Wednesday, January 22, 2025
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Capturing the wit and destructive lifestyle of humorist Oscar Levant is a daunting task for any actor attempting to portray the …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:13PMMonday, December 23, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The biggest problem Broadway has with so-called “jukebox musicals” is they always seem to get mired down by the exposition o…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:42AMSaturday, December 21, 2024
By ALAN SMASON There are a lot of people capable of taking a beloved film soundtrack and adapting it faithfully into a theatre piece for presentation on the stage. There are also a lot of pe…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:07PMThursday, December 5, 2024
By ALAN SMASON Of all the holiday-themed shows that make their way onto stages in December, Elf: The Broadway Musical may be the one most resistant to the Grinch, Scrooge and other humbugs. …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:50PMMonday, December 2, 2024
By SCOTTY BENNETT Consider, if you will, a blizzardlike night, a cozy inn on the brink of closing forever, suddenly brought back to life by the arrival of two very different groups of travel…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:37PMSunday, December 1, 2024
By SCOTTY BENNETT Woman on a Ledge is an adaptation by Hershey Felder of harpist Rita Costanzi’s writings about her life. Ms. Costanzi is a world-renowned harpist whose life experiences ha…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:31PMBy SCOTTY BENNETT Okuni: The Woman Who Created Kabuki by Ako Dachs is a limited, fictionalized account of the woman who is thought to have created kabuki. It is generally accepted that the d…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:50PMWednesday, November 20, 2024
By ELIZABETH SCHABINGER Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived! The six wives of British King Henry VIII are back in Washington, D.C. at the National Theatre, fresh from thei…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:23PMBy ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Thirty-seven years after the scandal-ridden story of televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker and their popular PTL Club made he…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:31PMTuesday, November 19, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The dark days of the COVID shutdown brought the theatre community to its knees. Unable to perform in front of live audiences or …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:52AMFriday, November 15, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Jamie Lloyd has made a reputation for himself as a visionary minimalist director, winning a remarkable collection of Olivier Awa…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 09:22AMThursday, November 7, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There are a few Off-Broadway shows that rise above the fray even though they are silly in concept or lack the kind of production…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:14AMWednesday, October 30, 2024
By ROY BERKO Bye Bye Birdie, Hair, Grease, Carrie, 13 (The Musical), Dear Evan Hansen and Mean Girls. What do all these Broadway musicals have in common? They placed the spotlight on teen a…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:51PMTuesday, October 29, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Talk about hitting it out of the ballpark. With the Fall Classic being played out in arenas in Los Angeles and in New York, it�…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:24AMSaturday, October 26, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu has said the concept of Pass Over is similar to that of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and tha…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:41AMMonday, October 21, 2024
By LOU HARRY Craig Lucas’ play Prelude to a Kiss reached Broadway in 1988, the same year that “Big,” “Vice Versa,” and “18 Again” were hitting movie theaters. Yes, all were bod…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:14PMThursday, October 17, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) When Girl from the North Country premiered on Broadway, there were a number of ebullient reviews trumpeting the musical for its …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:17PMSunday, October 13, 2024
By ROY BERKO “Neither Ruby Dee or Ossie Davis ever appeared in a Karamu House stage production but both had significant presence and impact in the organization and in the lives of Karamu a…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:37PMBy ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critc (“Steppin’ Out“) Whether you loved the board game “Clue” when growing up or, perhaps, enjoyed the Paramount Pictures movie of the same title, …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:21PMThursday, October 10, 2024
By ANNE SIEGEL Just in time for Halloween, Beetlejuice, the Musical arrives as the first offering in the Marcus Center’s 2024-25 Broadway season. The musical plays though October 6 in th…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:38AMBy ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Several noted plays assign multiple roles to single actors in order to emphasize how clever and talented the actors are. Not onl…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:04AMFriday, September 20, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was first mounted in the fall of 1879, so there is little debate that the work could use a bit…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:42PMThursday, September 19, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) It’s been said that the third time’s the charm. Previously, two earlier iterations of Hairspray have graced local theaters. …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:11PMSunday, 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 02:04AM 
