By ROY BERKO Bye Bye Birdie, Hair, Grease, Carrie, 13 (The Musical), Dear Evan Hansen and Mean Girls. What do all these Broadway musicals have in common? They placed the spotlight on teen angst. OMG! Think back to high school, specifically the cafeteria, at lunch time. Depending on the institution you attended there was probably the table of […]
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 ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) When Girl from the North Country premiered on Broadway, there were a number of ebullient reviews trumpeting the musical for its inventive reimagining of Bob Dylan’s music and its tautly written book by Conor McPherson. The ensemble nature of this work is at its very heart. Lead […]
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 ANNE SIEGEL Just in time for Halloween, Beetlejuice, the Musical arrives as the first offering in the Marcus Center’s 2024-25 Broadway season. The musical plays though October 6 in the Marcus Performing Arts Center. In fact, Beetlejuice seems to be on everyone’s minds these days. The sequel to Tim Burton’s popular 1988 film, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder […]
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 […]