By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) If anyone questioned whether Shelbie Mac is the greatest young talent to come down the pike since the late Cynthia Owen, all doubts have been erased with her starring role in Peter Pan, currently playing the boards at the Jefferson Performing Arts Center on Airline Drive. Mac, who […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When we last viewed Torvald and Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen’s immortal play A Doll’s House, Nora had made an irreconcilable decision. Simply put, she wanted more from life than being a wife and mother. Her purpose was to become “a human being” and not be defined by […]
By AARON KRAUSE MIAMI, Fla. — Up is down and right is wrong. It’s a phrase that could describe today’s topsy-turvy world. But in playwright Michael McKeever’s bold and imaginative re-thinking of Dracula, Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel, the phrase describes a quite favorable world. That is, if you’re progressive and care about causes such as equality. […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Louis Armstrong has been one of the most thoroughly researched, yet still largely unknown figures. Part of the problem is that the lens of history has been deliberately clouded and that much of his life’s story was glamorized and rewritten by no less a raconteur than Armstrong himself. […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) October 6 will be the 20th anniversary of the kidnapping, torture and beating of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard, a student at the nearby University of Wyoming, was targeted as a victim for aggression and violence because he was outwardly gay. Discovered tied to a remote […]
By ROY BERKO Susan Hill, author of the book “The Woman in Black,” the source of the play of the same name now being staged at the Cleveland Play House (CPH), relates: “The Suffolk coast. Winter. The early Seventies. Behind the path giving onto the shingle beach and the North Sea, are marshes, mysterious places […]
By ROY BERKO God, or a facsimile thereof, in the form of Mike Polk Jr., who in his other life is a local comedian and Fox 8 personality, is appearing on the Beck Center for the Arts stage, in a mock spiritual conversation with his audience. The script, which was written by David Javerbaum, and […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Meredith Wilson’s immortal The Music Man has been playing for the past two weeks at the Rivertown Theaters for the Performing Arts in Kenner, but unlike the signature song from Act One (“Ya Got Trouble”), this specific production has run without much of a hitch. It didn’t […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) For the past three weeks Rainbow Carnage Productions has been presenting Hedwig and the Angry Inch on the stage at Café Istanbul. With a simple, but effective set and direction by Kimberly Kaye, this is the third professional production of the John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask […]
By HERBERT SIMPSON I wondered how the old love-rock musical would play these days for an audience of younger folk unfamiliar with Hippie rebellion, flower children, 60s rock music, and a more feminine long-hair style and slovenly tie-dyed clothes-styles. For that matter, I wasn’t so sure how the now-rather-old folks, mostly more establishment, would regard […]