Past Reviews

February 18, 2011
Taking the Last Train at Triad Stage
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

The challenge in a minimalist play is to give a feeling of richness and depth, even though there might be few characters and relatively little scenic or costume design. To stage such a production takes faith in cast, crew and audience, and Preston Lane takes that leap once again in The Sunset Limited, a one-act, one-scene play by Cormac McCarthy, and the fourth show in Triad Stage' s 10th season.
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December 16, 2010
Laugh away the holiday havoc in Triad Stage’s The Santaland Diaries
Theater Review by Lenise Willis
YES! Weekly

Host of “Dirty Jobs” Mike Rowe entertains us as he takes on some of the world’s filthiest, most unthinkable jobs. And although being an elf in Macy’s Santaland doesn’t require a roll in the dirt, it certainly takes the title of most humiliating job. Just like Rowe, David Sedaris allows us to peek into an entirely different “career,” while letting us laugh at the narrow job market and all the shameful jobs that we too may have taken in desperation.
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December 3, 2010
For the First of Several Times, A 'Caroling We Shall Go
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

Ah, A Christmas Carol. Perhaps no performance is more closely associated with the season than this. Thus, welcoming another voice to the chorus almost seems redundant. Unless it's a production of Triad Stage, newly christened as one of the top ten new theatres in the country. Add, on top of that, award-winning director Preston Lane's confession that this is his all-time favorite story – in his words, "a central myth in the Western world."
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October 22, 2010
Educating Rita Wows Bibliophiles and Biblio-phobes Alike
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

Intellectual awakening, much like a little knowledge, can be a dangerous thing. It can interfere with politics, social mores, and, especially where beautiful young women are concerned, personal relationships. Educating Rita, first staged in 1980, explores this topic in a comedy with tragic undertones. Triad Stage brings one of the motherland’s most successful modern works to its stage at a moment when the theatre company itself is reaching full bloom.
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September 25, 2010
An amazing fusion of theater, film and video: Triad Stage's The Glass Menagerie
Theater Review by Byron Woods
Independent Weekly

Here’s a question for long-time theater buffs: What if Tom Wingfield, Tennessee Williams’ pseudonymous narrator in The Glass Menagerie, had gone on to be a filmmaker instead of a writer—one whose ghostly, black and white footage from his memories keeps shifting between a profound sense of intimacy and a much cooler reserve?
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September 15, 2010
"Glass Menagerie" an Homage to Williams from Triad Stage's Preston Lane
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

Staging a masterpiece work comes with a lot of pressure; thus, director Preston Lane's admitted hesitancy in bringing to Triad Stage The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the first performance in Triad Stage's 10th anniversary season. That pressure goes double when you learn that Lane unabashedly calls Williams his inspiration; indeed, Williams is something of the muse for this marvelous Southern regional theatre.
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September 14, 2010
Triad Stage Puts a New Spin on “The Glass Menagerie”
Theater Review by Susie Potter
Triangle Arts and Entertainment

The Tennessee Williams classic, The Glass Menagerie, is a play that has been done to death. However, the Triad Stage production brings it to a whole new glittering life. This sensational production, which opened on Sunday, Sept. 5th, twists and warps the classic in a truly amazing way.
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September 14, 2010
Triad Stage presents "The Glass Menagerie" unlike any other
Theater Review by Lenise Willis
The Jamestown News

Triad Stage kicked off its 10th season on September 10 with an unforgettable opening night performance of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. The 1944 play lives in a world of memory - making both its content and style a complex and daunting play to produce. However, artistic director Preston Lane rose to the challenge, and presented a play straying from popular realistic portrayals and truly paying homage to the playwright's original vision.
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June 11, 2010
Triad Stage's World Premiere of Providence Gap Is One Musical, Mystical, Miraculous Play
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

There are spirits in this place. The place is the Pyrle Theater in downtown Greensboro. The spirits are part of Triad Stage’s newest production, the world premiere of Providence Gap. They drift down a mountain hollow, rustle the treetops, and rush like a brook from scene to scene. Of course, these spirits are all actors — aren’t they? Such is the mysteriousness of Providence Gap: a dream state from which you don’t want to be stirred, a story that encompasses many stories, lives, and emotions, collected into one musical, mystical, miraculous play.
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April 28, 2010
Triad Performance in Review: Ethel Waters
Theater Review by Suzana McCalley
The Community Arts Café

Ethel Waters – a legend that many of us do not even know about. If pressed we can recall her strong and vulnerable unique rendition of “His Eye is On The Sparrow”, but unless you see “Ethel Waters” at Triad Stage (April 11 – May 2, 2010), I am convinced you will not get the full version of her miraculous story. Not only was Ethel Waters an incredible singer, but she also happened to be black, poor and a woman in a time when it was unacceptable to be any of those things. This play is particularly important not only as an incredible work of art, but as a biography, and a striking historical account.
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April 18, 2010
Ethel Waters: His Eye is on the Sparrow
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

For millions who watched the Billy Graham Crusades, the name Ethel Waters is familiar as one of Graham’s most faithful comrades, a woman so close to Graham that she called him her son. “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” sung in her throaty contralto, became the African-American singer’s theme and as much defined her as did George Beverly Shea’s “How Great Thou Art.” Her beatific smile and powerful stage presence established her as a woman who was close to God.
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February 23, 2010
Recalling Around the World in 80 Days
Theater Review by Perry Tannenbaum
Creative Loafing Charlotte

Two of my favorite French-speaking literary characters, Hercule Poirot and Phileas Fogg, have similar personalities, cool and precise to a fault, yet surprisingly quick-witted and quick-acting in a crisis. We can have our fill of Poirot, who appears in no less than 33 Agatha Christie novels, but Fogg (an Englishman who only "spoke" French in the original text) was brought to life once by Jules Verne in 1872. His epic adventures in Around the World in 80 Days are so vast that, after the humongous Hollywood version of 1958, Fogg has largely evaporated from popular culture.
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February 14, 2010
Preston Lane Takes Triad Stage Patrons on a Remarkable Trip Around the World in 80 Days
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

