By LOU HARRY I caught the first performance of The Prom, produced by Summer Stock Stage, a unique company that fuses the talents of established performers with early career actors. It’s now a resident company of the Butler Arts & Events Center, with four productions this season at the Schrott Center. This was my fourth…
By LOU HARRY I caught the opening night of Terry Guest’s play Oak at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center, the second of its three rolling world premiere productions. Some thoughts: – Oak concerns a playfully named family that consists of young mother Peaches (Psywrn Simone), her restless teen Pickle (Jadah Rowarn), younger son Big Man…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) A decade ago the NOLA Project mounted an unusual production of Adam Szymkowicz’s Clown Bar at The Little Gem Saloon. Set in a seedy bar run by a crime syndicate of clowns, Szymkowicz spun a dark tale of menacing clowns that would give chills to any coulrophobic…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Over the course of the last several years, Crescent City Stage has established itself as the premiere equity theatre company in New Orleans, partially filling the void left in the wake of the dissolution of Southern Rep. While Southern Rep was largely a community theatre company with…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick, the two brothers who conceived Something Rotten! and more recently wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Mrs. Doubtfire (Karey also wrote that book), probably have a tinge of pride that Something Rotten! – a sendup of Broadway musicals improbably set in…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable is a brilliant indictment of organized religion and the negativity attached to innuendo and gossip. While it finds root in the Catholic Church of Shanley’s own youth, the damage to reputation and the stain on the lives of the accused could…
The 2025 Tony Award nominations were announced on Thursday, May 1 by Tony Award winners Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. The nominations for competitive Tony Awards are: Best Play English, Author: Sanaz Toossi The Hills of California, Author: Jez Butterworth John Proctor is the Villain, Author: Kimberly Belflower Oh, Mary!, Author: Cole Escola Purpose, Author: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Best Musical Buena…
By ROY BERKO Hispanic theatre is noted for its’ fictional-based literature that normally has six elements: character, plot, point of view, setting, style and theme. These are often encased in a melodramatic storyline with major family dysfunction. José Cruz González’s Under a Baseball Sky, now in production at Beck Center for the Arts, well fits…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It’s been a full decade since Lin-Manuel Miranda’s idea of a “mixtape” about the Founding Fathers was playing at the Public Theater to sold out performances and plans for a transfer to Broadway had been announced. If the buzz about Hamilton were to live up to its…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When the season announcement was made last year that Jefferson Performing Arts (JPA) would be producing Billy Elliot: The Musical for its final 2025 show, there was some hope expressed that the local market might be able to yield a capable actor to tackle the title role….
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Throughout his life, Tennessee Williams knew tragedy. Whether through his sister Rose’s struggle with mental health or the loss of his lovers Bernard Dubowsky (aka Kip Kernan) and Frank Merlo, Williams knew the sting of loss and hopelessness. But as a very young man, he was unacquainted…
By SCOTTY BENNETT There are times in a person’s life when the only rational response to the pressures of daily living is to escape into a different reality. Drugs and alcohol are often the doorways to the alternate realm. Still, sometimes, the mind of the escapee creates, in whole cloth, a new place within the…
