Tag: Burning Coal Theatre Company
Burning Coal Stages Tom Stoppard & Pink Floyd’s Challenging, Stimulating Darkside
In 2013, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s 1973 progressive rock album The Dark Side of the Moon, the BBC enlisted British playwright Tom Stoppard to adapt the work for radio. Pink Floyd gave Tom Stoppard, known for philosophical plays such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Arcadia, and the mind-bending 1985… Read More ›
Tom Stoppard & Pink Floyd’s Darkside Is Thought-Provoking Entertainment
“What’s the good?” asks Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard in his play, Darkside, inspired by the rock group Pink Floyd, who in turn may well have been offering the same huge question in their album The Dark Side of the Moon. In America, the idiom is more often “What’s the use?” Burning Coal… Read More ›
Ian L. Finley’s The Greeks Explores the Oedipus Trilogy on June 9-25 at CAM Raleigh
You might already know how Oedipus Rex is going to end. If you do not, but you know what the Freud’s “Oedipus complex” is, you can likely predict the play’s climactic realization. In the mid-Fifth Century BCE, Sophocles — arguably the most celebrated Greek tragedian in history — wrote a trilogy collectively known as the… Read More ›
Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg at Burning Coal Is an Intelligent Antidote to Love Story Cliché
A monolithic black wall. In silver, a slender, curving integral sign (∫) reaches from floor to ceiling. Its twin is on the floor of the playing space. The integral sign is a calculus operation that determines the characteristics of a variable as it changes over time. It features heavily in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which… Read More ›
Burning Coal’s Heisenberg Has Promise but Lacks Passion
Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg, onstage now at Burning Coal Theatre Company under the direction of Emily Ranii, is a sort of poor man’s Harold and Maude. It is a story of what happens when a woman in her 40s, Georgie Burns (Sarah Hankins), forcefully wheedles herself into the life of a much older man, Alex Priest… Read More ›
Emily Ranii’s Staging of Heisenberg at Burning Coal Couldn’t Be Better
Introduced first in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-76), the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. Or to put it another way, the more one focuses on an object, the less you know… Read More ›
Burning Coal’s American Premiere of David Edgar’s Written on the Heart Is Just Superb
Tonight through Dec. 18th, Burning Coal Theatre Company is staging the American premier production of Written on the Heart, British playwright David Edgar’s 2011 dramatization of the writing of the King James Version of The Bible. It is a reminder that during a period of almost a hundred years prior to that book’s composition, the… Read More ›
David Hare’s Skylight Is an Excellent Show with Great Performances, a Conversation Starter
The play Skylight by British playwright David Hare, running at Burning Coal Theatre Company through Oct. 23rd, does not carry the social and political import that Burning Coal artistic director Jerome Davis attributes to it in his program notes, in our opinion. Beautifully performed by Davis himself and Emily Barrett Rieder, with the support of… Read More ›
A Challenging and Captivating Script and Compelling Performances Make Burning Coal Theatre Company’s Skylight a Must-See Show
Skylight by British playwright David Hare, which is playing now through Oct. 23rd in Burning Coal Theatre Company’s Murphey School Auditorium in Raleigh, premiered in 1995 in the West End of London. In 1996, it moved to Broadway, where it received a Tony Award® nomination for Best Play. In 2014, both productions received a revival… Read More ›
The Fringe Dwellers Is an Exhilarating Combination of Movement, Aerial Artistry, Hula Hoops, and More
The program for Burning Coal Theatre Company and Cirque De Vol Studios’ joint production of The Fringe Dwellers: Time as a Symptom cites the Urban Dictionary in informing the audience: “Often it is said that Fringe Dwellers are higher spirits waiting for humanity to grow with them into something bigger.” Brian Cooper exemplifies this concept… Read More ›
Cirque de Vol Studios’ The Fringe Dwellers at Burning Coal Is Elegant But Verbose
The third production to launch as part of Burning Coal Theatre Company’s “Wait Til You See This” Summer 2016 second-stage series, Cirque de Vol Studios’ The Fringe Dwellers: Time as a Symptom is presented in repertory with Koffee Dance Company’s Insomnia and Exit Through Eden’s Émilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight. Cirque… Read More ›
Émilie Is an Amazing Play About an Amazing Woman: Informative, Entertaining, and Uplifting
Produced in the Murphey School Auditorium as part of Burning Coal Theatre Company’s “Wait Til You See This” second-stage series, Exit Through Eden’s presentation of Émilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight by Lauren Gunderson provides the total package. It is informative, entertaining, engaging, uplifting … and the list could go on! Director… Read More ›
12 Community Members Play the Title Role in Burning Coal’s Spoonface Steinberg
First heard 19 years ago on BBC 4, Spoonface Steinberg is a fictional one-hour monologue, written by Tony Award®-winning playwright Lee Hall, who is probably best known for penning Billy Elliot. It has undergone a couple of transitions since 1997, passing through TV, especially on YouTube, and is now a dramatic reading, which premieres in… Read More ›
Blue Sky Asks, Can Warfare Ever Be Fair?
