Üga Büga with Greenhead and Diseased Earth at the Southern 7/26

The best thing about Charlottesville’s Üga Büga is that it’s hard to describe. I’ve seen it called “Southern sludge beard metal” and “hog rock” (likely in reference to its debut, 2024’s Year of the Hog), but neither seems entirely fair. It’s sludge-ish, but not like those who plunder the slo-mo riffery of early Black Sabbath […]

Retracing and rethinking

I’m a sucker for a historical walking tour. Treading where our forebears trod to see current spaces through their historical context reshapes our understanding of places that we thought we knew. Such experiences enable us to learn, in greater detail, about people of the past whose lives were very different from our own. The Albemarle […]

‘Get Happy!’ at Ruth Caplin Theatre 7/24-7/27

In honor of “the world’s greatest entertainer,” Get Happy! is an exciting and engaging evening of songs from American icon Judy Garland. Conceptualized, produced, and performed by lauded cabaret artist and UVA alumna Jenna Pastuszek, this cleverly curated collection of Garland’s greatest hits and hidden gems features music from The Wizard of Oz, Easter Parade, […]

Jen Chapin Trio at Belmont Arts Collaborative 7/24

Jen Chapin Trio debuts a new two-set, cabaret-style performance featuring political insight and poetic storytelling in a musical arrangement made for the moment. Anything Goes and How Did We Get Here? weave historically informed, jazz-inspired queries and responses concerning our current and rapidly changing political environment around selections from Chapin’s critically acclaimed urban folk catalog. […]

‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Coriolanus’ at Live Arts 7/24-7/26

Live Arts offers up a teen show doubleheader of Mel Brooks’ musical Young Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s tragedy Coriolanus. Monstrous laughter ensues when Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the infamous Victor Frankenstein, inherits his family’s Transylvania estate and quickly takes up the mad sciences in Young Frankenstein. In Coriolanus, Rome is experiencing famine-induced unrest, which is disrupted […]

The Cville Band

The Cville Band continues its 103rd season with Summer at The Paramount. Featuring guest artists Robert Graham playing “Reflective Mood” and Michelle Younger (pictured) playing Julia Delaney’s “Reel and The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the show also spotlights the municipal band’s Assistant Director Burton Hable, who will perform new pieces and old favorites. An […]

J Roddy Walston and The Automatic Band

Fridays After Five rocks out with J Roddy Walston and The Automatic Band. This piano-playing chaos merchant specializes in ripping up stages with a blend of classic and Southern rock along with early metal, funk, and face-melting riffs rolling over psychedelia-infused jams. Bringing more than just volume and speed, the hard-charging outfit offers a high-energy […]

‘Mary Poppins’

Paramount On Screen presents the family-favorite Mary Poppins, starring the incomparable Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Set in Edwardian London in 1910, a magical and musical child-care provider swoops in to save the Banks family from boring days. A series of fantastical encounters with chalk-drawn penguins, choreographed chimney sweeps, and laughing men who float […]

A jazzed up ‘Winter’s Tale’ works wonders

American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse, Through August 2 As far as Shakespeare plays go, The Winter’s Tale is stuffed full of the tropes audiences are familiar with from the Bard’s more well-tread works: jealous rage aimed at assumed infidelity, disguised identities, forbidden love, and misuse of power. But in the reliably capable hands of the […]