By HERBERT W. SIMPSON It seems that Geva Theater Center’s long devotion to creating a worthy theater piece devoted to the history of Son House has reached a temporarily completed form in this rich, complicated show that dazzled the opening night audience. Geva commissioned the work more than four years ago, and at this point […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Just before every performance of The Pianist of Willesden Lane, the one-woman play based on the book she wrote with Lee Cohen (“The Children of Willesden Lane”), Mona Golabek holds onto a Star of David that hangs from her necklace. As she grasps the golden artifact (which […]
By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — Dramamine is not one of the products for sale in the theater lobbies where the Broadway musical adaptation of Anastasia plays. But if you are prone to motion sickness or equilibrium disturbances, you may want to consider asking your doctor or pharmacist about taking medication before attending. To be sure, nothing […]
By ROY BERKO What do Rogers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter all have in common? Yes, they are all composers of American musicals, but they are also just some of those who attempted, and failed, to make George Bernard Shaw’s classical Pygmalion into a musical. At one point, Shaw had given permission […]
By EDWARD RUBIN There are few examples of jukebox musicals – a denigrating term if ever – that have blown me away. In fact, without overtaxing my brain, Jersey Boys, which dramatizes the formation, success and eventual breakup of the 1960s rock ‘n roll group The Four Seasons, is the only jukebox musical of import […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When co-artistic directors Augustin Correro and Nick Shackleford founded the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company four years ago, they insisted their intent was to bring the collected works of their namesake playwright to New Orleans stages with emphasis on his more obscure and lesser-performed titles in addition to the mainstays […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“). Playwright, author and poet Tennessee Williams wrote his one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton in 1946. He was still living in New Orleans in the 600 block of St. Peter Street, only two buildings down from the present site of Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré. […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) By the time Lorraine Hansberry died in 1965 at the tender age of 34 from pancreatic cancer, she had already made history. Her award-winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, about an African-American family attempting to move out of a redlined slum and into a well-to-do white neighborhood was […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) New Orleans is finally in the room where it happens. The groundbreaking work of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: An American Musical, currently on its second national tour at the historic Saenger Theater, offers theatre lovers an opportunity to expand their minds and break free from the past in […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – A small but energetic theater company, Off the Wall Theatre, has produced a memorable production of one of Tennessee Williams’ later works, Small Craft Warnings. This rarely-produced work received lukewarm response when it opened Off-Broadway in 1972. At that time, Williams was 60 and feeling very aware that he […]