Sunday, September 8, 2024
By ALAN SMASON For the past several weeks, I’ve been promoting this weekend as a way for the local theatre community to give back to Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré, the historic theater …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:29PMThursday, July 25, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) It has taken nine years for the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans (TWTC) to tackle one of the biggest and most i…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:40PMFriday, July 19, 2024
By ROY BERKO Confession: I am not a big fan of juke box musicals, the now popular Broadway vehicle which is a genre of American musical theatre in which pre-written songs are woven, mostly…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:44AMTuesday, July 16, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) After several decades in development and through various iterations, Empire, the musical that tells the story of the constructio…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:30PMMonday, July 15, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The Public Theater has enjoyed a well deserved reputation as a proving grounds for works that have later found great fame on Bro…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:42AMMonday, July 1, 2024
By LOU HARRY Prior to a performance, most theaters share a short list of expected behaviors. Turn off those cell phones. Unwrap those candies. Note the exits. However, for Hamlet, staged at …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 09:39AMSunday, June 23, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) One of the marketing ploys for The Notebook: The Musical can be found at the merchandising kiosk downstairs at the Gerald Schoen…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:04PMTuesday, June 18, 2024
By ROY BERKO In 1985, “Back to the Future,” the feature film, opened. It starred Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. It quickly became a cult favorite and spun off two sequels ed…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:04AMMonday, June 17, 2024
The 77th Annual Tony Awards were held in New York City on Sunday, June 16, presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing. Despite snagging 13 Tony nominations – the most f…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:39PMMonday, June 10, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With the rapid rise of blatant antisemitism in the world today, there is probably no better time than now for the presentation o…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:32AMSunday, June 2, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) James Bartelle, a founding member of The NOLA Project, has written a number of original works for the troupe of young, innovativ…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:44AMFriday, May 24, 2024
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI – The Broadway Series at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts concludes its 2023-24 season with a bang. No, this is not a reference to the confetti-spewin…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:11AMSaturday, May 18, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) In what may be the greatest bit of casting for a national tour in decades, Rob McClure, the Tony-nominated actor brought his A g…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:13AMWednesday, May 1, 2024
The American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, sponsors of the Tony Awards for excellence on the Broadway stage, were announced on Tuesday, April 30. The awards will be presented on Sund…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:51AMSaturday, April 20, 2024
By LOU HARRY While many companies have responded to the challenges facing post-lockdown theater by offering minimally cast shows and/or feel-good entertainments, the storied Guthrie Theater …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:33PMThursday, April 18, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Playwright Michael Frayn claims he got the inspiration to write Noises Off in 1970 while watching a comedy he had written unfold…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:09PMWednesday, April 17, 2024
By ANNE SIEGEL War is hell, they say. But the months leading up to war can also be a kind of hell, as demonstrated by the characters in From Here to Eternity, a new musical that opened recen…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:42PMSunday, April 7, 2024
By ALAN SMASON While the Academy Awards buzz was mostly about “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things,” a smaller film starring Anthony Hopkins – “One Life” – was distributed a few we…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:40PMFriday, March 29, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) While the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival has ended this year’s presentations and its famed Scholars Conferen…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:27AMThursday, March 21, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) New Orleans audiences have long been enamored of local comedy genius Ricky Graham, but thanks to the regional premiere of The Pr…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:45PMSunday, March 17, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The latest production of Jesus Christ Superstar bowed this weekend, presented by the Jefferson Performing Arts Society (JPAS) at…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:01PMThursday, March 14, 2024
By ALEX MILLER In the Algonquin Room of the Placid Pines Senior Care Center, a small group of New Yorkers gather to chat, drink coffee or juice and tell the same old stories. On one side of …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:22PMBy ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With a subtitle – The Carole King Musical – it’s easy to conceive that Beautiful is a musical that only concerns the life …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:29AMMonday, March 11, 2024
By ROY BERKO Northwestern grad, Selina Fillinger, was the first Judith Barlow Prize winner, an annual student award given to work inspired by a historic female playwright. “In 2019, her …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:56PMSunday, March 10, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The producers from the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans had already planned for a major opening night on March …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:21PMThursday, March 7, 2024
By LOU HARRY There are Broadway shows that seem destined for long lives after the New York production folds. I’m willing to bet, for instance, that we will be seeing productions as wide ra…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:51PMSunday, March 3, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Producers of Broadway shows that performed reasonably well on the Great White Way have largely been upping their game in the yea…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:04PMFriday, March 1, 2024
By ALAN SMASON Biting satire must be carefully presented. If it doesn’t go far enough, it can come across as insincere and tepid, but if it goes too far, it can be considered as inappropri…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:42PMWednesday, December 27, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Patrick Page chooses his words very carefully or, perhaps, it should be said he chooses Shakespeare’s words carefully. In All …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:02PMMonday, December 25, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic Following his 2019 Tony Award win for Tootsie, writer Robert Horn was offered several projects of his choosing, but none seemed more appropriate than r…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:35PMSunday, December 17, 2023
By ROY BERKO Langston Hughes, the author of Black Nativity, now on stage at the Allen Theatre, in a joint production between Karamu, the country’s oldest black producing theater and the Cl…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:44PM 