In a first collaboration between CAM Raleigh and Burning Coal Theatre Company, the U.S. premiere of British playwright Clare Bayley’s Blue Sky opened Thursday night in the main exhibition hall of CAM Raleigh, on the first floor. Burning Coal artistic director Jerome Davis observes in his page in the program that “… [I]t would be… Read More ›
The Wiz at Burning Coal: Kazowie! What a Show!
A funny thing happened to us last weekend on our way to review The Wiz, Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown’s adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in Burning Coal Theatre Company’s Murphey School Auditorium, near the Historic Oakwood Section of Raleigh. Illness prevented us from going. Several nights later, we… Read More ›
Asylum at Burning Coal Theatre Combines Writhing, Sensuous, and Undulating Acrobatics with Dance
Asylum is an aerial show, the collaboration of Raleigh’s Burning Coal Theatre Company Only Child Aerial Theatre of Brooklyn, NY. Credit for the story is given to Kendall Rileigh and Nicki Miller, both of whom are also performers. (On a personal note, Chuck feels it necessary to state that having been locked in an institution… Read More ›
British Singer/Songwriter Callaghan Returns at 7 p.m. on Sept. 12th in Murphey School Auditorium
Drop-dead gorgeous 32-year-old British folk and alternative-country singer/songwriter Callaghan returns to Murphey School Auditorium in Raleigh, NC, for one performance only — at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 12th — as part of Burning Coal Theatre Company’s 2015 MusiCoal Summer Concert Series, showcasing what the Raleigh-based professional theater calls “new music that is exhilarating, fresh,… Read More ›
Burning Coal Theatre Company Announces Its 2015-16 Season!
Burning Coal Theatre Company of Raleigh, NC announces its 2015/2016 season of plays. In its 19th season, the theatre, housed in the historic Murphy School auditorium at 224 Polk Street, will host the Brooklyn based Only Child Aerial Theatre’s Production of Asylum created by Nicki Miller and Kendall Rileigh and directed by Nicki Miller (October… Read More ›
“Sunday in the Park with George” Makes a Good Impression (Get the Point?) at Burning Coal
Stephen Sondheim became discouraged with musical theater upon the failure of Merrily We Roll Along in 1981. He began his collaboration with James Lapine after seeing Lapine’s Twelve Dreams (1981), which rekindled Sondheim’s spirit. Burning Coal Theatre Company’s production of Sunday in the Park with George, which is now playing in Murphey School Auditorium, near… Read More ›
“Sunday in the Park with George” Shows Its Age, But Still Entertains
Sunday in the Park with George, onstage now at Burning Coal Theatre and directed by Jerome Davis, is a quirky little musical, one inspired by Seurat’s famed painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. In his script, author James Lapine imagines what Seurat’s life must have been like and who each… Read More ›
Burning Coal Theatre Company announces its 2014-15 Mainstage Season
It’s mainstage season includes the world premiere of David Edgar’s Iron Curtain Trilogy directed by Jerome Davis, three plays about the fall of communism in Europe presented to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall
“The Diary of Anne Frank” Has All the Tension, Heartache, and Joy Your Heart Can Take
We blithely assume that everyone knows the story of the events depicted in Burning Coal Theatre Company current production of The Diary of Anne Frank, playing April 10-13, 17-20, and 25-27 in Murphey School Auditorium, near the Historic Oakwood Section in downtown Raleigh, NC. Otto Frank’s family and their friends, the Van Daans, and another… Read More ›
