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 people capable of directing such a work and bringing out the actors’ very best performances that are faithful to that […]
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 values that won’t pass muster among Broadway producers. The current production of Little Shop of Horrors is the latest of these kinds of […]
By AARON KRAUSE Forget ghosts and goblins. Deborah Zoe Laufer’s frightening and moving drama, The Last Yiddish Speaker, centers on a real horrific scenario. Specifically, the playwright imagines that the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol was successful. As a result, a white supremacist regime came into power. Under its rule, authorities enforce ethnic, ideological […]
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’s easy to conflate a baseball metaphor with a description for a local hit show. But the Jefferson Performing Arts’ (JPA) latest production […]
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 that it was born out of the communal mourning over the death of Trayvon Martin. But it is much more than that. It is a simultaneous […]
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 body-switching stories, but Prelude was something different. Yes, it involved people’s personas suddenly inhabiting the bodies of others, but much of its focus was […]
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 artists. They often visited for speaking engagements, to instruct master classes, and to support Karamu’s mission.” The duo met at Karamu. Dee’s […]
By 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, the murder mystery genre that catapulted Agatha Christie to fame has proven to be a major draw to its success. The simple board game developed during […]
By 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 only do they perform different roles for as many as 40 separate characters, but they are required to feed themselves their own lines. It’s not unlike […]
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 of timely updating. The original language is also outdated in that Dano-Norwegian is hardly ever employed and translating it into modern English […]