Prairie hometown companions 

Nurtured by the Charlotte Folk Society, the funky, voluble, old-timey Carolina Chocolate Drops have evolved at warp speed since they were hastily put together for the Black Banjo Gathering up at App State three years ago -- from obscure curiosity to international phenomenon. They've returned from a tour of The Netherlands, Ireland, England, Scotland, France and Belgium with a four-performance rendezvous scheduled down in Charleston at Spoleto Festival USA, June 4-5. Along the way from Boone to Spoleto, they've stopped by and set spell with Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion while untapping a long forgotten wellspring of Black string-band music.

You can hear all about the trio's Charlotte connections the next time they play in town. Nearly selling out the auditorium at Northwest School of the Arts on the same night our beloved Tar Heels were playing in the Final Four, the Drops obviously have a strong following here that cries out enthusiastically for future concerts.

That enthusiasm spilled out jubilantly into the aisles last Saturday night with spontaneous dancing by young and old. Consider it justified. Each member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops is a relaxed raconteur who can readily connect with an audience. Each also has serious vocal and multi-instrumentalist chops.

Fiddlers Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson both double on the banjo, originally an African-American instrument according to their personable intro. Both also triple on the humble apple cider jug, illustrating the penchant of the enslaved ancestors to convert anything at hand to music. Giddens unwrapped an African akonting and accompanied herself on a brief chant from Gambia, where she received the instrument. Robinson, on the other hand, unsheathed an autoharp.

Wearing a porkpie hat, suspenders, beard du jour and an infectious wide grin, songster Dom Flemmons may best be described as a one-man orchestra with an unabashed minstrel flair. Mostly, he played steel guitar, but Flemmons is an itchy, restless soul. Jug, Pan pipes, wood sticks, hand slaps and various drums -- played with both sticks and brushes -- are all in his arsenal.

Toss in a couple of kazoos, and I think the wide Chocolate instrumental palette is fairly well covered. The group's repertoire, judging from the 20 songs that interrupted their patter, is equally wide-ranging. At one end of the spectrum, you would find tunes recorded by the great soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, "Viper Man" and "Salty Dog." At the other end, there was that import from Africa and an unexpected exhumation of "Old Rattler" from the late, lamented Hee Haw series. Pretty damn white, if you ask me.

Should you go to Charleston and catch up with the Drops at Spoleto, I'm fairly certain you'll be rewarded with a live performance of "Salty Dog." That's because Giddens discards her fiddle, gets up from her chair, and dances the Charleston as her band-mates continue to wail. Take a blow after that workout? Naw, she takes a kazoo.

SUE AND I also made a pilgrimage to Davidson College, a North Carolina school capable of giving the Kansas Jayhawks a game. There I was able to tick a biggie off my lifetime To-Do List by seeing the legendary, rarely-produced Waiting for Lefty at the Duke Family Performance Hall.

If you hadn't read up on Clifford Odets' notorious agitprop script before taking your seat, you'd probably wonder why this gripping pro-labor rabble-rouser so rarely gets an airing. Theater students know the score: Aside from Odets' blatant Commie leanings -- remember, this was thrown in the teeth of the FDR administration in 1935! -- it takes a large cast and a generous costume budget that yields less than an hour of drama. Only one production of Lefty has ever been performed on or off-Broadway in the cultural heart of FDR's home state.

Davidson's Theatre Department put on a full-court press in fleshing out Odets' script. Designer Joe Gardner decked out the hall in workers-of-the-world styled union banners and spread the already ample playing space at the Duke into the audience courtyard. You had to walk by a dozing derelict to get to your seat as director Sharon Green deployed her cast upstairs and downstairs, further recreating the desperations of Depression Era. A makeshift band, fronted by Graham Smith on guitar and Chris Marsicano on vocals and washboard, huddled over the fire of a converted oil drum to keep warm.

