Lawrence Toppman

Fifty years ago, people regularly went to the movies to get out of the heat. Those of us without air conditioning would cough up a couple of bucks, almost regardless of what passed in front of our eyes, to relax for two hours with cool air moving over us.

Lawrence Toppman: As you enter Carolina Actors Studio Theatre to see 'The Edge of Our Bodies,' you pass beneath a mannequin.

Long ago, before playwright Glen Berger got sucked into the extravagant insanity of “Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark,” he created an extraordinary little piece about a lonely librarian and an overdue book.

But I can swear to you, as the 1967 spelling champion of Florence L. Walther School – later tragically defeated in the Burlington County (N.J.) contest – that “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” gets to the very heart of the matter.

We know from the title of “Monsieur Lazhar” that the main character is rising from the dead: not literally, like the biblical Lazarus, but psychologically. He’s an Algerian immigrant seeking political refuge in Montreal after the killing of his wife and children, and he takes a job at a school.

Tim Burton has always been a fan of the Frankenstein story, from his short “Frankenweenie” (which will be his next feature film) to the animated heroines of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Corpse Bride.” This obsession takes a different form in “Dark Shadows,” where he stitches together segments from half a dozen genres. His creation lurches from mood to mood, staggering forward exhaustedly, until it collapses.

“Loving you is not a choice. It’s who I am.”

Is the American Dream to find financial security, perfect love, personal freedom? Or is it, as 'Floyd Collins' suggests - especially in the intimate production at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre - to win fame?

When I was a child, a doctor told me to laugh hard whenever anything hurt. If I had to pop out a loose tooth, rip off a bandage or drain a blister, roaring with laughter would distract me from pain. Maybe Bruce Norris’ pediatrician gave him the same advice, because his Pulitzer-winning “Clybourne Park” functions exactly that way.

I’m still trying to figure out what I thought about the all-Tchaikovsky concert, where a large screen hung above the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra to show what musicians were doing.