More and more, I have the suspicion that "dysfunctional family" is redundant. The only "normal" families I know are the ones I don't know well.
Sometimes we look back to look forward. When we do, we look back through a tinted lens. This spirit of guarded nostalgia, caught between joyful reminiscence and bitter memory, frames Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness," at Live Arts now through Feb.
Imagine a time of madness, gin and jazz. "The Wild Party," running through Dec. 14 at Live Arts, can take you there -- just make sure your glass is full, your clothes sharp and your feet fast.
Before you learn anything else, you'd better learn Grandma's rules. No playing in the house. No feet on the sofa.
It's all in the execution, or so they say. David Auburn's "Proof," the most anticipated play in Heritage Repertory Theatre's summer season, can be thankful for that.
It's not quite round-the-clock theater, but it comes close. July means it's time again for the Summer Theatre Festival at Live Arts, a whirlwind saturation experience that makes it possible to see 13 performances in about a week.
Do six plays in seven weeks sound hectic to you? Heritage Repertory Theatre, the professional company-in-residence at the University's Drama Department during the summer months, helps keep theater alive in Charlottesville by adopting a repertory mode of production. With irregular, sporadic summer schedules, vacations interrupting things and with friends and family around for shorter chunks of time, many theaters adapt by turning to this model.
Pick the term that does not belong with the others: caves, Kentucky, overalls, fiddles, moonshine, musical theater.
To get in the mood for the sticky summer nights ahead, make your way down to Live Arts for Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," which runs through May 11.
Welcome to Berlin, where everyone is beautiful. Sit back and enjoy. The picture, of course, is more complicated than this in the Drama Department's Culbreth Theatre production of the Broadway musical "Cabaret." Director Jack Donahue leads a talented cast in this modern musical with a political bite, set in the nightscapes of pre-World War II Germany. "Cabaret" strikes a difficult balance between acting and singing.