They infused the pre-show and the actual production with labor songs, stretching the playing time just past the hour mark. Other singers -- and actors -- were on mics at the rear of the hall and up in the balcony, adding to the atmosphere of a union hall meeting.

As the economy continues to skid, Lefty has regained a currency that was largely in eclipse during the dotcom boom. Not merely a screed against tight-fisted industrialists who exploited and underpaid their employees, Lefty was a frontal assault on union racketeers who soaked their membership financially while stifling their urges to mobilize and go on strike.

Yes, there are dated aspects, chiefly the sweethearts who are relegated to humble housekeeping chores in the script (Suzanne Lenz as the starving wife and Lucy Flournoy as the patient girlfriend). Green muted -- or you might say cheerfully underscored -- these quaint gender roles by assigning a few of the men's roles to women, including an out-of-work actor (Ellen Goodson) and a sympathetic, but weak-willed hospital head (Ananta Bangdiwala).

The true arc of Odets' persuasion, over a span of six pointed scenes, is an accretion of hardship, injustice, and suffering that convinces six honest working Joes, from a couple of cabbies (Josh Carson and Zack Byrd) up to a top chem lab assistant (Steve Foglia) and a Jewish surgeon (Mario Silva), to mobilize against the bosses.

Within the union, this was cigar-smoking Harry Fatt (Chris Moore) and his silent Henchman (Rich Torrence). Out in America, we found Fayette (Dave McClay), an evil industrialist bent on developing a new poison gas, and a hardnosed theater producer (Moore again). Back in the union hall for the finale, we discover that Lefty has been shot and killed in a nearby alley. This is the last straw for one-eyed Agate (McClay again), who's in the middle of his speech when the news breaks. He calls on every able union member in the hall -- and across America -- to strike, strike, STRIKE!!

Everybody in the cast, and a few of us pinkos in the audience, joined the chant. While a couple of the gender crossings did look a bit dubious, there wasn't a weak performance to be seen, and Donna Conrad's costumes were as superb as the rest of this effort. Another Davidson Wildcat victory.

I'M NOT ALTOGETHER sure whether or not Robert Dubac's previous visit to Charlotte with The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? belongs to another century. Both the Web and my PDA draw blanks on the first coming. But it was clear that I needed a refresher when that show plus The Male Intellect: The 2nd Coming ran at Booth Playhouse for a two-week engagement.

While I dimly recall liking Oxymoron? better than I expected to, I recalled nothing specific from that performance whatsoever. That was conclusively demonstrated when, prefacing his brief talkback with the audience after 2nd Coming, Dubac revealed -- to me, anyway ± that Act 1 had been largely a rehash of the original Male Intellect. Nothing had rung a bell, even the hokey blackboard bits.

So although I wasn't shortchanged as much as customers who expected 2nd Coming to be thoroughly new and fresh, I wasn't greatly impressed, either. I can't say whether too many stand-up comics have already mined the same Mars-Venus turf since Dubac's last appearance, but Act 1 -- the "Finding Balance" part of the program -- struck me as horribly hackneyed stuff, gussied up with the chalktalk gimmick and an assortment of goofball characters whose patter often fell flat. I'll give a tentative thumbs-up to Professor Phillip Pomeroy and a hearty thumbs-down to the redneck Colonel.

Ditto for such shopworn Neanderthal bullshit as no man can watch TV without a remote in his hand or sit idly in the passenger seat of a car -- and that all men punctuate their argumentative points with a rooster thrust of their heads. Done that lately, dude? Women who attended could catalog the inaccuracies accorded to their gender, so let me move ahead.

The crotch-grab, warning the audience that the F-word was coming during Act 2 -- now there was a welcome touch of class. Actually, I did enjoy Dubac more after intermission, but let's face it. In the process of entering "The Door of Truth," Dubac totally abandoned his overarching subject, the male intellect.

Maybe by the time Dubac returns again, say in 2018, he will have figured out what Act 2 of 2nd Coming is all about and turned it into a complete show instead of a bungled mishmash.