“The Diary of Anne Frank” Keeps a Tight Grip on Viewers
Thanks to the prolific book, The Diary of a Young Girl, published in 1947, most are familiar with Anne Frank, the precocious teen who chronicled her two year experience in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Even those who haven’t read Anne’s words are likely to be familiar with her story, which has… Read More ›
“The Electric Baby” Is Bizarre But Intriguing
Lives and storylines intersect with dramatic results in Stefanie Zadravec’s “The Electric Baby,” onstage now at Burning Coal Theatre as part of its second stage series. The play takes an intensely close look at six intertwined lives. There’s Natalia (Lori Ingle Taylor), a Romanian immigrant who spends her days (and nights) tending to her desperately… Read More ›
“Kindertransport” Plays Emotional Hardball With Viewers
During the nine month period before the start of World War II, nearly 10,000 children residing in Nazi countries were sent to live in the United Kingdom as part of a rescue mission known as the Kindertransport. In her 1993 play, aptly named “Kindertransport,” Diane Samuels relates the fictional account of one such child—precocious Eva… Read More ›
Burning Coal’s “The Heretic” Is an Exhausting and Puzzling Play
Richard Bean’s “The Heretic,” in its American premiere at Burning Coal Theatre Company, is a puzzling and, unfortunately, not very enjoyable play. Though it starts off as promising, with its strong characters and its fearless exploration of even stronger topics—think the issues surrounding climate change and the screwed-up world of academia—it quickly dissolves into a… Read More ›
Burning Coal’s “Ruined” Offers a Dose of Harsh Reality
In a time when shows, such as “The Client List” and “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” glamorize prostitution and the objectification of women, Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined” is a much-needed dose of harsh reality. The play, set in war-ravaged Africa, takes a look at the lives of three young women who work in a… Read More ›
Burning Coal Will Bring British Singer/Songwriter Callaghan to Raleigh at 7 p.m. on March 24th
Burning Coal Theatre Company will bring drop-dead gorgeous 30-year-old British folk and alternative-country singer/songwriter Callaghan to Murphey School Auditorium for one performance only — at 7 p.m. on Sunday, March 24th, as part of the Raleigh, NC-based theater’s fourth annual spring and summer MusiCoal Series, showcasing what Burning Coal calls “new music that is exhilarating, fresh, and unlike anything you’ve heard before!”
“Nocturne” Paints a Painstakingly Vivid Picture of Grief
When viewers walk into Mortall Coile Theatre Company’s production of Nocturne, a one-man play written by Adam Rapp and part of Burning Coal Theatre Company’s “Wait ‘Til You See This Series, the set is the first thing that catches their attention. Beautifully designed by Jon Haas and director Dana Marks, the set features hundreds (possibly… Read More ›
Burning Coal Adds Another Laurel to Its Crown with an Uproarious Rendition of “As You Like It”
The ever-adventurous Burning Coal Theatre Company, whose “Henry V on Trapeze” was by far the best local production of 2011, works its theatrical magic once again with a high-spirited presentation of William Shakespeare’s early pastoral comedy “As You Like It,” performed with brio by a stellar seven-member cast, under the direction of Davidson College professor Mark Sutch. The inspired contributions of set designer Natalie Hart of Elon University, lighting designer Chris Popowich of Pittsburgh, costume designer Jane Stein of Virginia Tech University, and properties creator Elizabeth Newton of Raleigh also contribute to the merriment.