By LOU HARRY Thanks to its notorious David Merrick-produced/Patti LuPone-starring died-on-the-road 1976 tryout, the Steven Schwartz/Joseph Stein musical “The Baker’s Wife” landed a reputation as being a lost cause. But like many musical theater lovers, I fell hard for its score – or, at least, the songs for the leads that were the only ones […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) At the beginning of Bess Wohi’s play Liberation, the character of Lizzie breaks the fourth wall to greet the expectant audience. She makes some quick, almost anxious banter to calm everyone down. That’s because just before they had taken their seats, they had turned their cell phones […]
‘By LOU HARRY Instead of praising our goulash, They’re appraising the plays of Willie Mays. In the original production of Dawn Yankees, that’s a lyric sung by Meg Boyd and other neglected wives lamenting the lack of attention paid to them by her husbands during baseball months. It’s just one of many lyrics and lines […]
By ROY BERKO The Notebook: The Musical tells the heart warming, and often heartbreaking life-long love story, of Allie and Noah. It is based on a true tale inspired by author Nicholas Sparks’ wife’s-grandparents, who shared a love story which started as a summer-romance and endured separation, renewal and Alzheimer’s Disease. It is filled with loving […]
By AARON KRAUSE A social media influencer learns from a DNA test that she is among the 40 percent of individuals who can smell asparagus in their urine. An otherworldly being tells two zoo-goers that ants, not humans, are among Earth’s dominant species. A woman aboard a spacecraft sometime in the future is murdered because […]
By ANNE SIEGEL SPRING GREEN, Wis. – There’s no better time for out-of-state visitors to head towards Wisconsin than right now. Some people might stay at campgrounds, others may find a secret fishing spot, and some will be searching for the latest antique finds. Avid theatergoers, however, know that satisfaction awaits in the verdant landscape […]
By AARON KRAUSE A small, dark statue of a woman rests among the items in Jacob Brown’s realistic set design for Main Street Players’ (MSP) shining professional production of Lauren Gunderson’s funny and moving play, The Revolutionists. Yet it is easy to overlook the black, inconspicuous statue—or notice that parts of its body are missing. Similarly, […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Jamie Wax’s play Call Me Izzy is set in Mansfield, Louisiana, some three to four hours away from where he grew up in Baton Rouge and New Orleans and worlds away from the New York City he now calls home. But for someone who has lived in […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It is perhaps most appropriate that for the third jewel in Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane’s studded crown is Carousel, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. The old chestnut is always welcomed when it allows for all stops to be pulled out […]
By ALAN SMASON This season’s New Orleans Shakespeare Festival has been quite unusual. To begin with, the first of its two major productions wasn’t even Shakespeare: it was Moliére and his final opus The Imaginary Invalid. That production was quite special with a new translation and adaptation by Ryder Thornton and superb direction by Anne-Liese […]