What could be more staid than the Victorian stage? Heavily draped curtains, overdone fringe, portraits of pompous dignitaries, painstakingly painted backdrops. Enter Preston Lane. Thanks to Triad Stage’s co-founder and artistic director, chaos erupts within this stuffy Victorian setting, and the theater’s audiences are whisked away on a rollicking whirlwind tour: Around the World in 80 Days, adapted from the 19th century Jules Verne adventure novel by Mark Brown.
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December 4, 2009
Triad Stage’s Beautiful Star Tells an Appalachian Nativity Story
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

For many years, the little country church I grew up in had a Christmas Eve play, and it was the highlight of the year. I can look back and mark my growth through the parts I played, and watching Triad Stage’s Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity was like revisiting those years.
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November 25, 2009
Triad Stage’s SantaLand Diaries Offers Holiday Satire at Its Finest
Theater Review by Keith Barber
YES! Weekly

Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, railed against the commercialization of Christmas in the TV animated holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Schulz’s method of delivering his message came in the form of a sweet, heartwarming story about Charlie Brown’s search for the true meaning of Christmas. David Sedaris took a slightly different approach with his 1992 NPR radio essay, SantaLand Diaries. If A Charlie Brown Christmas is the G-rated version of holiday satire, SantaLand Diaries definitely merits an R.
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October 28, 2009
Triad Stage’s Oleanna Does Justice to Mamet's Vision
Theater Review by Keith Barber
YES! Weekly

The tile-covered walls deep inside Triad Stage reverberated with the voices of men who had been unnerved by what they had just witnessed. Opening night of David Mamet’s Oleanna sparked a vigorous postmortem in the men’s room. “That’s why you always have a third person in the room!” one gentleman exclaimed. Nearly everyone inside the lavatory either nodded or voiced their agreement.
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October 25, 2009
Triad Stage’s Oleanna Is an Eyebrow-Raising He Said, She Said
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

A theater, like a symphony, needs to take on intellectually challenging projects, as much for its audiences as itself, if it exists truly for the edification of the community. Triad Stage’s latest production, Oleanna, written by David Mamet, is one of those productions.
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September 11, 2009
Triad Stage Kicks off New Season with Picnic
Theater Review by Christine McCarthy
The Community Arts Café

Triad Stage has opened their “Season Together” with a winner! Their production of William Inge’s “Picnic” was energetic and moving, comedic and heartbreaking, much like the human condition.
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September 11, 2009
Triad Stage’s Picnic Is a Superb Rendition of a Theater Classic
Theater Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

Staging a period production is always a challenge: modernizing it inflicts change, and audiences don’t always like change; keeping the integrity of the era in which it was written runs the risk of seeming old-fashioned and stilted. Triad Stage’s Picnic manages to overcome both challenges: while keeping the feel and face of the 1950s, when William Inge wrote the play, Triad Stage artistic director Preston Lane has made the show as fresh and titillating as a work wet off the press.
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June 14, 2009
Triad Stage’s Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite Is a Riotous Blast from the Past
Theatre Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

Any way you translate it, Triad Stage’s Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite is a riotous blast from the past. Who’d have thought a 300-year-old play, a French one at that, could feel so fresh and sharp?
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May 12, 2009
Trailer trash in The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead
Theatre Review by Perry Tannenbaum
Creative Loafing

Up in Greensboro, you also have just a few more days to catch the regional premiere of Robert Hewitt's The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead at Triad Stage. It's a one-woman show starring Kate Goehring -- and a curious assortment of wigs and hats as she portrays five women, a man and a boy.
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May 3, 2009
The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead at Triad Stage Takes Wing in the Second Act
Theatre Review by Lynn Jessup
Classical Voice of North Carolina

The title The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead, aptly describes the three main characters in Triad Stage’s current production of Australian playwright Robert Hewett’s 2004 one-woman show.
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November 26, 2008
A dispatch from Santaland on stage
Theatre Review by Keith Barber
YES! Weekly

Who among us hasn’t felt at some point in our lives just a little bit cynical about the holiday season? Even Charlie Brown railed against the commercialism of Christmas in Charles Schulz’s animated masterwork, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
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October 31, 2008
Review of Triad Stage’s newest play, 'Bell, Book and Candle'
Theatre Review by Joe Scott
Greensboro News & Record

In his note for Triad Stage’s newest play, “Bell, Book and Candle,” director John Feltch points out that this story about a community of witches and warlocks hiding in plain sight is an apt metaphor for the gay community circa 1950.
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September 13, 2008
Actors, setting excel in "Iguana"
Theatre Review by Joe Scott
Greensboro News & Record

With "The Night of the Iguana," director Preston Lane and his team at Triad Stage put me in a rare predicament. They put me in the position of having to ask myself which part is better about their play, the acting or the show's production values.
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June 16, 2008
“Blackbeard” unleashes terror at Triad Stage
Theatre Review by Brian Rose
Burlington Times-News

Triad Stage is calling “Bloody Blackbeard” one of its biggest productions ever, and after seeing the play, it’s hard to argue with that assessment.
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June 14, 2008
Ahoy: “Blackbeard” Serves Up Pageantry
Theatre review by Mary Martin-Niepold
Winston-Salem Journal

He terrifies those around him and loves drawing blood as much as stealing treasure and conquering women. He is Blackbeard, the stuff of pirate legend, and the star of Triad Stage’s most recent production, Bloody Blackbeard, which opened Thursday night in Greensboro.
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