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…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There is an adage well known to pharmacists and those familiar with shampoo. The directions “repeat when necessary” come to mind for a great many things, but with the current joint production of the NOLA Project and the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) of Shakespeare’s “A…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) One could argue that T. Lawrence Shannon, the defrocked Episcopal priest who is the central character of The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams, should be slovenly and out of shape. The play suggests he was quite at home with those potent potables – the rum-cocos…
By ALAN SMASON If, as the adage says, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then satire must be the epitome of adoration. Two one-act plays by famed playwright Christopher Durang and another by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa have served to turn the tables for longtime fans of Tennessee Williams, accustomed as they are to themes of…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There is little doubt when Thomas Lanier Williams put pen to paper and drafted what became The Glass Menagerie that he was pouring out the poetic words that traced his own tortuous upbringing. Under the guise of his nom de plume, Tennessee Williams, his “memory play” was…
