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 […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT In the moments between daylight and evening, there is a time when it is neither day nor night. It is a time of transition, a liminal state between now and then, a twilight zone between what is here and nowhere. Welcome to Nowhere, a town somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountains of […]
By ROY BERKO A juke box musical consists of pre-existing songs which are melded into a script to tell a story. The songs, in contrast to lyrics and music, which are specifically integrated into a traditional musical’s story, don’t always smoothly transition into the juke box tale. The songs can be by one specific artist or […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” is the basis for Once Upon a Mattress, the 1959 musical that launched the Broadway career of Carol Burnett as Princess Winifred – “Fred” for short – the Wobegone. A 1996 production starring Sarah Jessica Parker […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré has removed any doubt about whether it could creatively pull off the first local production of Jersey Boys. In fact, the talented directing team of artistic director A. J. Allegra and choreographer and co-director Jauné Buisson have produced a very satisfying […]