ARTS Pick: Into the Woods

Broadway has a knack for re-telling classic children’s stories, and one of the early big ones was Into the Woods. Four County Players is mounting Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s multiple Tony Award-winning show in the continued celebration of its 40 seasons.

Good buzz: In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)

Onstage, a fine-featured woman removes her skirt, collapses her bustle, and adjusts the corset nipping her waist. Her hands are pale and flighty as she sits on the doctor’s bench and pulls a medical drape up to her chin. Diagnosed with hysteria, a Victorian umbrella term for ailments including headaches, light sensitivity, and predisposition to […]

ARTS Pick: Bent Theater Improv

Bent Theatre goes all the way—with a bit of “Saturday Night Live,” a dash of “Whose Line is It Anyway?,” a touch of “MadTV,” and plenty of other side-splitting schticks.

ARTS Pick: God’s Ear

The best new plays are always hard to categorize, and Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear is no exception. Staged by UVA’s drama department, it is a powerful and intentionally disjointed examination of deep loss and finding ways to cope.

ARTS Pick: Paula Poundstone

Catty lady If you can’t quite place Paula Poundstone, try imagining her with a red brick wall behind her while she dishes out a brilliantly composed cat joke. There’s also a pretty good chance you’ve heard her yucking it up as a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.” Poundstone holds the honor […]

ARTS Pick: The Winter’s Tale

Leaping nimbly from intense psychological anguish to giddy, fool-inspired revelry across a plot that covers over 16 years and two disparate countries, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale blows the game wide open with a complex examination of jealousy and regret on one hand, and farcical comedy resulting in a plethora of marriages on the other,