joke. “It wasn’t exactly the best thing we’ve ever done, but it was certainly memorable,” Quillen […]

Emerging voices fill a DIY bill at the Jefferson

There’s no disputing that digital music and online platforms have radically changed how we listen to and discover music. The DIY scene has aced this technological inroad, benefiting from the access and control it gives to up-and-coming artists. Today’s unsigned musicians release their own music, book their own shows, eschew mainstream media and feel a […]

Live Arts weighs love and dysfunction in season opener

This week Live Arts opens its season by inviting the public into an intimate theater in the round to observe the interior lives of family and friends in Edward Albee’s 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, A Delicate Balance. Director Fran Smith says it is an eloquent work that “centers around family dysfunction.” The setting is Westchester […]

ARTS Pick: The Crucible

No one escapes suspicion in The Crucible when paranoia fuels charges of witchcraft, and Massachusetts Bay Colony citizens are pressured into false confessions. Arthur Miller’s award-winning play merges societal paranoia and the history of the Salem witch trials that began in 1692 and resulted in the execution of 20 people. Through October 29. $15, times […]

Movie review: Victoria & Abdul chooses gags over substance

The story of Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim—“the Munshi”—is one worth telling. Karim, a humble clerk in Agra, was invited to participate in a ceremony for the queen, which resulted in the initiation of a peculiar friendship that defied convention and stirred controversy among the Royal Court. All of the ingredients are there: class antagonism, […]